He might have won the very first Nobel Prize, had he not passed away just a few years prior, and much too young, wasn’t he in his late-30s or early-40s?
In fact, I believe that had Hertz remained alive and won his prize, the Nobel Committee would not have felt obliged to give it to Marconi a few years later.
Marconi was a back-stabbing asshole who became one of the wealthiest men in the world by abusing the gentlemanly trust of others, and coasting on someone else’s technology - particularly the way crystals oscillate, and some of them serve nicely as a sort of “translation point” between electromagnetic waves and the physical apparatus that transmits and/or receives the signal.
He might have won the very first Nobel Prize, had he not passed away just a few years prior,
Basically the same thing happened twenty years later with Henrietta Swan Leavitt, who made a discovery that’s essential to figuring distances in space. She noticed something while working as a computer at Harvard College Observatory that eventually became known as Leavitt’s Law. Her Nobel nomination was halted because she passed away and the award is not given posthumously. Hubble’s work heavily relied on hers.
expatriado@lemmy.world
on 16 Jun 14:24
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this type of science-discovery to usefulness-realization latency is the norm, pretty sure Curie didn’t envision nuclear power plants
Tar_alcaran@sh.itjust.works
on 16 Jun 14:25
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I mean, it would be some 25 years until the radio was invented. And Hertz’ machine required a 30kV spark on a 2.5m meter long antenna with 2 solid 30cm zinc spheres, and his transmission range was something like “barely down the hall”.
Not the most practical method.
con_fig@programming.dev
on 16 Jun 16:18
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I’m sure someone thinks it’s perfect for their use case, semi relevant xkcd:
Tar_alcaran@sh.itjust.works
on 16 Jun 17:12
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Yes, except you need to buy each bit in a big glass jar.
Edit: only half joking, they used big Leiden Jars, which were basically giant glass batteries. There was no such thing as people with power at home, unless you were crazy rich
gandalf_der_12te@discuss.tchncs.de
on 17 Jun 12:38
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There were electrochemical cells (invented in 1800) that provided a constant current for some time.
Idk the details. Look up Galvanic cell, Volta cell.
Tar_alcaran@sh.itjust.works
on 17 Jun 12:51
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Sure, but those are still “big glass jars full of electricity”
gandalf_der_12te@discuss.tchncs.de
on 17 Jun 14:33
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General_Effort@lemmy.world
on 16 Jun 18:35
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Fun fact: The german word for using a radio is “funken”; literally “to spark”. A radioman is, or was, a “Funker”. When you are talking over the radio, you are doing it “Über Funk”.
gandalf_der_12te@discuss.tchncs.de
on 17 Jun 12:36
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ooh i always guessed the word “Funk” comes from function, i.e. the radio is a useful tool that has a function to whoever is using it.
squaresinger@lemmy.world
on 17 Jun 12:59
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Pretty much the first type of commercially viable radio transmitter was the spark-gap transmitter (“Knallfunkensender” in German). It worked by charging up some capacitors to up to 100kV and then letting them spark. This spark sent a massive banging noise on the whole radio spectrum, which could then be turned into an audible noise using a very simple receiver. That was then used to send morse codes (or similar encodings).
They went into service around 1900, and by 1920 it was illegal to use these because they would disrupt any and all other radio transmissions in the area with a massive loud bang.
General_Effort@lemmy.world
on 17 Jun 14:47
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“Knallfunkensender”
Literally “Bang-Sparks-Sender”.
Are you sure it’s because of the radio spectrum bang? I always thought it was because of the audible bang.
If someone operated such a thing today, any guesses what the death zone for electronic devices would be?
It’s a broadband bang that can be heard across the whole spectrum. It becomes audible when listening to radio broadcasts.
Regular radio transmissions are comparatively narrow band, allowing lots of simultaneous transmissions in the same airspace, each on its own frequency. The spark gap transistor is very wide band, so it basically sounds as if you are sending a bang sound across all radio frequencies at the same time.
It wouldn’t destroy radio equipment, but the radio transmissions. It’s basically as if you’d use a radio jammer as a morse code transmitter.
General_Effort@lemmy.world
on 17 Jun 14:35
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It really is from “Funkentechnik”: “Spark technology”. I wonder how many people appreciate the post for the cute etymology and how many because it sounds funny.
Good information for ham radio people, too. Hobby sounds too geeky? Just say you’re into Über-Funk-Parties.
gandalf_der_12te@discuss.tchncs.de
on 17 Jun 14:37
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ok but now, where does the word “Funke” (spark) come from?
