[HN Gopher] 200 Years Ago, Faraday Invented the Electric Motor
___________________________________________________________________
200 Years Ago, Faraday Invented the Electric Motor
Author : RachelF
Score : 343 points
Date : 2021-09-04 23:45 UTC (23 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (spectrum.ieee.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (spectrum.ieee.org)
| gugagore wrote:
| For those who like those talkies that explain things:
| https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL448D1862FBD624BB
| jbay808 wrote:
| > At heart, Faraday was an experimentalist
|
| This is often repeated, but I think it's a misleading label.
| Faraday doesn't get nearly enough credit for his theoretical
| prowess -- probably because he didn't develop his theories
| mathematically. But I would say his mental model of nature was
| far more accurate than most of his peers, mathematical or not,
| and that understanding is what guided him to groundbreaking
| discovery after groundbreaking discovery. He developed his
| experiments to confirm his own theoretical predictions, often
| predictions that no theoretical physicsts were making at the
| time; for example, the Faraday effect (that magnetism can rotate
| the polarization of light in a material), Faraday's law (the
| electromagnetic one), and Faraday's law (the chemical one).
| mathgenius wrote:
| Agree. The guy pretty much invented field theory. Yes, Maxwell
| wrote the equations, but Faraday had the great conceptual
| insights. For more on how this evolved into modern gauge
| theory:
|
| https://www.physics.umd.edu/grt/taj/675e/OriginsofMaxwelland...
| thrdbndndn wrote:
| You have a point but I feel when people say "theoretical" they
| have specific (or, more narrower) meanings. As in, if you can't
| express it in mathematical models, it's not "theoretical".
| Probably "analytical" is a better name?
|
| So, Faraday very likely had a very good mental model and
| "instinctive" feel about how these things work, as you said,
| just that did not count as theoretical prowess.
| dotancohen wrote:
| I would say that this definition is very modern. Before about
| the time of Maxwell, the majority of theory was far less
| mathematical. I would say that it wasn't until the 1960s and
| 1970s, when particle and cosmological theorists became the
| far cutting edge of physics, that only mathematical models
| would be taken seriously.
| jbay808 wrote:
| Einstein's major breakthrough in special relativity wasn't a
| mathematical discovery, but his intuitive mental model of the
| impossibility of racing against a light beam. The
| mathematical transformation that follows from that had
| already been put to paper by Lorentz. But anyone would still
| call Einstein a theoretical physicist.
|
| Faraday had his own theory of physics, essentially the
| underpinning of field theory, which was held entirely in his
| head. He tried to describe it to his peers in letters, and
| they mosy just couldn't grasp what he was talking about
| because of the distance between his ideas and theirs. So
| instead he just demonstrated in one revolutionary experiment
| after another that his ideas made sense, and everyone else
| had to race to keep up.
|
| But unlike Oersted, Faraday didn't stumble into his
| discoveries. He designed his apparatus to prove the behaviour
| he already had imagined must be there.
|
| (Sometimes he'd stumble by trial and error into the materials
| he needed, but materials science is hard and he was pretty
| good at that too).
| ck2 wrote:
| neat timeline, first linear induction motor was not for another
| 80 years
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_the_electric_motor
| Animats wrote:
| Well, sort of. Faraday invented the first thing that would sort
| of rotate given electrical power. It took another 33 years before
| someone built something that had useful torque at the output
| shaft. Along the way, coils and commutators had to be developed.
| It also took a while to realize that generators and motors are
| basically the same.
|
| Rotating electrical machinery was considered a solved problem and
| kind of boring until about 20 years ago. Then people started
| using semiconductor switches to drive electric motors. Classic
| theory assumed you were driving motors with a sine wave. Motor
| controllers tried to make motors happy by providing a sine wave,
| or something close to one. Gradually it was realized that motors
| could be purpose designed for chopped waveforms. This broke all
| that beautiful closed-form math and charts on polar graph paper
| that goes back to Tesla. You have to simulate to design a modern
| electric car motor.
| tomnipotent wrote:
| Shoulders of giants.
