I can assure you they were not the first people to dream up the concept of superconductivity. (In fact Heike Onnes first observed superconductivity in frozen mercury in 1911). And even if they were, as an idea it's still worthless. My idea for a product is an anti-gravity machine. So what? Unless I can figure out how to do it, the idea is worthless. It's discovering how do it that counts.
My point is that they weren't even looking for a superconductor. They were on a fishing expedition for a perfect resistor. As a result they took lots of interesting compounds, cooled them well below the temperature of liquid nitrogen, tried to run a current through them, and checked for resistance.
The actual idea that they had? Nobody has succeeded in finding that yet.
