Lord Kelvin Quotes
Radio has no future. Wireless [telegraphy] is all very well but I'd rather send a message by a boy on a pony
One of the great scientists of all time was totally wrong when it came to predicting the practical utility of the technological developments of science. In all fairness to Kelvin, once he had actually tried the new technologies, he became a great enthusiast for them and helped introduce them to the world.
Lord Kelvin, 1824-1907, William Thompson, British Scientist and President, Royal Society, Predictions
Sourced by: Eigen's Political and Historical Quotations
It took a while but radios and TVs were produced in portable versions, and of course now we have Wi Fi, the Internet and Smart Phones and Tablets. Tesla was one of the great American immigrant scientists. He found in America the kind of intellectual and operational freedom that did not exist in the rigid, monarch-controlled, Austro-Hungarian Empire. He developed patents and techniques that formed the technological bases of radio, telephone long distance, TV, cell phones, Wi Fi, just to name a few. Most important he was Thomas Edison’s great nemesis. Edison invented DC electric generators that could power factories or entire streets in a neighborhood. Tesler invented and developed AC electrical technology which could power entire cities and he could move electricity over long distances which Edison could not. Tesler was one of the first scientists to conceive of and try to implement “Big Science” where there were huge capital investments to develop machines and systems to do what had never been done before—philosophically like the CERN Hadron Collider. Tesler even convinced a large corporation to finance the construction of a massive building and tower so he could experiment with the wireless transmission of electricity. However, as the industrial democracies have learned, Big Science can only be funded by governments and it often takes sever working in consort to afford the huge investment that is required. In Tesler’s era, the federal and state governments did not fund scientific research so his work was not only technically ahead of his time but also conceptually. He anticipated most of the problems and need for a national power grid that was challenging America even at the beginning of the 21st century.
Washington DC to Baltimore. While Morse is remembered as a pioneering inventor. What is not remembered is that Morse could not find private backing for his invention. However, in a midnight session of Congress in 1843, $30,000 was appropriated to build the first magnetic telegraph. Morse sent this first message from the U. S. Capitol building. In a way the telegraph was a precursor to the Internet which while conceived of by private citizens had to be initially funded by the Government.
Not only did the Radio fail to inhibit war, but Marconi completely missed the way demagogues like Hitler and Mussolini would use propaganda via the radio to induce war in their societies. They did not justify war; they made it a national duty. Media inventors seem to have an overly optimistic view of the invention’s effect. See {635261}.
William Thomson, 1st Baron Kelvin, OM, GCVO, PC, PRS, FRSE was a Irish-British mathematical physicist and engineer born in Belfast. Professor of Natural Philosophy at the University of Glasgow for 53 years, he did important work in the mathematical analysis of electricity and formulation of the first and second laws of thermodynamics, and did much to unify the emerging discipline of physics in its modern form. He received the Royal Society's Copley Medal in 1883, was its President 1890–1895, and in 1892 was the first British scientist to be elevated to the House of Lords.