|
| Faraday was the first to demonstrate an actual physical process
| where electrical energy was converted to mechanical energy.
|
| It's turtles all the way down.
| yann2 wrote:
| It starts with Hans Christian Oersted deciding to place a
| compass next to a current carrying conductor.
|
| Its such a simple thing but no one had thought of a reason to
| do such a thing.
|
| What happened to the compass shocked the world and triggered
| Faradays many beautiful experiments.
| tomnipotent wrote:
| Ampere, Volta, Galvani, Ohm - so much of the modern world
| unfolding in just a few decades of discovery, when people
| still worked by the light of candles and oil lamps and it
| could take years for information to travel.
| tdeck wrote:
| Interestingly electrostatic motors (albeit very weak ones)
| predate Faraday's invention by decades. Ben Franklin even
| designed one [1].
|
| In the early days of electricity research, static electricity
| was more common than "current" electricity. There were early
| static-based telegraph experiments that predated Morse [2]
| and used a silk thread as a conductor. Before the
| electromagnet was invented, people didn't know how to build
| an indicator based on electric current - one concept was to
| use electrolysis and look for bubbles.
|
| [1]: https://hackaday.com/2017/10/03/ben-franklins-weak-
| motor-and...
|
| [2]: https://physicstoday.scitation.org/doi/full/10.1063/PT.3
| .307...
| [deleted]
| segfaultbuserr wrote:
| > _Motor controllers tried to make motors happy by providing a
| sine wave, or something close to one. Gradually it was realized
| that motors could be purpose designed for chopped waveforms._
|
| Marginally related: it was quite a shock to me when I first
| learned a rocket engine's thrust can be PWM-controlled.
| Animats wrote:
| _it was quite a shock to me when I first learned a rocket
| engine 's thrust can be PWM-controlled._
|
| The thrust of the pistons of a steam locomotive is PWM-
| controlled. That's what all the elaborate levers and cranks
| on the side of the locomotive do. They control the "cutoff"
| point in the cycle, where steam is turned off. Look up "valve
| gear" if interested.
| pfdietz wrote:
| > coils
|
| When were adequate insulators for wires developed? You need
| that for coils. From what I read, the first technology that
| used insulation was telegraphy, in the 1840s.
| lifeisstillgood wrote:
| Sorry I may have misunderstood - is an electric car motor
| fundamentally different in some way from the one I learnt back
| in school? (I ask honestly as I find that my education may not
| have taught me everything)
| pjc50 wrote:
| Depends what you were taught in school, but somewhat: they're
| different from the old DC motors with brushes and commutation
| that you might have had in childhood toys.
| bob1029 wrote:
| Fundamentally, no. It's all about controlling the field
| effect more precisely now. See:
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reluctance_motor
| belter wrote:
| Teslas have a:
|
| ""Switched Reluctance motor, using permanent magnets."
| ..."Tesla calls it a PMSRM, Permanent Magnet Switched
| Reluctance Motor."
|
| https://cleantechnica.com/2018/03/11/tesla-model-3-motor-
| in-...
| adrian_b wrote:
| It is likely that the Tesla motor has a clever geometry
| for achieving low torque ripple and high efficiency, but
| combining switched reluctance and permanent magnets in
| the same motor is nothing new.
|
| This combination has been used for many decades in the
| so-called hybrid stepping motors, where "hybrid" means
| that both PM and SR are used.
|
| In the case of stepping motors, the advantage of the
| combination is to provide in the same motor both very
| small steps and also a static torque, i.e. the motor can
| maintain a position even without the power supply.
| beckman466 wrote:
| > I ask honestly as I find that my education may not have
| taught me everything
|
| Side tangent: would you say your education overall gave you a
| good base to build on? If yes, what sort of curriculum were
| you taken through?
| idiotsecant wrote:
| If you only know about one type of electric motor, then yes a
| lot of motors are different than the one you learned about in
| school. Induction machines, synchronous machines, steppers
| ,bldc machines, small universal machines etc... There is a
| world of different motor windings and rotor configurations
| out there for all kinds of different purposes.