General_Effort@lemmy.world
on 17 Jun 14:59
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mittelhochdeutsch (mitteldeutsch) vunke, althochdeutsch funcho, entstanden aus den mit -n- gebildeten Formen des Feuer zugrunde liegenden Substantivs
Those practical methods would never have existed if not for Hertz’ experiments. Those were 25 years of other scientists, having seen that this new concept exists, refining his contraption into what eventually would become the machine that we know as a radio.
gedaliyah@lemmy.world
on 16 Jun 14:38
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This may be an even better example than the positron. Originally a theoretical antimatter form of the common electron, with no practical application.
Turned out to be a vital tool for medical imaging. If you or someone you know has ever had a PET scan, now you know what the P stands for.
If you think about it, almost all computer-technology is radio. Wifi, bluetooth, GPS, radar, and cellular are literally radio. Meanwhile everything else runs on transistor tech developed and refined… for radios.
Our modern economy couldn’t exist if people like Hertz and Maxwell didn’t get to toy with their useless hobbies. But we can’t rely on the curiosity of the leisure class anymore. Basic research is expensive, necessary, and a public good. I’m afraid that the Trump regime has already spoiled the secret sauce that makes America the technology leader of the world.
Transistors were mostly developed for telephone systems (the ones with wires) as a replacement for tubes. And the modern tech used for radios is very different from that used for computers.
Ithink you could be more charitable in your reply. Transistors were developed to replace tubes in telephone systems… Okay but the tubes had been developed to where they were because of their usefulness in radio.
And while computers don’t inherently rely on radio, it’s radio communication that’s taken computers from one in every office to one in everyone’s pocket. Right? The main thrust of the previous commenter is true.
markovs_gun@lemmy.world
on 16 Jun 18:54
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Even more than that, just proving Maxwell was right was a key stepping stone to all of modern physics. Maxwell, not Einstein, was the first to show that the speed of light is invariant, and Einstein’s Relativity was a framework for explaining how tf physics works if that’s actually true. Prior to Einstein, physists all just kind of assumed there was some flaw in Maxwell’s theorems to lead to this crazy speed invariance, but as the evidence just kept piling up in favor of Maxwell, they started having to wrestle with the uncomfortable thought that this could actually be true. In this sense, Hertz can also be thought of as an important step to Einstein and beyond, and almost all of our modern technology.
No, Hertz never lived to see applications of his discovery. Guglielmo Marconi (was a fascist) started working on radio telegraphy in 1894, shortly after Hertz’ death.
latenightnoir@lemmy.blahaj.zone
on 16 Jun 16:27
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Oof! One of those moments which kinda’ make one wish there wasn’t an afterlife…
Thank you for the tidbit, though, and fuck Fascists regardless!
One of those moments which kinda’ make one wish there wasn’t an afterlife…
Tada, your wish is reality 🙃
latenightnoir@lemmy.blahaj.zone
on 16 Jun 17:09
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I’m of the “I don’t know, whatever” persuasion=))
explodicle@sh.itjust.works
on 16 Jun 19:45
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I wish Russell’s Teapot wasn’t real.
latenightnoir@lemmy.blahaj.zone
on 16 Jun 20:06
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Look, I agree that from a purely logical standpoint, there ain’t nothing there. Personally, I believe the Universe is enough as far spiritual anchors go. But from an “I’m just breathin’ here” standpoint, I genuinely couldn’t care less. As long as people don’t hurt others out of their beliefs, they can knock themselves out believing whatever they so desire (*from a “Religion” perspective, to be clear!)
To be perfectly honest, I also think it adds a bit of flavour to the world as long as it’s benign, I’ve had the immense luck of meeting a few religious people who took the good things out of The Text (generalising) and forged their own very personal relationship with the divine! They were the kind of people who took Free Will as being the highest imperative at the end of the day, people who would have fundamentally tried to respect existence even without the pre-existing framework. I’m thinking here specifically of my godfather (raised in an Orthodox household), who’s a middle-management kinda’ Priest (I don’t know the ranks, I’m sorry…).
Having these examples in mind, I prefer all the more to live and let live, as long as they do so as well.
It’s about congressman talking about government waste and targeting the sciences. It’s like, you don’t get the “cool” applications without the “weird” research. I’m doing a horrible job describing it, but I thought it was a good listen.
Oh yeah. No one appreciates blue sky research. We don’t know where the question will take us, which is why governments fund the research. They can take on the 0.1% chance something useful is created 20 years later.
I feel like this is a very “scientisty” thing - the theoretical aspect is so fascinating and being able to fit all the pieces into a model that is mathematically accurate is the reward.
