We used gold centuries ago, we could be totally able to come back to it. Or at least back to the US dollar backed by gold like it was years ago
Not gonna work out
Well, it could actually work out if we got back to the state we had been in like 16-17th centuries (or even before that). Conspiracy theories aside, the major reason why governments dismantled gold backup of fiat currencies was because it had been a constant pain in the ass in the form of monetary imbalances which were caused by the rapid expansion of the world economy due to Industrial Revolutions (definitely not a bad thing on its own)
It had started to be acutely felt in the second half of the 19th century and ultimately led to the Great Depression of 1929 (with a train of minor crises before 1929). The Nixon shock of 1973 was sort of official divorce, but we could safely claim that gold and dollar parted their ways as early as 1933 after Franklin Roosevelt had signed his famous Executive Order 6102. In other countries the separation occurred even earlier
What you call "the monetary imbalances which were caused by the rapid expansion of the world economy due to Industrial Revolutions (definitely not a bad thing on its own)" could be also called as the new way to print money and the unlimited scriptural money based on nothing. To reply to the industrial revolution as you said
It is more like all major countries did it before the US
Basically, the gold standard was effectively abandoned everywhere in the world (but in the US, obviously) when WWI started. That was a reasonable thing to do as belligerent countries started to print money like there was no tomorrow and for some of them there was not (as all countries do that when they are warring)
Germany as the Wiemar Republic had returned to gold standard in like 1923-24 for a short while to get down with the hyperinflation they succumbed to after they had lost the war and were obliged to pay heavy war reparations (which they fully paid out only in 2010)
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