• PM_ME_VINTAGE_30S [he/him]@lemmy.sdf.org
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      4
      ·
      1 month ago

      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.

    • Justas🇱🇹@sh.itjust.works
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      1
      ·
      1 month ago

      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.

  • Allemaniac@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    5
    arrow-down
    1
    ·
    1 month ago

    The germans are really something else, what innovation hasn’t sprung from their imagination?

  • iAvicenna@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    19
    ·
    1 month ago

    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.

    • Echo Dot@feddit.uk
      cake
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      4
      ·
      1 month ago

      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?

  • Anti-Face Weapon@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    28
    ·
    1 month ago

    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.

    • Ronno@feddit.nl
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      19
      ·
      1 month ago

      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
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        7
        ·
        1 month ago

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

        • psud@aussie.zone
          cake
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          1
          ·
          1 month ago

          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

    • DragonTypeWyvern@midwest.social
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      16
      ·
      1 month ago

      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.

      • squaresinger@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        15
        ·
        1 month 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.

  • MystikIncarnate@lemmy.ca
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    17
    ·
    1 month ago

    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.

    • Jessvj93@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      3
      ·
      1 month ago

      And Mantis Shrimp still continue to baffle me in the amount of EM range they can sense/see.

    • Echo Dot@feddit.uk
      cake
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      12
      ·
      1 month ago

      I still like the fact that the guy that invented super glue was very annoyed by how sticky it was.

    • zaphod@sopuli.xyz
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      16
      ·
      1 month ago

      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
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        3
        ·
        1 month ago

        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!

        • kazerniel@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          11
          ·
          1 month ago

          One of those moments which kinda’ make one wish there wasn’t an afterlife…

          Tada, your wish is reality 🙃

              • latenightnoir@lemmy.blahaj.zone
                link
                fedilink
                English
                arrow-up
                4
                ·
                edit-2
                1 month ago

                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.

  • manxu@piefed.social
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    27
    arrow-down
    3
    ·
    1 month ago

    I mean, why would a guy that started a car rental company know anything about radio waves?

    Gotcha!

  • shutz@lemmy.ca
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    159
    ·
    1 month ago

    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?”

      • gandalf_der_12te@discuss.tchncs.de
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        8
        ·
        1 month ago

        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.

      • musubibreakfast@lemm.ee
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        34
        arrow-down
        1
        ·
        1 month ago

        Here’s a little known fact that is not true, which will bring some nuance to the previous anecdote, Benjamin Franklin ate babies.

    • GraniteM@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      12
      arrow-down
      2
      ·
      1 month ago

      “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?’”

    • Reddfugee42@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      3
      arrow-down
      7
      ·
      1 month ago

      That last bit is me when dealing with people who “aren’t impressed” by today’s AI.

        • psud@aussie.zone
          cake
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          1
          ·
          1 month ago

          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

        • ameancow@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          1
          ·
          edit-2
          1 month ago

          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.

      • ameancow@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        3
        ·
        edit-2
        1 month ago

        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.

  • expatriado@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    77
    ·
    1 month ago

    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
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    118
    arrow-down
    1
    ·
    1 month ago

    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.

    • General_Effort@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      19
      ·
      1 month ago

      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”.

        • General_Effort@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          4
          ·
          1 month ago

          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.

        • squaresinger@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          2
          ·
          1 month ago

          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
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            1
            ·
            1 month ago

            “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?

            • squaresinger@lemmy.world
              link
              fedilink
              English
              arrow-up
              2
              ·
              1 month ago

              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.

    • Crankenstein@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      5
      ·
      1 month ago

      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.

  • bier@feddit.nl
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    6
    arrow-down
    1
    ·
    1 month ago

    If only he knew his discovery would lead to the worst car rental company he problem wouldn’t have published