Considering the practical application of the model and how it can benefit society (or in other words, be marketed for profit) takes a different set of skills.
I absolutely detest the equivocation of “benefits society” and “marked for profit”.
Plenty of things have been discovered to have practical applications which can benefit society yet are shelved or have its implementation frustrated because it cannot be exploited for profit or threatens the profits of a preexisting application which it would replace.
burgerpocalyse@lemmy.world
on 16 Jun 17:33
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This post tickles a fond memory of mine. I was talking to a right-wing libertarian, and he said there should be no research done ever if it couldn’t prove beforehand its practical applications. I laughed out loud because I knew how ignorant and ridiculous that statement was. He clearly had never picked up a book on the history of science, on the history of these things:
quantum mechanics. It would be a shame if the poor libertarian didn’t have semiconductors in his phone, or if he didn’t have access to lasers for his LASIK surgery (which he actually did have), both of which are technologies built by basic research that didn’t have practical applications in mind.
electromagnetism. It would be a shame if the poor libertarian was having his LASIK surgery and the power went out without there being a generator, a technology built by basic research that didn’t have practical applications in mind.
X-rays. It would be a shame if the poor libertarian didn’t have x-rays to check the inside of his body in case something went wrong, a technology built by basic research that didn’t have practical applications in mind.
superconductivity. It would be a shame if the poor libertarian didn’t have superconductors for an MRI to check the inside of his body in case something went wrong, a technology built by basic research that didn’t have practical applications in mind.
radio waves. It would be a shame if the poor libertarian didn’t have radio waves for his phone and computer’s wifi and bluetooth to run his digital business, technologies built by basic research that didn’t have practical applications in mind.
When talking with libertarians you should keep in mind they have completely different axiomatic values. It is often the case that they understand a certain policy would be on net bad for everyone, they simply don’t care. They are rarely utilitarian about those issues.
I get along much better with libertarians who justify libertarianism with values extrinsic to just “muh freedom” – they are usually much more willing to yield ground in places where I can convince them that a libertarian policy would be net negative, and they have also moved me to be more open minded about some things I thought I would never agree with.
InternetCitizen2@lemmy.world
on 17 Jun 12:33
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Mm for instance, I think in some contexts markets are pretty powerful, like prediction markets are pretty good at predicting things. (Not saying they’re flawless – polymarket likely overpredicted Trump’s victory). Or that benign-looking regulation is frequently detrimental to the public – while not libertarians at all, Abundance makes a good case for repealing a lot of regulation related to construction. Such regulation is often motivated by people who want to preserve the value of their homes, even though on the surface it appears to be about environmental concerns. (Obviously, I think the environment is important, so we shouldn’t just repeal everything. Just that we should be more critical of such regulation.) Another example is how the U.S. banned civilian supersonic aviation in its airspace because of disruptive sonic booms; apparently the technology now exists to keep such booms very quiet, but the regulation persists, because it’s not booms which were banned but instead supersonic speed as a proxy for booms.
MyNameIsIgglePiggle@sh.itjust.works
on 17 Jun 03:29
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Bullshit. Lasers have been intended to gain interplanetary superiority since the dawn of time. We just didnt know how to make them or that they could also be used to read music from a circle
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?”
Landless2029@lemmy.world
on 16 Jun 23:51
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Everything I’ve ever heard about Franklin makes him a boss. This is a new one.
And as in the dark all Cats are grey, the Pleasure of corporal Enjoyment with an old Woman is at least equal, and frequently superior, every Knack being by Practice capable of Improvement.
That’s my favourite part to quote.
When the lights are out. Pussy is pussy. And old pussy is often better. 😉
It’s dangerously close to “In the dark a hole is a hole.”
gandalf_der_12te@discuss.tchncs.de
on 17 Jun 12:13
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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.
“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?’”
I’m not impressed by today’s AI and I also fully understand that the tech is going to completely upend society and will eventually be a part of our picture of utopia, or our picture of actual hell on Earth.
The people who are screaming it’s wild wonders and benefits are at least as closed-minded as the people who think we’re going to be able to put the toothpaste back in the tube. The actual direction this tech moves is going to be far more like the discovery of radio, in that at the time of it’s discovery and early implementation, the people then had no idea the implications down the road and we’re at the same point. Except the big difference and why this is contentious is that radio was far less dangerous to society broadly.
Radio was a fundamental force that always existed around us, we learned to use it the way our ancestors used rivers and waters to move goods and people. AI is completely human-made and doesn’t exist without human engineering, so it’s not neutral, it’s a tool shaped by man to do whatever a man wants with it.
