this post was submitted on 24 Feb 2024
162 points (95.0% liked)

Futurology

1801 readers
64 users here now

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[โ€“] SplashJackson@lemmy.ca 4 points 9 months 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

[โ€“] hperrin@lemmy.world 10 points 9 months 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.