Let's look at each of those problems.

Automobiles required a suitable fuel and a lightweight powerplant capable of highly dynamic power output. The first powered carriages date to the early 19th century, on rails, though coal and steam were not responsive, dynamic, or efficient. Good for railroads, not for untracked vehicles (not that this wasn't tried).

Discovery and refinement of petroleum (1835 - 1865), creation of the reciprocating engine (Otto, Deisel, 1860s - 1880s), suitable tyres (vulcanised rubber, 1844), and high-quality steelmaking (Bessemer process, 1856 - 1860s). With the basic parts together, the first automobiles appeared in the 1880s, but further expansion required both mass-production assembly-line practices (Ford, 1901), and expanded and reliable fuel supplies (major oilfield discoveries including Spindletop, 1901, Lakeview, 1910, and East Texas -- "Pappy" Joiner's "Daisy Bradford No. 3", 1930). Well into the 1930s, it wasn't entirely clear that petroleum or petrol would be the fuels of choice, with other petroleum distilates (NGLs, condensate, and deisel) and ethanol among contenders.

Once the automobile was developed, a period of rapid innovation and patent filing followed ... and largely tapered off by the 1930s. There's been incremental improvement since. Even in areas such as safety, mortality per billion passenger miles has improved at a remarkably constant rate of halving about every two decades, since the 1920s (the rate was twice that in the decade 1910-1920).

Heavier-than-air craft were also largely dependent on the same factors: high power-to-weight powerplants, a high energy-density fuel, and a basic knowledge of aeronautics. Development of aircraft trailed automobiles only slightly, with similar trends of patent filings. The DC-3, described as a perfect aircraft design in Robert J. Gordon's The Rise and Fall of American Growth saw first flight in 1935, only 29 years after the Wrights on first first flight. It remains in active commercial use.

Gordon on the DC-3:

The very aircraft, the “Flagship Detroit,” that operated the first American flight from Chicago to New York is owned by the Flagship Detroit Foundation and often flies around the country to visit air shows. DC-3s are used everywhere because they are cheap; one can be purchased for $100,000. Their popularity eight decades after the first flight demonstrates that the DC-3 is the best-designed aircraft in aviation history. Its ruggedness is legendary; a common saying among pilots is that “the only replacement for a DC-3 is another DC-3.”

Aircraft designed in the 1950s, and built in the 1960s, not only still fly, but serve as the backbone of strategic military bombing capabilities of the United States, in the form of the B-52, specific airframes of which will continue in combat missions through the 2040s if not beyond, and hold status as the fastest operational manned aircraft, in the form of the SR-71.

That is: there are inventions for which, once the prerequisite requirements are met, rapidly emerge and attain levels of maximum development.

DNA's existence was suggested by Darwin, the basic mechanics of genetics by Mendel, its structure by Watson and Crick, based on the work of others including Rosalind Franklin, and relying largely on the insights of X-ray crystallography. Direct manipulation and reading of DNA was achieved in the 1970s through enzymatic processes, though not well-developed for several decades further -- the problem is a fundamentally difficult one. Even now, the benefits of direct genetic manipulation are scant, another point covered by Gorden, in his general assessment of medical advances, or largely lack thereof since the 1970s. Still, at least there's been demonstrable progress.

And then there's practical nuclear fusion.