| martyvis wrote:
| We were using SCR (silicon controlled rectifier) based motor
| drives in industrial settings at least 35 years ago. (I
| graduated as an Electrical Engineer in 1985 and were commonly
| using them then)
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| This is pretty amazing when you think about it. When I was a
| child, 200 years seemed like an eternity (I was born near the US
| bicentennial, and the founding of the US was like ancient history
| to me). Now, nearing 50, 200 years ago is just about 4 of my
| lifespans. In just 4 of my lifespans (and I don't even feel
| _that_ old), we went from rudimentary electric motors to all the
| amazing technology we have at our fingertips today. Truly
| astounding.
| mhh__ wrote:
| First election (post acts of union) through to women gaining
| the vote in the UK was about 4.5 of your lifetimes.
| dotancohen wrote:
| My grandfather was a slave, he passed only 15 years ago.
| _dain_ wrote:
| Your grandfather was 141 years old?
|
| (Or from a country which abolished slavery later, like
| Brazil?)
| lostlogin wrote:
| Is there a description of his life you are able to share?
| MrsPeaches wrote:
| Not OP but there are some interviews on YouTube called
| Voices from the Days of Slavery, where former slaves from
| the US talk about their lives as slaves.
|
| The opening 30s of the interview with a former slave
| Fountain Hughes always sends shivers down my spine:
|
| https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=4IfIDrQxI0o
| epicureanideal wrote:
| Although we should also note that most men also didn't have
| the right to vote for a couple of those lifetimes [1]. If I
| understand correctly, only a minority percentage of property
| owning men could vote before 1918.
|
| And from all men being able to vote to all women being able
| to vote was a span of 10 years, so 0.2 of GP's lifetime.
|
| https://www.bbc.co.uk/bitesize/guides/z9hnn39/revision/2
| tomnipotent wrote:
| The French Revolution and end of feudalism happened in the
| lifetime just before the electric motor. It's easy to
| forget that the middle class is a very recent invention.
| rsj_hn wrote:
| The Roman Empire had a middle class. The middle ages had
| a middle class. In early civilization, during cattle
| culture, there was a middle class. But historically
| middle classes consisted of small landowners in the
| countryside.
|
| What you are probably referring to is a _large urban_
| middle class consisting of landless skilled workers,
| which requires modernity, as all previous middle classes
| were built around rural land ownership, or going back to
| pre-agricultural periods, ownership of cattle. The key
| ingredient of the French revolution is the battle between
| rural and urban, between the farmer and the craftsmen,
| with the craftsmen gaining ascendancy over and eventually
| slaughtering the farmers.
| lordnacho wrote:
| It's been said that as you age, you appreciate history going
| back proportional to your age as being near your own time. As a
| rule of thumb it kinda makes sense:
|
| - As a kid I thought the moon landing was in the distant past,
| being 11 years before me. Now I have friends who watched it.
|
| - The war seemed even more distant, but I know concentration
| camp victims who lived through that.
|
| - Pop music seems to fly past, but there's a familiarity to the
| old hits that I recognize from older people now.
|
| - The wall being built and coming down was about a quarter
| century, felt like forever at the time. I remember things that
| happened a quarter century ago now.
| nostrademons wrote:
| That's like the meme that when Harriet Tubman was born, Thomas
| Jefferson was still alive, and when Harriet Tubman died, Ronald
| Reagan was alive. The electrical engineering equivalent might
| be that Thomas Edison was born before Faraday died, and Gordon
| Moore was born before Thomas Edison died, and Gordon Moore is
| _still alive_.
|
| The modern world is only an eyeblink old in the grand scheme of
| history.
| sokoloff wrote:
| In under 1.5 of them, humans went from first heavier than air
| flight to walking on the moon. In around another 1 of them, we
| flew a helicopter on Mars. It's utterly bananas to think of the
| pace of progress in our lifetime and immediately prior.
| sgtnoodle wrote:
| I currently work on embedded software for medical delivery
| UAVs, and I often choose to use 30-40 year old technologies
| because it's the most "boring" solution. We're already making
| sci-fi drones, we don't need to make the software flashy.