Sorry my comment didn’t have Subway Surfers playing in the corner with a popular streamer reacting to it so you could actually read it and understand it.
I agree. But don’t really care if people use it, I just cannot stand when people wave it around like a new teddy bear that gives them a smug sense of superiority for… checks notes …using a product that someone is selling to let stupid people do easy things.
AI tools are pretty good in Photoshop; they’re pretty good in copilot; Ukraine claims they’re good at guiding a drone to a Russian bomber (though they also hit decommissioned aircraft). I think you only see the use of less specialised AI used to generate low quality text and soulless images
fossilesque@mander.xyz
on 16 Jun 20:10
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I LOVE SIGNAL PROCESSING
ChaoticNeutralCzech@feddit.org
on 17 Jun 03:21
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Half of the field is viable thanks to a single algorithm: FFT
FFT was a DARPA project. It alone probably makes all their funding worth it.
PM_ME_VINTAGE_30S@lemmy.sdf.org
on 17 Jun 10:58
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ME TOO!
I feel like the signal processing community is really passionate about their work. It comes out in their books. I know I can talk for hours and hours and hours about signal processing. And my DSP professor was like that too. That was such a fun class.
gandalf_der_12te@discuss.tchncs.de
on 17 Jun 12:23
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I had that during my second year of master’s. I barely understood it and the rest of the class couldn’t understand it at all. I wrote my exam and forgot 99% of it a week later.
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.
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
Kornblumenratte@feddit.org
on 17 Jun 14:11
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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.
No fuel? All you need is something that makes a fire. And it is not like crude oil wasn’t know to people back then.
If the invention had been further explored it is entirely reasonable to assume people could have invented a “practical” steam engine 2.000 years ago. All it would have needed is fixing the steam exhaust and have it drive a shoveled wheel.
Still, going from a stream powered spinning toy to locomotive is a few orders of magnitude. Heron’s “engine” was a little jet engine. Heated water pushed it’s way out of pipes. It’s a far cry from building steam pressure in a tank, using that pressure to drive a crank shaft, and pushing along a vehicle of any kind.
There are a number of industrial era inventions required before you can even start putting something like a train together.
The Romans didn’t even have replaceable parts yet. Every nail was custom made.
If you haven’t seen it, watch Clickspring’s series on the antikithra mechanism. It’ll give you an idea of how hard it was to produce complicated machinery was at the time.
Also there was no need in Italy and Greece. Britain invented steam engines because they needed a better way to pump water out of their mines, people worked out later that they could use these engines to power a cart, a digging machine, a rail machine. They needed mines for heating fuel due to the cold climate, they needed coal fired heat for their metallurgy
You need reasons to invent stuff (necessity is the mother of invention) and you’re not going to get much reason in a perfect climate with all the food you need coming from the sea and land all year
Britain already had rails for human and horse drawn carts
Kornblumenratte@feddit.org
on 18 Jun 06:07
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They did not use coal back then – I’m not sure whether it was even known to the Mediterranean culture. Forests were plundered for shipbuilding. Crude oil was only available as naphtha in the Middle East, barely enough for the local fishermen to pitch there boats and for the Byzantines to use in their flamethrowers. Furthermore, crude oil was not used in steam engines — you cannot shovel a heep of oil under a kettle. Fuel existed, yes, but they had no access to it.
All it would have needed is fixing the steam exhaust and have it drive a shoveled wheel.
So a completely different machine? Shoveled wheels were invented centuries after Heron. Even if they played with such a setup – an open, non-pressurized turbine has no usable power. To use steam, you’ll have to pressurize it, and the technology to tame high pressure was only developed to build cannons that do not burst.
In the history of the steam engine, the fuel supply was available before the engine. IIRC, Watt’s incentive for the invention of the steam engine was the need to drain coal mines.
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.
Allemaniac@lemmy.world
on 17 Jun 14:05
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The germans are really something else, what innovation hasn’t sprung from their imagination?
If only he knew his discovery would lead to the worst car rental company he problem wouldn’t have published
MystikIncarnate@lemmy.ca
on 17 Jun 15:38
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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 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?
milicent_bystandr@lemm.ee
on 17 Jun 20:42
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Aw, cheer up; someone will apply you in thirty to forty years.
Bronstein_Tardigrade@lemmygrad.ml
on 18 Jun 07:10
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It’s why Michael Faraday will always be my fave; a blue collar genius. He designed, created, and built the equipment that eggheads used to test their hypothesis and mathematical equations.
threaded - newest
He probably would have figured it out had he had time to evolve into Megahertz.
Then ascended to become pure EM spectrum as his final Gigahertz form.
