You and I understand this, but it's not always clear to the rest of the world. Nevertheless, I enjoy the guilty pleasure of comparing the developments in SF stories to those in the so-called real world. In the early days of radio, he published magazines for electrical hobbyists, and sometimes wrote fiction for the amusement of his readers. The eponymous Ralph uses reflected radio waves to learn the distance and location of the bad guy's spaceship, anticipating the invention that warned British interceptors of Luftwaffe bomber attacks 28 years after the story's publication. The book also describes restaurants which serve food exclusively in liquid form, through hoses running to each patron's seat.
Rocket ships have runningboards.
And commuters zoom through the metal streets of the Big Apple on motorized roller skates powered by titanic radio transmitters. Seems unlikely now. They probably would have rejoiced at the ease of our Tele-Theaters, where we can switch from one play to another in five seconds, until we find the one that suits us best. Hugo could have been describing my living room at the end of the 1990s. Except that electronic wizardry allows me to switch from one play to another in a fifth of a second, sometimes to the dismay of my wife.