The visibility that overlooked inventors achieve through recovery efforts can be temporary.

A book gets published and then goes out of print.

A documentary gets made and then becomes hard to find.

A school changes its curriculum when its leadership changes.

The sustained visibility that famous inventors enjoy — through textbooks that are reprinted decade after decade, through museums that remain open, through cultural references that recur in conversation and media — is not easily achieved for overlooked inventors even after recovery efforts have made them temporarily more visible.

These limitations do not make the recovery effort less important.