With great power comes great corruption and tyranny. So begins the dark era of Terahertz
Only can Petahertz rise from the ashes of darkness and re-engineer the Universe before the incoming Heat Death
“Hello, is that DarkHorse comics?
Boy, do I have an epic 5-phase graphic novel for you!”
Darkahortz
Really? I only get 3-phase @ 60Hz
This thread hurts.
The laughing? Yep!
He might have won the very first Nobel Prize, had he not passed away just a few years prior, and much too young, wasn’t he in his late-30s or early-40s?
In fact, I believe that had Hertz remained alive and won his prize, the Nobel Committee would not have felt obliged to give it to Marconi a few years later.
Marconi was a back-stabbing asshole who became one of the wealthiest men in the world by abusing the gentlemanly trust of others, and coasting on someone else’s technology - particularly the way crystals oscillate, and some of them serve nicely as a sort of “translation point” between electromagnetic waves and the physical apparatus that transmits and/or receives the signal.
Basically the same thing happened twenty years later with Henrietta Swan Leavitt, who made a discovery that’s essential to figuring distances in space. She noticed something while working as a computer at Harvard College Observatory that eventually became known as Leavitt’s Law. Her Nobel nomination was halted because she passed away and the award is not given posthumously. Hubble’s work heavily relied on hers.
this type of science-discovery to usefulness-realization latency is the norm, pretty sure Curie didn’t envision nuclear power plants
I suppose it’s like asking a biologist what type of dishes would they do with a plant species they just discovered
Is that not what drives biologists, trying to eat new discoveries before someone else
most likely other humans eat it first, they just didn’t write it down and publish it
Just like how anthropological archeologists compete to eat the oldest thing they find
Darwin ate every damned thing he came across.
That’s gross.
Recycled protein.
How?
She didn’t envision a lot of things
I mean, it would be some 25 years until the radio was invented. And Hertz’ machine required a 30kV spark on a 2.5m meter long antenna with 2 solid 30cm zinc spheres, and his transmission range was something like “barely down the hall”.
Not the most practical method.
I’m sure someone thinks it’s perfect for their use case, semi relevant xkcd:
<img alt="" src="https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/workflow.png">
At least physics will never get patched. The spark device with zinc spheres will always do that thing.
FCC: And get you arrested
So like Bluetooth?
Yes, except you need to buy each bit in a big glass jar.
Edit: only half joking, they used big Leiden Jars, which were basically giant glass batteries. There was no such thing as people with power at home, unless you were crazy rich
There were electrochemical cells (invented in 1800) that provided a constant current for some time.
Idk the details. Look up Galvanic cell, Volta cell.
Sure, but those are still “big glass jars full of electricity”
yeah, true
But somehow more reliable.
Fun fact: The german word for using a radio is “funken”; literally “to spark”. A radioman is, or was, a “Funker”. When you are talking over the radio, you are doing it “Über Funk”.
ooh i always guessed the word “Funk” comes from function, i.e. the radio is a useful tool that has a function to whoever is using it.
Pretty much the first type of commercially viable radio transmitter was the spark-gap transmitter (“Knallfunkensender” in German). It worked by charging up some capacitors to up to 100kV and then letting them spark. This spark sent a massive banging noise on the whole radio spectrum, which could then be turned into an audible noise using a very simple receiver. That was then used to send morse codes (or similar encodings).
They went into service around 1900, and by 1920 it was illegal to use these because they would disrupt any and all other radio transmissions in the area with a massive loud bang.
Literally “Bang-Sparks-Sender”.
Are you sure it’s because of the radio spectrum bang? I always thought it was because of the audible bang.
If someone operated such a thing today, any guesses what the death zone for electronic devices would be?
It’s a broadband bang that can be heard across the whole spectrum. It becomes audible when listening to radio broadcasts.
Regular radio transmissions are comparatively narrow band, allowing lots of simultaneous transmissions in the same airspace, each on its own frequency. The spark gap transistor is very wide band, so it basically sounds as if you are sending a bang sound across all radio frequencies at the same time.
It wouldn’t destroy radio equipment, but the radio transmissions. It’s basically as if you’d use a radio jammer as a morse code transmitter.
It really is from “Funkentechnik”: “Spark technology”. I wonder how many people appreciate the post for the cute etymology and how many because it sounds funny.
Good information for ham radio people, too. Hobby sounds too geeky? Just say you’re into Über-Funk-Parties.
ok but now, where does the word “Funke” (spark) come from?
www.duden.de/rechtschreibung/Funke#Bedeutung-1
¯\_(ツ)_/¯oha dankeschön ^.^
Appreciate for both of course!
