Hugo Gernsback was a writer and is considered by many to be the father of science fiction, he was the founder of Amazing Stories magazine, and he’s the reason the annual science fiction awards are called the Hugo Awards.

He also predicted almost every aspect of modern society, from remote-control television to solar power. But perhaps his most impressive premonition was radar technology. Not because he predicted some vague “magical device that detects things!” but because he worked out the exact mechanics of how it would function.

For some background, actual radar was invented in 1934, when Robert M. Page demonstrated a pulsing radar system while working at the U.S. Naval Research Labrotory. But it was more than two decades earlier, in 1911, when Gernsback wrote a serial novel called Ralph 124C 41+ (read it as “one to foresee for one other”), which, according to Sir Arthur C. Clarke, contained “the first accurate description of radar, complete with diagram.”

Gernsback figured that radar detection was possible because “A pulsating polarized ether wave, if directed on a metal object can be reflected in the same manner as a light-ray is reflected from a bright surface or from a mirror.”