|
| I've previously worked on self driving cars, and spaceships.
| Over my career, it doesn't feel like anything's changed more
| than incrementally. A lot of the expensive technologies I
| worked with professionally are now starting to appear in
| consumer electronics, though, and that's really cool. It
| seems like modern breakthroughs come from "Elon Musking"
| existing technology into being cheaper and better, and then
| "Apple-ing" it into a mainstream commodity.
| throw0101a wrote:
| > [...] _and I often choose to use 30-40 year old
| technologies because it 's the most "boring" solution._
|
| There's a good chance that it will also be around for a
| while in regards to spare parts and such:
|
| > _The Lindy effect (also known as Lindy 's Law[1]) is a
| theorized phenomenon by which the future life expectancy of
| some non-perishable things, like a technology or an idea,
| is proportional to their current age. Thus, the Lindy
| effect proposes the longer a period something has survived
| to exist or be used in the present, it is also likely to
| have a longer remaining life expectancy._
|
| * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lindy_effect
| dotancohen wrote:
| I've mentioned variations on this regarding music.
|
| How much garbage is on the radio today? From the last
| decade? From the last generation?
|
| Music hasn't gotten worse, but we're still listening only
| to the good stuff. Pantera will be around another
| generation at least, my grandchildren's grandchildren
| will likely still listen to The Beatles. And starship
| captians will undoubtedly invite the wives of dignitaries
| to onboard Mozart recitations en route to the boring
| interstellar negotiations of their husbands.
| lostlogin wrote:
| > And starship captians will undoubtedly invite the wives
| of dignitaries to onboard Mozart recitations en route to
| the boring interstellar negotiations of their husbands.
|
| I hope gender roles will have progressed more by then,
| though technological progress is often more rapid than
| social change.
| dotancohen wrote:
| I was referring to a specific episode of Star Trek The
| Next Generation. There is no need to interject social
| wokeness into every conversation. You are causing
| attrition, not compassion.
| vincnetas wrote:
| most likely your reference was not recognised by parent.
| neither did i recognized it.
| bserge wrote:
| He didn't mention the gender of the wife and husband.
| pfdietz wrote:
| When applied to humanity as a whole that gives something
| like the Doomsday Argument.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doomsday_argument
| kilroy123 wrote:
| I totally agree. However, I do think there is and will
| continue to be massive breakthroughs in _biological_
| technology.
|
| Things like synthetic biological manufacturing. The
| decoding and understanding of the basic biologic software
| that runs our cells and bodies.
|
| I'm convinced a huge breakthrough is on the horizon, that
| will nudge us down the correct path of building AGI, based
| on better understands of bioelectric computation.
| cameldrv wrote:
| It's a good observation, but IMO this has been the
| lifecycle of many, many technologies. Take the jet engine.
| It was invented in the 30s, applied to exotic military
| applications in the 40s and 50s, available as
| transportation for the rich in the 60s and 70s, and finally
| became the dominant long distance transport mode for
| everyone by the 80s and 90s.
| madengr wrote:
| You could have been a teenager when the Wright brothers first
| flew, and 80 during the moon landing.
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| "In under 1.5 of them, humans went from first heavier than
| air flight to walking on the moon. In around another 1 of
| them, we flew a helicopter on Mars"
|
| Yeah, one of those is much less inpressive than the other. We
| landed a probe on mars before we landed people on the moon
|
| In the first period Engineers and Industrialists were in
| charge of companies, and then we succumbed to
| financialisation and bean counters, and progress has stalled.
| systemvoltage wrote:
| This is what I come to HN for - inspiration and optimism
| (hasn't been delivering lately :-)). The rate of progress is
| unbelievable and we are already getting serious about going to
| Mars.
| lcvw wrote:
| The most shocking one to me is always going to be penicillin.
| There are still people alive who were born before it was
| discovered. 90 years ago you could die from an infected scratch
| and now we have the whole arsenal of modern medicine available.
| mycall wrote:
| PSA: If you don't have antibiotic cream, please purchase soon
| (people do forget)
| londons_explore wrote:
| How effective is antibiotic cream Vs oral antibiotics?