Those practical methods would never have existed if not for Hertz’ experiments. Those were 25 years of other scientists, having seen that this new concept exists, refining his contraption into what eventually would become the machine that we know as a radio.
This may be an even better example than the positron. Originally a theoretical antimatter form of the common electron, with no practical application.
Turned out to be a vital tool for medical imaging. If you or someone you know has ever had a PET scan, now you know what the P stands for.
I always thought it stood for “pepperoni.” So, you’re saying “PET” stands for “Positrons, Endives, and Tomatoes”?
No it stands for animals you keep at home.
PET scan, its powered by hamsters.
I guess they decided CAT scan wasn’t inclusive enough.
Cats were originally used for their curiosity, but training hamsters and eventually parakeets led to much smaller machines.
If you think about it, almost all computer-technology is radio. Wifi, bluetooth, GPS, radar, and cellular are literally radio. Meanwhile everything else runs on transistor tech developed and refined… for radios.
Our modern economy couldn’t exist if people like Hertz and Maxwell didn’t get to toy with their useless hobbies. But we can’t rely on the curiosity of the leisure class anymore. Basic research is expensive, necessary, and a public good. I’m afraid that the Trump regime has already spoiled the secret sauce that makes America the technology leader of the world.
Transistors were mostly developed for telephone systems (the ones with wires) as a replacement for tubes. And the modern tech used for radios is very different from that used for computers.
Ithink you could be more charitable in your reply. Transistors were developed to replace tubes in telephone systems… Okay but the tubes had been developed to where they were because of their usefulness in radio.
And while computers don’t inherently rely on radio, it’s radio communication that’s taken computers from one in every office to one in everyone’s pocket. Right? The main thrust of the previous commenter is true.
Even more than that, just proving Maxwell was right was a key stepping stone to all of modern physics. Maxwell, not Einstein, was the first to show that the speed of light is invariant, and Einstein’s Relativity was a framework for explaining how tf physics works if that’s actually true. Prior to Einstein, physists all just kind of assumed there was some flaw in Maxwell’s theorems to lead to this crazy speed invariance, but as the evidence just kept piling up in favor of Maxwell, they started having to wrestle with the uncomfortable thought that this could actually be true. In this sense, Hertz can also be thought of as an important step to Einstein and beyond, and almost all of our modern technology.
It’s getting pretty drafty up here. Giants on shoulders of giants all the way down. I can’t even see the bottom anymore.
Bottom is probably Newton. The guy was a machine.
Two inventions:
are independent of each other, but go together nicely.
You could have an internet (sort of) without computers. Consider Teletypers, FM Radio broadcasts, or Telephone.
Really? You mean like the … telephone network?
Did it Hertz when he realised the opposite, or did that happen after his time?
No, Hertz never lived to see applications of his discovery. Guglielmo Marconi (was a fascist) started working on radio telegraphy in 1894, shortly after Hertz’ death.
Oof! One of those moments which kinda’ make one wish there wasn’t an afterlife…
Thank you for the tidbit, though, and fuck Fascists regardless!
Tada, your wish is reality 🙃
I’m of the “I don’t know, whatever” persuasion=))
I wish Russell’s Teapot wasn’t real.
Look, I agree that from a purely logical standpoint, there ain’t nothing there. Personally, I believe the Universe is enough as far spiritual anchors go. But from an “I’m just breathin’ here” standpoint, I genuinely couldn’t care less. As long as people don’t hurt others out of their beliefs, they can knock themselves out believing whatever they so desire (*from a “Religion” perspective, to be clear!)
To be perfectly honest, I also think it adds a bit of flavour to the world as long as it’s benign, I’ve had the immense luck of meeting a few religious people who took the good things out of The Text (generalising) and forged their own very personal relationship with the divine! They were the kind of people who took Free Will as being the highest imperative at the end of the day, people who would have fundamentally tried to respect existence even without the pre-existing framework. I’m thinking here specifically of my godfather (raised in an Orthodox household), who’s a middle-management kinda’ Priest (I don’t know the ranks, I’m sorry…).
Having these examples in mind, I prefer all the more to live and let live, as long as they do so as well.
Oh yeah? Prove it!
I mean, why would a guy that started a car rental company know anything about radio waves?
Gotcha!
Because of car radio? Vertical integration, you know.
I thought he was a baker. When I was a kid people would always be talking about “Hertz donuts”. Then they’d punch me. I never knew why.
