What is “retrovation”? The term is a neologism.
Anna Sivula and Jaakko Suominen in their paper, “Retrovation: The Concept of a Historical Innovation,” define retrovation as:
“…an innovation that utilizes knowledge concerning the past. A retrovation is an innovation created for the intentional use of historical knowledge in the revivification of an object or for providing a new meaning or purpose for it.”
Nigel Duckworth has used the term similarly to mean the process of reverting to an earlier form of technology while calling it innovation and progress. It is an “echo” of an earlier innovation. An example is the reintroduction of airships, such as the Flying Whale, for carrying cargo