Is there a good overview of materials improvements over, say, the past 150 years? It seems like one of the areas, along with IT and biotech, which has had huge gains even in the past 20 years, contrary to the "end of innovation" thesis of Thiel et al. You can get carbon fiber in everything now, ceramics are more used in things other than pottery, and companies like Crucible made a lot of awesome steels (including...cast stainless steels!) from the 1970s to now. Sure, the properties don't get 10x better, but a 1% improvement in strength-at-2000C for the blades makes a jet turbine a lot more efficient.