|
| The cream it would seem wouldn't be able to get to bacteria
| deepest into the cut.
| ruined wrote:
| if you have a wound you can't clean and bandage yourself,
| you should probably seek medical attention. antibiotic
| cream is for anything that doesn't reach that level.
| Gupie wrote:
| Or use an antiseptic cream which does not have the
| downside of antibiotic resistance.
| jhgb wrote:
| If you have a wound, even one that you can clean an
| bandage yourself, why would you put _cream_ in it? You
| clean it and you put a sterile dressing on it.
| matheusmoreira wrote:
| Antibiotics are not necessary for wounds that are not
| infected. Regular hygiene is sufficient.
| jhgb wrote:
| Uh...why would you buy an antibiotic cream? To breed
| resistant bacteria at home?
| tzs wrote:
| I'm not going to weigh in on antibiotic cream--a lot of
| commentators are making good points about overuse of
| antibiotics leading to antibiotic-resistant bacteria, but
| on the other hand most medical sites do recommend applying
| an antibiotic cream for a couple days after receiving a
| puncture wound so in fact it probably is a good idea to
| have some around in your first aid kit.
|
| On home medicines in general, though, I'd like to add a
| PSA. Put an annual event on your calendar to check your
| inventory to make sure you have an adequate supply and
| nothing is expiring soon.
|
| It really sucks to say fall off your bike and somehow
| sprain your entire left side, making most movement agony,
| and then find that you need to go to the store because you
| are out of ibuprofen and acetaminophen.
| FBISurveillance wrote:
| This might be a bit of an unpopular opinion, but I think
| that using antibiotics unless you [absolutely] have to -
| like when you get one prescribed - is a problem if you
| think long-term because of a higher chance of antibiotics
| resistance. Using antibiotics "just in case" should be
| avoided.
|
| Here's an example of E. coli developing resistance to a
| _strong_ antibiotic within 12 days [0].
|
| Unfortunately, I know more than a few people who take
| antibiotics even when they get common cold/flu, which
| doesn't make sense since viruses are not bacteria and they
| should get vaccinated instead.
|
| [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bDa4-nSc7J8
| Sharlin wrote:
| I _really_ hope that's not an unpopular opinion on a site
| like Hacker News. Misuse (could even call it _ab_ use,
| especially in the case of livestock) of antibiotics is a
| direct cause of antibiotics rapidly becoming less useful.
| xorcist wrote:
| Unpopular? Antibiotic resistance is one of our more
| severe public health problems globally, and it's only
| getting worse.
|
| It's not controversial that the two big drivers of this
| problem are the countries where antibiotics are available
| over-the-counter, and the widespread use of antibiotics
| in livestock.
|
| These practices must end if we want to be able to keep
| using antibiotics to save lives in the future, and it is
| a question of policy alone.
| matheusmoreira wrote:
| Antibiotics must be used rationally. Bacteria evolve
| surprisingly quickly. They can and will develop resistance
| to the medication. Depending on which antibiotic it is, the
| bacteria might already be resistant. Staphylococcus aureus
| is ubiquitous and resistant to common penicillins. In this
| case, all it will do is kill off all the non-pathological
| bacteria that actively compete with the resistant bacteria
| for resources, allowing it to spread over a wider area.
| lurquer wrote:
| Or, you could just keep some silver leaf around. Place it
| on the wound, and your chances of infection are greatly
| reduced. Apparently, many of the bacteria that cause us
| problems can't tolerate being in contact with silver.
| tdeck wrote:
| For those interested in antibiotic history it's worth noting
| that sulfa drugs predate penicillin by a few years. Prontosil
| was the first practical antibiotic, developed in 1932; it's
| mentioned a few times in the All Creatures Great and Small
| books: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prontosil
|
| The first antibiotic known to modern medicine was an anti-
| syphilis drug called Salvarsan:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arsphenamine
| elboru wrote:
| Last week my mom suddenly got very sick. She got pneumonia,
| one of her lungs collapsed. We expected the worst, she's not
| that old but she has diabetes and other health issues.
