It probably would have been invented anyway, by somebody - but when is not known. Billiards gave the first person reason to develop the idea once he saw it could work. There was a year of experimentation needed before it worked in the real world (though as the article notes a trained chemist could probably have figured out the working formula faster).

Everything we know could have been invented by someone else earlier if they had tried (many things depend on earlier inventions and so earlier is often only a few years). Most of them would be invented by someone else a few years latter as well. However we remember the person who invented it (and often the person who made it successful) and not the others who didn't.