And this is why science shouldn’t be beheld to the whims of politicians and capitalists
There’s a good NPR podcast in the same vein as this: www.npr.org/…/episode-779-shrimp-fight-club
It’s about congressman talking about government waste and targeting the sciences. It’s like, you don’t get the “cool” applications without the “weird” research. I’m doing a horrible job describing it, but I thought it was a good listen.
Planet Money has some really good episodes. Unfortunately, a lot of filler as well.
Oh yeah. No one appreciates blue sky research. We don’t know where the question will take us, which is why governments fund the research. They can take on the 0.1% chance something useful is created 20 years later.
ApertureScience! We do what we must because we can!I feel like I hear about this guy once every second
Whatever you do, love Hertz
which is about the frequency that the heart (german Herz) is beating with.
I feel like this is a very “scientisty” thing - the theoretical aspect is so fascinating and being able to fit all the pieces into a model that is mathematically accurate is the reward.
Considering the practical application of the model and how it can benefit society (or in other words, be marketed for profit) takes a different set of skills.
I absolutely detest the equivocation of “benefits society” and “marked for profit”.
Plenty of things have been discovered to have practical applications which can benefit society yet are shelved or have its implementation frustrated because it cannot be exploited for profit or threatens the profits of a preexisting application which it would replace.
Dr Venture type science
Not really, he’s not stealing something his dad made, using modern tech to smooth over the 60s parts and presenting it as his own invention.
You don’t understand that’s just Hanseatic understatement.
This post tickles a fond memory of mine. I was talking to a right-wing libertarian, and he said there should be no research done ever if it couldn’t prove beforehand its practical applications. I laughed out loud because I knew how ignorant and ridiculous that statement was. He clearly had never picked up a book on the history of science, on the history of these things:
When talking with libertarians you should keep in mind they have completely different axiomatic values. It is often the case that they understand a certain policy would be on net bad for everyone, they simply don’t care. They are rarely utilitarian about those issues.
I get along much better with libertarians who justify libertarianism with values extrinsic to just “muh freedom” – they are usually much more willing to yield ground in places where I can convince them that a libertarian policy would be net negative, and they have also moved me to be more open minded about some things I thought I would never agree with.
Those are much rarev in my opinion.
Such as? I’m curious.
Mm for instance, I think in some contexts markets are pretty powerful, like prediction markets are pretty good at predicting things. (Not saying they’re flawless – polymarket likely overpredicted Trump’s victory). Or that benign-looking regulation is frequently detrimental to the public – while not libertarians at all, Abundance makes a good case for repealing a lot of regulation related to construction. Such regulation is often motivated by people who want to preserve the value of their homes, even though on the surface it appears to be about environmental concerns. (Obviously, I think the environment is important, so we shouldn’t just repeal everything. Just that we should be more critical of such regulation.) Another example is how the U.S. banned civilian supersonic aviation in its airspace because of disruptive sonic booms; apparently the technology now exists to keep such booms very quiet, but the regulation persists, because it’s not booms which were banned but instead supersonic speed as a proxy for booms.
Bullshit. Lasers have been intended to gain interplanetary superiority since the dawn of time. We just didnt know how to make them or that they could also be used to read music from a circle
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?”
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
Benjamin Franklin fucks
Benjamin Franklin, Advice to a Young Man on the Choice of a Mistress (1745)
Its a good read and many points are still valid today.
I didn’t need to know Benjamin Franklin fucks old ladies because they can’t have babies, but I appreciate the honor of carrying this information.
also the idea of a genius putting a bucket on the head of a grandma he fucks and telling her to act like she’s 21 is HILARIOUS to me
That’s my favourite part to quote.
When the lights are out. Pussy is pussy. And old pussy is often better. 😉
It’s dangerously close to “In the dark a hole is a hole.”
I feel like there’s a bit of trying to scare the kid off from that life course and get married like a proper person in that letter
British children! Maybe a few Prussians too.
The British were John Paul Jones, but Franklin taught him.
That’s a really cool Franklin quote. Visionary.
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.
“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?’”
That last bit is me when dealing with people who “aren’t impressed” by today’s AI.
I’m not impressed by today’s AI and I also fully understand that the tech is going to completely upend society and will eventually be a part of our picture of utopia, or our picture of actual hell on Earth.
The people who are screaming it’s wild wonders and benefits are at least as closed-minded as the people who think we’re going to be able to put the toothpaste back in the tube. The actual direction this tech moves is going to be far more like the discovery of radio, in that at the time of it’s discovery and early implementation, the people then had no idea the implications down the road and we’re at the same point. Except the big difference and why this is contentious is that radio was far less dangerous to society broadly.
