

Nikola Tesla predicted mobile phones in 1909 - vpdn
http://recombu.com/news/nikola-tesla-predicted-mobile-phones-in-1909_M11683.html

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amix
Nikola Tesla isn't only predicting wireless communication (which he calls a
primitive usage of wireless technology), but wireless transfer of electricity
- - one of his unfinished projects and something that we still don't have
today. Read this passage once more:

"The attention of the world has been caught and held by the wireless
telegraph, and yet this is a very primitive use of the the art. So far only
electric waves have been used, which have been quickly damped out in their
passage through the air. It is possible, however, to transmit electric
currents of enormous power for thousands of miles without demising their
energy."

Too bad he got screwed by Edison & company. I think the world would have
looked a lot more different if Tesla had finished his work on wireless
transfer of electricity.

Nikola Tesla is viewed as one of the co-inventors and pioneers of radio and
this article clearly shows his vision and how far ahead he was of his time (
check <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radio> ).

~~~
jarin
We do have wireless transfer of electricity, take a look at your electric
toothbrush or Palm Pre charging puck.

~~~
amix
We don't have it on Tesla's scale. He wanted to transfer wirelessly enormous
amounts of electricity and communication on a global scale. His idea resolved
using Earth as part of a powerful type-two oscillator... Basically, his
solution would have enabled a cheap and global distribution of electricity and
communication.

"Using a global array of these magnifying transmitters, it was Tesla's plan to
establish what he called the "World System", providing multi-channel global
broadcasting, an array of secure wireless telecommunications services, and a
long range aid to navigation, including means for the precise synchronization
of clocks. In a more highly developed state he envisioned the World System
would expand to include the wireless industrial transmission of electric
power."

from <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wardenclyffe_tower> \- his unfinished
project intended for commercial trans-Atlantic wireless telephony,
broadcasting, and to demonstrate the transmission of power without
interconnecting wires.

I don't really think we can imagine what world Tesla saw or what solution he
had in mind, but it's clear for us now that Tesla was correct in many of his
assumptions regarding the Wardenclyffe tower, e.g.:

"Despite the ridicule he has been subjected to by scientists for many years,
many of Tesla's ideas are being demonstrated to be essentially correct. For
example he correctly predicted the existence of the ionosphere and electrical
resonance of the Earth-atmosphere system. Resonance of the earth-ionosphere
cavity with a fundamental frequency in the vicinity of 7.3 Hz was demonstrated
in the 1950s as the Schumann resonance[37]. The latter phenomenon was named
after Schumann, for although Tesla had detected a resonance of the Earth-
atmosphere system, he was not taken seriously in his time.[38] Furthermore,
Tesla appears to have excited a different terrestrial resonance mode with a
fundamental frequency of 11.78 Hz."

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fhars
Everybody was thinking about wireless telephony at the time:

[http://books.google.com/books?as_q=wireless+telephony&nu...](http://books.google.com/books?as_q=wireless+telephony&num=10&as_epq=&as_oq=&as_eq=&as_brr=0&as_pt=ALLTYPES&lr=&as_vt=&as_auth=&as_pub=&as_drrb_is=b&as_minm_is=0&as_miny_is=&as_maxm_is=0&as_maxy_is=1908&as_isbn=&as_issn=)

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jarin
Today I am officially predicting a cure for cancer, personal spaceships, a
grand unified theory, and a female president. I am a genius.

~~~
rimantas
Cool, future is already here, but unevenly distributed. We have already got
one of four over there: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dalia_Grybauskait%C4%97>

~~~
eru
Germany doesn't have a female president, yet. But the Chancellor
(<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angela_Merkel>) has more power anyway.

~~~
ianium
Looks like there have been 9 female presidents (of various countries, mostly
Latin America). That and a bunch of other female heads of state.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_elected_or_appointed_fe...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_elected_or_appointed_female_heads_of_government)

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emarcotte
Not sure why this is novel... mobile comunication has been possible for many
years, cell phones didn't invent it. Walkie talkies, etc all existed long
before cellular phones. In fact, I would argue walkie talkies are closer to
what he was talking about since it didn't involve going to some cell tower.
The two devices just communicate together.