| Thankfully the doctors got everything under control with the
| help of antibiotics. It was amazing to witness how she
| recovered very quickly. Today she's back home, the whole
| family got reunited and we enjoyed a nice meal like nothing
| happened last week.
| SantalBlush wrote:
| I think it's often taken for granted just how much humanity has
| kicked ass over the past 200 years, technologically speaking.
| Motors, antibiotics, airplanes, skyscrapers, computers, the
| moon landing.... It's just crazy compared with any other era of
| human existence.
| bdamm wrote:
| And how much of that is due to progressive and functional
| forms of government? Seems like a great deal of it really.
| BuyMyBitcoins wrote:
| I often wonder if we've hit a plateau and are just waiting
| for some major breakthrough, or, if we've got about as good
| of a command of physics and chemistry as we can that it's
| much slower progress from here on out.
| afr0ck wrote:
| AI and Quantum Computing comes into mind for the next era
| of inventions.
| varjag wrote:
| AI's been on the list since before the space flight tho.
| colechristensen wrote:
| We just take for granted the "moon landings" of previous
| eras. Things like cities with 100,000 people, running water,
| sewers, having a functioning economy over hundreds or
| thousands of miles... there are many accomplishments growing
| past complicated animals with pointy sticks to civilization.
| tomnipotent wrote:
| Sewers and paved roads are what really boggles my mind,
| most in the last half-century. Or that China used more
| cement in 3 years than the U.S. did in the entire 20th
| century.
|
| We're living in an era where things like the Great Wall of
| China or the Hanging Gardens of Babylon are created on a
| regular basis.
|
| I just hope this progress isn't sigmoid shaped, or that
| we've more than passed the half-way mark.
| lostlogin wrote:
| Most of this is due to progress, but part is due to the way
| Western European nations dominated the globe and destroyed
| some pretty advanced civilisations. Some pretty impressive
| progress was essentially wiped out by colonialism.
| mastax wrote:
| Even prehistoric humans were trading metals and pottery
| (and other things that decomposed and left no evidence,
| surely) over thousands of miles. It's easy to forget that
| they were as intelligent as we are but did not have Isaac
| Newton's shoulders to stand on.
| rowanG077 wrote:
| Truly insane what leaps humanity has made in such a short period
| of time. I can't even imagine what technology we will have in
| just another 200 years.
| [deleted]
| juanani wrote:
| Judging by the actual pace(not hyped version), self-driving
| vehicles should be coming around then.
| vishnugupta wrote:
| I get goosebumps just thinking about improvements to day-to-day
| life I have experienced first hand since early 90s.
|
| I see my two children growing up and there's almost _nothing_
| in common between their childhood and mine. Like things that
| existed, games being played, schooling etc., etc.,
| visarga wrote:
| I didn't get to wear diapers, my kids did. Little things that
| make a huge difference.
|
| A recent life improvement wonder is the robot vacuum. So much
| time recuperated.
| LeoPanthera wrote:
| It's (reasonably) easy to make your own electric motor, if you
| want a better understanding of how they work.
|
| Rex Garrod (of Battlebots fame) demonstrates his own one on Tim
| Hunkin's "The Secret Life of", here:
| https://youtu.be/CJlrbMHLBd4?t=939
| hellbannedguy wrote:
| Some electrical unions used to make their apprentices make
| their own motor.
|
| I happened to have a Craftsman lathe that has a armature winder
| attachment.
|
| I sold ten motors before I decided I didn't want to be a union
| electrician.
|
| Looking back, I guess the union wanted the students to have a
| deep understanding of motors?
| tppiotrowski wrote:
| The Secret Life of machines is a great series for someone that
| was born in the "digital" age. It's great to see the
| progression from mechanical parts to electric parts and easy to
| see why electric is the future due to lack of moving parts and
| thus greater reliability. Think internal combustion engine with
| all lubrication and gaskets vs. an electric motor.
