> If his ideas had real substance, we would have seen substantial results by now

This is naive. Like saying if backprop had any real substance, it would have had results within 10 years of its publication in 1989

> Your chronological sequence is interesting, but it refers to a time when the number of researchers and the amount of compute available were a tiny fraction of what they are today.

Again. Those resources are important. But one resource being ignored is time. Try baking a turkey at 300 for 4 hours veruss at 900 for 1 hour and see how edible each one is