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Still going with the design triangle stuff despite the whole thread on why the model doesn't work? Anyway, a couple of things on this specific article:
Why 1900-1950: because that's where a game works best. Go earlier and you have the problem of accounting for wind. It's not an impossible problem to overcome, which is why naval games with sailing ships exist, but it does add a layer of complexity vs. games where ships can move consistently under their own power. Go later and the game degenerates into adding up missiles vs. anti-missile defenses and then rolling to see if your one attack is enough to sink the enemy fleet (and with nukes the answer is always "yes"), followed shortly by the enemy missile salvo sinking your own fleet. Go into space and you keep the missile problem but add the impossibility of representing real physics on a tabletop game, which is why every space combat game is just re-skinned historical naval combat.
Scale: the issue with scale isn't weapon ranges vs. movement speed, it's impatient players who are used to GW-style "meet in the middle and roll lots of dice" games. In real naval combat maneuvering before shots are fired is the most important part of the battle. Fleets maneuver to gain an advantage, maybe their are a couple of skirmishes between scouting units ahead of the main fleets, but once the capital ships are committed to battle most of the outcome has already been decided. And once the shooting does start ships fire a ton of shots with very low hit rates, with the most likely outcome of a main battery salvo being "no hits, but we have a better range estimate for the next attempt". But a lot of players hate that. They want to jump straight into the action as fast as possible, with a brief maneuvering period at most, and once they start attacking they want to see major damage done with every attack. So yeah, you're definitely going to have problems with movement speed vs. weapon ranges when a battleship magically cripples or kills the enemy every time it fires. But the problem is not inherent to scale, it's about impatient players that will demand constant action and casualties no matter what scale you use.
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