| W-Stool wrote:
| I was born in 1958 and it is amazing to me what has been invented
| even since then. But in the early 60's it seemed like the future
| was limitless. I distinctly remember the promise of flying cars,
| vacations on the moon, and electricity via nuclear power that
| would be "too cheap to meter". Even Arthur C. Clark's seminal
| science fiction classic was set in 2001 - hey, that's 20 years
| ago! I really wonder what kind of advances we'll see in 200 more
| years and what kind of society they will enable. With things like
| social media, AI, face recognition, a divided nation here in the
| USA, and all the complexities and complications from climate
| change, the future seems to be one massive challenge after
| another, with our species frequently making decisions that is not
| in its best interest. Does the future give us both better tools
| and improved judgement to use them for the common good?
| billti wrote:
| > I really wonder what kind of advances we'll see in 200 more
| years and what kind of society they will enable.
|
| I _really_ hope I'm wrong, but I honesty think it's probably a
| 50/50 chance we'll make it that far. Besides what we're doing
| to the planet and the lack of action we seem to be able to
| muster for that, our ability to create carnage (WMDs if you
| will) and them gradually falling into more hands seems high
| risk. (And what if something deadlier than Covid WAS developed
| in a lab and got into the wild?).
|
| Again, I hope our ingenuity pulls us through. But the damage a
| few lunatics with a lot of resources could affect 200 years ago
| was pretty limited. Now some hacker in Moscow can knock out
| energy pipelines on the East Coast of the U.S.
| adventured wrote:
| > the promise of flying cars
|
| What's the promise of flying cars though?
|
| I'd suggest they're largely a terrible idea, wildly inefficient
| as a mode of transportation, and should not exist unless we
| come up with an extraordinary energy breakthrough that entirely
| remakes the planet. There are plenty of terrible ideas we've
| chosen not to pursue because they're irrational.
|
| We could make flying garbage trucks. Who doesn't want hovering
| garbage trucks. So futuristic! It's a terrible idea. We could
| make buses that can fly. It's a terrible idea. We could all try
| to live in underwater cities. It's a terrible idea. We could
| all try to live in orbit around the planet. It's a terrible
| idea.
|
| The lack of flying cars isn't a failure. It's the ideal outcome
| (for now).
|
| I don't get the appeal of low quality fantasy ideas that were
| obviously absurd. I don't get why people dwell on mediocre
| ideas from the past as an indictment of the present. It seems
| like a cheap excuse to lash the present for not being good
| enough. Electricity too cheap to meter was obviously not going
| to happen at scale, it was an incorrect premise that wasn't
| thought through at all (as though nuclear power plants,
| infrastructure, maintenance, replacement, labor were also going
| to be free or nearly so). I'd call it a very foolish notion by
| the person that suggested it.
|
| Just because someone comes up with a fantastic premise and
| floats it out there (what if I could take a pill and live
| forever!), that doesn't mean the present failed by not
| realizing it. Sometimes they're just bad ideas or otherwise a
| false premise, supported by poor reasoning (if supported by
| anything).
| djmips wrote:
| Yeah flying cars are going to be so noisy and that includes
| drones that deliver pizza. No thanks!
| flyingcircus3 wrote:
| Flying cars' most significant hurdle is not energy, but
| safety. Commercial air travel is only safer than automobile
| travel because of the high levels of coordination and
| regulation that exist around it. Think of all of the humans
| (nevermind software) and their cooperation involved in planes
| taking off and landing safely. Then add in the fact that
| planes are constantly being maintained by mechanics, on much
| more frequent intervals than automobiles. Compare what is
| considered a safe distance between two moving automobiles,
| and two moving planes. When these safe distances are violated
| by planes, even when no actual collision occurs,
| investigations occur.
|
| Inherent to the success of flying cars is widespread adoption
| by the masses. If they're only available to
| multimillionaires, why would they be any more attractive than
| private jets, which are already available to those same
| people? Thus, the success of flying cars would require
| similar levels of coordination and regulation, only for many
| many more times the number of aircraft. If instead, its every
| pilot for themselves, as it is with automobiles, flying cars
| will end up being far more deadly than autos, given that low
| speed car accidents don't often result in deaths, whereas an
| aircraft collision of any kind can be catastrophic. More
| aircraft in the air will also mean higher density of aircraft
| in the air, making coordination even more critical than it
| already is.
