this post was submitted on 24 Feb 2024
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Futurology

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[–] SplashJackson@lemmy.ca 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

To be fair, Socrates envisioned the TV and Jules Verne hypothesized space travel, yet you don't see people giving them credit for inventing those things

[–] hperrin@lemmy.world 10 points 1 year ago (1 children)

The vactrain proper was invented by Robert H. Goddard as a freshman at Worcester Polytechnic Institute in the United States in 1904. Goddard subsequently refined the idea in a 1906 short story called "The High-Speed Bet" which was summarized and published in a Scientific American editorial in 1909 called "The Limit of Rapid Transit". Esther, his wife, was granted a US patent for the vactrain in 1950, five years after his death.

[–] SplashJackson@lemmy.ca -1 points 1 year ago

Esther is a hot name, I bet his wife was a cutie-patootie