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.

[–] squaresinger@lemmy.world 0 points 15 hours ago

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.

[–] Ronno@feddit.nl 0 points 15 hours ago (2 children)

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.

[–] Obi@sopuli.xyz 0 points 15 hours ago

Imagine industrial revolution Roman Empire, thank fuck they didn't connect the dots.

[–] Kornblumenratte@feddit.org 0 points 14 hours ago (1 children)

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.

[–] Saleh@feddit.org 0 points 13 hours ago (1 children)

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.

[–] SippyCup@feddit.nl 0 points 11 hours ago

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.