Radio was a fundamental force that always existed around us, we learned to use it the way our ancestors used rivers and waters to move goods and people. AI is completely human-made and doesn’t exist without human engineering, so it’s not neutral, it’s a tool shaped by man to do whatever a man wants with it.
Ok boomer
Sorry my comment didn’t have Subway Surfers playing in the corner with a popular streamer reacting to it so you could actually read it and understand it.
Apology accepted
The problem isn’t the “AI”. It is people praising its babbling as the solution for everything.
I’m unimpressed by the people who use it.
I’m sure they have trouble sleeping over that
They’re destroying humanity both physically and mentally, so I certainly hope so.
I shake my fist at them!
I agree. But don’t really care if people use it, I just cannot stand when people wave it around like a new teddy bear that gives them a smug sense of superiority for… checks notes …using a product that someone is selling to let stupid people do easy things.
AI tools are pretty good in Photoshop; they’re pretty good in copilot; Ukraine claims they’re good at guiding a drone to a Russian bomber (though they also hit decommissioned aircraft). I think you only see the use of less specialised AI used to generate low quality text and soulless images
I LOVE SIGNAL PROCESSING
Half of the field is viable thanks to a single algorithm: FFT
FFT was a DARPA project. It alone probably makes all their funding worth it.
ME TOO!
I feel like the signal processing community is really passionate about their work. It comes out in their books. I know I can talk for hours and hours and hours about signal processing. And my DSP professor was like that too. That was such a fun class.
i would like to hear about it :)
I had that during my second year of master’s. I barely understood it and the rest of the class couldn’t understand it at all. I wrote my exam and forgot 99% of it a week later.
Was he the guy that started that rental car company?
/s
His customers lamented that driving was so boring and they wished there was some magical way for the cars to play music.
Oh well. Nothing to be done there.
Just straight lazy… Shame.
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.
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.
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
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.
No fuel? All you need is something that makes a fire. And it is not like crude oil wasn’t know to people back then.
If the invention had been further explored it is entirely reasonable to assume people could have invented a “practical” steam engine 2.000 years ago. All it would have needed is fixing the steam exhaust and have it drive a shoveled wheel.
Still, going from a stream powered spinning toy to locomotive is a few orders of magnitude. Heron’s “engine” was a little jet engine. Heated water pushed it’s way out of pipes. It’s a far cry from building steam pressure in a tank, using that pressure to drive a crank shaft, and pushing along a vehicle of any kind.
There are a number of industrial era inventions required before you can even start putting something like a train together.
The Romans didn’t even have replaceable parts yet. Every nail was custom made.
If you haven’t seen it, watch Clickspring’s series on the antikithra mechanism. It’ll give you an idea of how hard it was to produce complicated machinery was at the time.
Also there was no need in Italy and Greece. Britain invented steam engines because they needed a better way to pump water out of their mines, people worked out later that they could use these engines to power a cart, a digging machine, a rail machine. They needed mines for heating fuel due to the cold climate, they needed coal fired heat for their metallurgy
You need reasons to invent stuff (necessity is the mother of invention) and you’re not going to get much reason in a perfect climate with all the food you need coming from the sea and land all year
Britain already had rails for human and horse drawn carts
They did not use coal back then – I’m not sure whether it was even known to the Mediterranean culture. Forests were plundered for shipbuilding. Crude oil was only available as naphtha in the Middle East, barely enough for the local fishermen to pitch there boats and for the Byzantines to use in their flamethrowers. Furthermore, crude oil was not used in steam engines — you cannot shovel a heep of oil under a kettle. Fuel existed, yes, but they had no access to it.
So a completely different machine? Shoveled wheels were invented centuries after Heron. Even if they played with such a setup – an open, non-pressurized turbine has no usable power. To use steam, you’ll have to pressurize it, and the technology to tame high pressure was only developed to build cannons that do not burst.
In the history of the steam engine, the fuel supply was available before the engine. IIRC, Watt’s incentive for the invention of the steam engine was the need to drain coal mines.
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.
The germans are really something else, what innovation hasn’t sprung from their imagination?
If only he knew his discovery would lead to the worst car rental company he problem wouldn’t have published
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.
And Mantis Shrimp still continue to baffle me in the amount of EM range they can sense/see.
I think new research says otherwise.
What, Jessvj is not baffled? That’s an odd thing to study
I still like the fact that the guy that invented super glue was very annoyed by how sticky it was.
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?
TIL: I’m just like Hertz
Nothing, I guess
Aw, cheer up; someone will apply you in thirty to forty years.
It’s why Michael Faraday will always be my fave; a blue collar genius. He designed, created, and built the equipment that eggheads used to test their hypothesis and mathematical equations.