True to a certain extent:
> Research on rechargeable Li-ion batteries dates to the 1960s; one of the earliest examples is a CuF2/Li battery developed by NASA in 1965. The breakthrough that produced the earliest form of the modern Li-ion battery was made by British chemist M. Stanley Whittingham in 1974, who first used titanium disulfide (TiS2) as a cathode material, which has a layered structure that can take in lithium ions without significant changes to its crystal structure.
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lithium-ion_battery#History
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_lithium-ion_bat...
But even if we grant that Li-ion batteries were a post-1970s innovation/invention—as opposed to a refinement of something that came before—it would still be one of the few that occurred, as the referenced book argues.