Practically yesterday!:
Eight hundred life spans can bridge more than 50,000 years. But of these 800 people, 650 spent their lives in caves or worse; only the last 70 had any truly effective means of communicating with one another, only the last 6 ever saw a printed word or had any real means of measuring heat or cold, only the last 4 could measure time with any precision; only the last 2 used an electric motor; and the vast majority of the items that make up our material world were developed within the lifespan of the eight-hundredth person. (Quoted from pages 9 - 10 of Assessing Technology Transfer, 1966 NASA Report SP-5067, by R. L. Lesher and G. J. Howick.)
The first scientific journal was published in your great-great-great-great grandparents’ time, 1665. Its title? Journal des Scavans. (Source: The Harvest of a Quiet Eye, A. L. Mackay, Bristol and London: The Institute of Physics, p. 133)
William Whewell coined the word “scientist” in 1840, writing: “We need very much a name to describe a cultivator of science in general. I should incline to call him a Scientist.” The first known published use of the word “researcher”came in 1883, when E. R. Lankester wrote: “Teaching here appears to be producing an income which may support a researcher.” (Sources of both: the Oxford English Dictionary)
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