generate electricity.

not generate electricity.

generate electricity the other way around.

not generate electricity.

generate electricity.

not generate electricity.

generate electricity the other way around.

not generate electricity…

Edit: I dumbly misread your post (energy/electricity) & thought of this, which I will leave here because it made me smile & that’s a good thing.

How do we know that lots of people didn’t figure this out & then got on with their lives? Because there was no way for them to tell all the other people in the world, we’ll never know, or if they wrote it down it’s been lost, so likewise we’ll never know.

Is hard to imagine what the world was like before mass literacy and mass communication.

Not sure if this counts (as a car), but it was a three wheeler (Reliant Robin), gutless and rattly, all the fun of going 50 mph without breaking the speed limit. All the engine weight was directly on the front wheel, so the back end (no weight at all) would slide out wonderfully around corners.