TIL: I'm just like Hertz
Nothing, I guess
this post was submitted on 16 Jun 2025
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Aw, cheer up; someone will apply you in thirty to forty years.
Imagine if he had to apply for funding
"these waves have the potential to transform how we communicate and will likely find world wide usage"
He would actually be right unlike all the other funding applications which are largely oversold.
I mean it's kind of bizarre that he couldn't think of a practical application. We literally use invisible waves to communicate already, these ones move at light speed, how could that not be useful?
Hilariously, light is an electromagnetic wave.
So, yes, we can see electromagnetic waves.... Just, only a very small segment of them.
How wrong he was. Now we use EM daily for everything.... Communicating via Wi-Fi, listening to music in the car (FM broadcast), or via Bluetooth and using LTE... Even heating our food. Not to mention medical applications like X-rays...
There's a shitload of stuff we use EM for without even thinking. It's all around us, all the time, like the matrix. I love EM science.
This goes to show you that, just because someone discovered a thing, doesn't mean that they have any idea what to do with that discovery, or that the discoveries end there....
Before, reality was just what humans could touch, smell, see, and hear, but after the publication of the charged electromagnetic spectrum, we now know that what we can touch, smell, see, and hear, is less than one-millionth.
I still like the fact that the guy that invented super glue was very annoyed by how sticky it was.
And Mantis Shrimp still continue to baffle me in the amount of EM range they can sense/see.
If only he knew his discovery would lead to the worst car rental company he problem wouldn't have published
The germans are really something else, what innovation hasn't sprung from their imagination?
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.
Herons steam "engine" had no power whatsoever and was not scalable. And even if it would have been scalable, they had had no fuel to drive it.
I thought they did invent a steam engine at some point. I'm sure I read that somewhere.
The thing is they were never going to invent the steam engine because they didn't have the technology to produce steel to the quality and strength that would be needed to build rails. And for that matter they didn't really have the metallurgy necessary to construct reliable boilers either.
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Imagine industrial revolution Roman Empire, thank fuck they didn't connect the dots.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_radio
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.
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.
Faraday, after demonstrating how moving a magnet through a coiled wire induced a current in the wire was asked by a visiting statesman what was the use of this.
Faraday responded, "In twenty years, you will be taxing it"
Similarly, at a demonstration of hot air balloons in France, Benjamin Franklin was asked "Of what use is this?"
Franklin replied, "Of what use is a newborn baby?"
"Mr. Franklin, of what use is this hot air balloon contraption?"
"You can take ladies up in it with a bottle of wine and a blanket and you know, they can’t refuse, because of the implication. Think about it. She's floating up in the middle of the sky with some dude she barely knows. You know, she looks around, and what does she see? Nothing but open air. 'Ahhhh! There’s nowhere for me to run. What am I gonna do, say ‘no?’"
Sounds like Faraday understood the... potential.
Funnily enough, Faraday seemingly also understood that the Electric Field only possesses a potential in the absence of changing magnetic fields. Because only in the absence of changing magnetic fields, the rotation of the Electric Field is zero, and only then it has a potential.
That's a really cool Franklin quote. Visionary.
Everything I've ever heard about Franklin makes him a boss. This is a new one.
Here's a little known fact that is not true, which will bring some nuance to the previous anecdote, Benjamin Franklin ate babies.
Another one that is true but sounds like an onion.
He enjoyed the company of GILFS
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