As ever, John very interesting. The tlricae I linked to does refer to your point, that the field was much more wide-open and undiscovered at the time of Einstein's breakthrough: It also helped that he was struggling with these problems at a very propitious time. Stephen Jay Gould has pointed out that the reason it's so hard to hit .400 in major league baseball today is that the whole level of play has been raised. In the 1920s and 1930s there were many weak teams, against which it was easy for top hitters to pump up their averages. Today though, there are fewer consistently weak teams. Batters have a higher standard against which to try to stand out.Einstein was like one of those old-time batters. Today there are thousands of physicists in the world, but when Einstein was at the patent office there were scarcely any 97 perhaps six full-time physicists in Switzerland and at most a few hundred in other major countries. He could take the time he needed for quiet mulling without too much worry that anyone would catch up to him. Oh, and I love the Albert, don't tell God what to do quote. Classic!!

Well....If Eins tein is wrong, they'll all just blame his Serbian wife Mileva Maric who planted the 'relativity' idea in his head in the first place. 

the Bible and Koran God don't exist.