It’s not always immediately obvious to what end you can use a new innovation. For instance, the Romans discovered and built a steam engine. But nobody connected the dots that it could be used to power a train.
To me, it showcases the main reason why we need to collaborate. Only together, we can exponentially increase the potential of everything we build.
Good for us as we wouldn’t exist without the world going exactly as it has (I guess unless you’re from a culture that didn’t get conquered/settled and has been quite insular), but imagine where technology would be if industrial civilisation had been continuous from so early
By August 1895, Marconi was field testing his system but even with improvements he was only able to transmit signals up to one-half mile, a distance Oliver Lodge had predicted in 1894 as the maximum transmission distance for radio waves.
I suppose beyond the engineering know how required they were looking at possible transmission ranges and thinking it simply wasn’t practical, square law and all that.
There are often actual limits to what can be done, and there are practical limits. Especially in the early days of a technology it’s really hard to understand which limits are actual limits, practical limits or only short-term limits.
For example, in the 1800s, people thought that going faster than 30km/h would pose permanent health risks and wouldn’t be practical at all. We now know that 30km/h isn’t fast at all, but we do know that 1300km/h is pretty much the hard speed limit for land travel and that 200-300km/h is the practical limit for land travel (above that it becomes so power-inefficient and so dangerous that there’s hardly a point).
So when looking at the technology in an early state, it’s really hard to know what kind of limit you have hit.
We stand on the shoulders of giants etc etc. But it seems odd to me that they wouldn’t think about using this for communication at least.
It’s not always immediately obvious to what end you can use a new innovation. For instance, the Romans discovered and built a steam engine. But nobody connected the dots that it could be used to power a train.
To me, it showcases the main reason why we need to collaborate. Only together, we can exponentially increase the potential of everything we build.
Imagine industrial revolution Roman Empire, thank fuck they didn’t connect the dots.
Good for us as we wouldn’t exist without the world going exactly as it has (I guess unless you’re from a culture that didn’t get conquered/settled and has been quite insular), but imagine where technology would be if industrial civilisation had been continuous from so early
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_radio
I suppose beyond the engineering know how required they were looking at possible transmission ranges and thinking it simply wasn’t practical, square law and all that.
This.
There are often actual limits to what can be done, and there are practical limits. Especially in the early days of a technology it’s really hard to understand which limits are actual limits, practical limits or only short-term limits.
For example, in the 1800s, people thought that going faster than 30km/h would pose permanent health risks and wouldn’t be practical at all. We now know that 30km/h isn’t fast at all, but we do know that 1300km/h is pretty much the hard speed limit for land travel and that 200-300km/h is the practical limit for land travel (above that it becomes so power-inefficient and so dangerous that there’s hardly a point).
So when looking at the technology in an early state, it’s really hard to know what kind of limit you have hit.