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Related short story: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Road_Not_Taken_(short_story)
Just a warning, the wiki article spoils the entire thing on the first sentence of the plot.
Also, one can find the full story with a search (like here: https://eyeofmidas.com/scifi/Turtledove_RoadNotTaken.pdf ). If it's not spoiled, it's a very interesting one.
I thought a lot about that story when there was the whole blowup about the possibly-easy-to-make-room-temp-superconductor a while back.
Of course as expected it wasn't real, but it was fun to imagine how things would be if it was real and we had discovered it much sooner.