|
| The easy answer to all of this is to say that software will
| replace all of these currently human roles. But just think of
| how far away level 5 autonomy is for cars. In the case of a
| car, most dangerous scenarios can be mitigated by slowing
| down or stopping. The aircraft equivalent of stopping is to
| land, which is obviously not as simple as decreasing speed,
| and is also not feasible without a runway of some kind.
| [deleted]
| kccqzy wrote:
| The promise of flying cars was in the 1960s, according to GP.
| You can see flying cars through the lens of 2021 and find
| that they don't make sense, but you can't say the same if you
| were looking through the lens of 1960s.
|
| > wildly inefficient as a mode of transportation
|
| Energy was plentiful in the 1960s. Gasoline was cheap. The
| oil crisis was in the 1970s. people hardly ever thought that
| there was a need to conserve energy. Plus, widespread cheap
| nuclear energy was on the horizon.
|
| > should not exist unless we come up with an extraordinary
| energy breakthrough that entirely remakes the planet
|
| Nuclear was such an imminent breakthrough back in 1960s.
| Robotbeat wrote:
| With solar and storage becoming cheap, we are in many ways
| in the beginning of a cheap energy revolution. Think of
| that jet pack dude. Those things are about 5% efficient
| thermodynamically, and they use jet fuel which costs about
| 5-15 cents per chemical kWh of energy, so the cost per
| useful mechanical kWh is about $1-3. For electric power,
| you can use off-peak electricity at 5 cents per kWh (or
| solar power utility scale which is half of that and
| falling) and the efficiency is more like 80-95%, for a
| useful energy cost of between 3 and 6 cents per mechanical
| kWh. Plus, electric motors and batteries cost less than
| those microturbines. And the motors are comparable in
| specific power, even.
|
| So the ingredients are there for new modes of transport
| enabled by MUCH cheaper and more abundant mechanical
| energy. Which we are, in fact, seeing in the form of Urban
| Air Mobility vehicles. But it may take quite a while for
| all these things to make it through society. The 21st
| Century is the century of the lithium battery like the 20th
| Century was the century of the internal combustion engine.
|
| Brushless motors with high energy rare earth magnets are a
| big part of this new energy revolution. 200 years after
| Faraday invented the first electric motor.
| visarga wrote:
| > You can see flying cars through the lens of 2021 and find
| that they don't make sense
|
| but we got autonomous flying drones instead and almost self
| driving cars
| breck wrote:
| I agree about flying cars.
|
| I want nothing flying up there. I want clear air and a view
| of the stars.
|
| Tunnels, that's where it's at! I hope the future is really
| more like Boring Company, and we move all the polluting infra
| underground.
| kleiba wrote:
| To me, I always feel that the sci-fi authors of that era
| believed in progress being fueled by noble causes, i.e.,
| _improving mankind_. In reality, it is rather driven by
| commercial interest and while this has undoubtedly lead to
| amazing inventions across many fields, it can at the same time
| be a limiting factor. But I think this fact is more or less
| inevitable given how our society and economy are structured.
| martythemaniak wrote:
| Well, our species doesn't really make decisions. Individual and
| collections of individuals make choices that somehow end up
| accomplishing things. That there is anything at all is actually
| quite amazing.
|
| To take an optimistic view, the next few years will see flying
| minivans (Lillium etc) and people going on vacation in a space
| hotel in Low Earth Orbit. The future seems to be coming right
| along at its own pace.
| someothherguyy wrote:
| Back then, advertisers and book dealers sold wild futurism
| because it made them money. Now media outlets new and old sell
| fear and uncertainty for the same reason.
|
| There is no crystal ball.
| [deleted]
| aardvarkr wrote:
| This is very true and it makes me very sad. I wish we were
| forward-looking as a society pushing towards a great future
| but instead we're looking backwards and holding onto the past
| markus_zhang wrote:
| Damn it has been that many years...
| agul29 wrote:
| Here's a link showing how different electric motors work (my HN
| submission): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26696505
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