~~~
jonknee
Probably because this was written at the dawn of wireless communications--
shortly after the invention of radio.

~~~
emarcotte
Sure, his idea is definitely interesting considering the time, but the article
is not. Like I say, he didn't just predict mobile phones, he predicted mobile
communication which has been possible much longer than the phone version.

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jacquesm
Mobiles yes, but Tesla clearly seems to think (at least according to this
article) that there will be no 'intermediaries', that the transmissions are
'station-to-station' (or peer-to-peer as we'd say nowadays) instead of the way
the cell phone network actually works, with calls using fixed base stations
plugged in to the trunk lines.

Station-to-station would indeed require transmission without loss, and power
loss for a transmitter is roughly equivalent to the cube of the distance for
an omni-directional antenna.

That doesn't diminish the power of this vision, but even Tesla had to abide by
the laws of physics.

One 'Nathan B. Stubblefield' apparently holds a 1908 patent on a wireless
telephone: <http://www.google.com/patents?q=887357>

~~~
10ren
The article talks about wireless power transmission, which relates to your
point. I think as a mathematically capable physicist, he would be well aware
of the inverse cube law (volume of a sphere with distance). I wonder what he
was thinking? Perhaps focussed radio, like a laser ( _raser_? It'd still be a
laser, just a non-visible frequency)

Also he didn't think of packet radio. But though extremely helpful, I'm not
sure that it's absolutely necessary.

~~~
dionysiac
Masers (microwaves) were actually developed before lasers were, and do work
pretty well for power transmission (as these things go - still quite a loss).
You have the problem of directionality and tracking, though.

~~~
jacquesm
And the problem of not frying stuff in between.

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danh
I find this interesting, but not _that_ impressive.

When I was about 5, I predicted the iPhone.

Well not exactly the iPhone, but I made a lot of drawings of a device with
phone, computer with touchscreen, music player, etc., in roughly the iPhone
form factor. Since I am very old, mobile phones at the time were back-
breakingly huge, and I had not ever seen a touchscreen.

My "design" was a bit different, though. I though it would look cool to carry
the device like a giant Dick Tracy-ish watch. And it needed a very small
cassette-tape memory for the computer (that was the only kind I had seen).

I also made a lot of drawings of cars with jet motors. That particular vision
has not worked out very well. Yet.

~~~
Retric
For that 5 year old kid: <http://www.madv8bike.com/id10.html> ;-)

Thrust =2,450 lbs aprox 3,800 horsepower \+ after burner another 1200
horsepower

~~~
danh
Oh yes. That _must_ be the future.

Or perhaps this, ever so slightly more practical, one:
<http://www.ronpatrickstuff.com>

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bitwize
"In the same way any kind of picture, drawing, or print can be transferred
from one place to another. It will be possible to operate millions of such
instruments from a single station."

Apparently he also predicted botnets...

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madmaze
Tesla was a dreamer and an inventor. This is a rarely successful combination,
most dreamers live too much in their dreams and fantasies to actually be a
productive inventor, and inventors are too grounded by reality to really dream
up something extremely special. But there are a few, like tesla or davinci
that managed to take their dreams and put them on paper and try then try to
make it reality

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ErrantX
Tesla probably needs accolade for his achievements (solution of all the AC
transmission "problems" in one fell swoop etc.) more than for his predictions
(every genius tends to make pretty accurate projections IMO).

He's generally forgotten (by the public) compared to Edison when his
contribution was probably greater.

~~~
jacquesm
Teslas biggest 'problem' is that the kooks have declared him to be their
patron saint and are going all overboard in attributing all kinds of nonsense
to him.

Tesla didn't help matters with the way he conducted (pun definitely not
intended) himself and some of the experiments he did.

But I'll bet there isn't a scientist that wouldn't give up a significant
amount of money to get their hands on that classified notebook just in case
there is some hidden gem in there.

<http://www.pbs.org/tesla/ll/ll_mispapers.html>

~~~
ErrantX
Well, yeh true. But at the time the main reason was he tore up the
Westinghouse contract and died in relative obscurity/depression. Whereas
Edison was a much more public figure.

In the later years after both their deaths many people (questioned) believed
Edison had pioneered AC current (and as a result was responsible for the
consumer electricity market) - none had really heard of Westinghouse/Tesla.

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jcromartie
Not to mention a global wireless Internet.

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jeffreyg
more insightful then Heinrich Hertz:

When asked what comes after his discovery that Maxwell's radio waves exist, he
replied 'Nothing, I guess'.

<http://www.acmi.net.au/AIC/HERTZ_BIO.html>

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doki_pen
I see some great predictions, but I bet he didn't predict goatse.

~~~
pavel_lishin
His papers _were_ confiscated.

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ivanzhao
"The only new thing in the world is the history you don't know"

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smallhands
We could have been ave living in a different world now have Tesla worked with
Steve Job during his life time.

