what fact about our current world would freak people out if it were a newspaper headline a century ago? - eviltoast

Some news that would be completely mundane today but scary or shocking in the past.

  • CanadaPlus@lemmy.sdf.org
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    1 year ago

    Yeah, but electrification, cars, antibiotics, many forms of sanitation, many forms of canning, radio, telephones of any kind, several forms of weapon and powered aircraft in general were new within living memory in the 20s. “It gets (much) better and more accessible” wouldn’t have surprised anyone. If we were going back 200 years you might have a point, and definitely would at 300.

    Actually, they didn’t understand how radio crystals (which are very rudimentary semiconductor diodes) worked at the time, but pretty much every other principle of physics used in modern technology was understood at that point. They just needed to finish quantum mechanics, and then figure out a few steps of application.