> our invention of the technology we use to communicate with deep space far predates us learning these concepts ourselves.

Maxwell published in 1873. The double slit experiment was 1803, subatomic theory developed throughout the 1800s, and Planck proposed quanta in 1900. The first radio transmission across the Atlantic came approximately 2 years after Planck's theory.

I doubt it is plausible to develop anything resembling industrial technology without stumbling across certain fundamental truths in the process because doing so requires a sufficiently accurate model of physics.

The period you're describing is that of old quantum theory, which was hugely inconsistent and predates our theories of modern quantum mechanics which is post 1925 or so.

The inventor of the arc converter was 18 at the time radio waves were discovered, 34 at the time he invented the arc converter, but 56 and with only 17 years left till his death when the era of modern quantum mechanics started with the invention of wave mechanics. It's a lifetime apart.

Some discoveries were made during that period that are of course still relevant.