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.
Two inventions:
- Internet
- Computers
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.
an internet (sort of) without computers.
Really? You mean like the … telephone network?
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
British children! Maybe a few Prussians too.
The British were John Paul Jones, but Franklin taught him.
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.
Because there is no hazard of Children, which irregularly produc’d may be attended with much Inconvenience.
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
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.”
That last bit is me when dealing with people who “aren’t impressed” by today’s AI.
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’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.
The problem isn’t the “AI”. It is people praising its babbling as the solution for everything.
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.
“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 LOVE SIGNAL PROCESSING
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.
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.
And this is why science shouldn’t be beheld to the whims of politicians and capitalists
TIL: I’m just like Hertz
Nothing, I guess
Aw, cheer up; someone will apply you in thirty to forty years.
ApertureScience! We do what we must because we can!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.
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.
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.
I think new research says otherwise.
If only he knew his discovery would lead to the worst car rental company he problem wouldn’t have published
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.
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.
Hertz donut
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:
At least physics will never get patched. The spark device with zinc spheres will always do that thing.
FCC: And get you arrested
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.
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.
Appreciate for both of course!
ok but now, where does the word “Funke” (spark) come from?
mittelhochdeutsch (mitteldeutsch) vunke, althochdeutsch funcho, entstanden aus den mit -n- gebildeten Formen des Feuer zugrunde liegenden Substantivs
https://www.duden.de/rechtschreibung/Funke#Bedeutung-1
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
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.
“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.
So like Bluetooth?
But somehow more reliable.
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”
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.
