Does it have to be an object? Or can it be a scientific method or type of field of study?
This is a cut and paste paragraph from the first post on my Icarus Meta-Club on Brassgoggles:
Victorian Era scientists were busy developing the science that people would use to develop supersonic flight. They could not
implement the technology, because the truth is that the development of Fluid Mechanics as a field in Mechanical Engineering, was a slow, tortuous and haphazard affair, more like Frankenstein Monster of events, mostly made in the lab, that did not make much sense until after the turn of the 19th. C. But all the tools for flight were already in place by the middle of the 19th. C.
Schlieren Photography of a bullet in supersonic flight, by Ernst Mach, 1888
The photo shows a leading bow shock wave, and a trailing shock wave
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