The lost souls of telecommunications history

From the dawn of telecommunications history through the present, the dustbin is where most innovations actually wind up.

Visionaries often don't notice the enormous and obvious impediments to realizing their technological dreams, road blocks obvious to more practical people. So let's hear it for the lost souls of telecommunications history. We don't read about them as often as we learn about Edison or Marconi or Bill Gates. And if we do, it's usually the tidied-up version. But they deserve as much credit for our present as the winners, if not more. So far into the technological past is their gaze ahead that their intuition appears almost Nostradamus-like in retrospect. They see resources, possibilities, and opportunities of which the rest of us aren't even vaguely aware. And from whence comes their energy and courage? That's simple. They're willing to take enormous risks and gambles because of that one part of the future that they don't see. Their own.