I took it Little Hawk's point there was that, until the technical stuff like radio came into the picture, the theoretical underpinning that made it possible must have seemed rather a far fetched self indulgent game played by jumped up academics to many people. Why couldnt these people stick to real stuff like steam engines, which made patently obvious sense, and got people to work?...

JBS Haldane wrote back in 1927 "I have no doubt that in reality the future will be vastly more surprising than anything I can imagine. Now my own suspicion is that the Universe is not only queerer than we suppose, but queerer than we can suppose."   The years since then seem to have borne out the truth of that.