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Nikola Tesla predicted mobile phones in 1909
- jacquesm 16y agoMobiles 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 http://www.google.com/patents?q=887357
- 10ren 16y agoThe 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.
- westbywest 16y agoAlthough this article is understandably scant on details, I gather from the blurb "millions of such instruments from a single station," that Tesla did anticipate some sort of transmission stations to relay the traffic of the wireless handsets. Still, a big difference between this forecast and the present state of mobile wireless is that Tesla probably expected the subscribers' handset to draw power from the microwave transmissions themselves, rather than from batteries.
- jcromartie 16y agoNot to mention a global wireless Internet.
- bitwize 16y ago"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...
- danh 16y agoI 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 16y agoFor that 5 year old kid: http://www.madv8bike.com/id10.html http://www.madv8bike.com/id10.html ;-) Thrust =2,450 lbs aprox 3,800 horsepower + after burner another 1200 horsepower
- WorkerBee 16y agoSince I am very old, mobile phones at the time were back-breakingly huge There were mobile phones when you were young. You are not old.
- danh 16y agoTurns out mobile phones are really old (for some value of mobile): "In 1910 Lars Magnus Ericsson installed a telephone in his car, although this was not a radio telephone. While travelling across the country, he would stop at a place where telephone lines were accessible and using a pair of long electric wires he could connect to the national telephone network." From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_mobile_phones http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_mobile_phones
- jarin 16y agoToday I am officially predicting a cure for cancer, personal spaceships, a grand unified theory, and a female president. I am a genius.
- jacquesm 16y agoThree out of four ain't bad...
- rimantas 16y agoCool, 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 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dalia_Grybauskait%C4%97
- eru 16y agoGermany doesn't have a female president, yet. But the Chancellor (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angela_Merkel http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angela_Merkel) has more power anyway.
- ianium 16y agoLooks 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_female_heads_of_government http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_elected_or_appointed_fe...
- ThomPete 16y agoGUT is unlikely IMHO
- amix 16y agoHe didn't only predict it, he invented it and built it. Nikola Tesla is the co-inventor of radio, remote control and was a pioneer for wirelessly transfer of both data and electricity! Check out: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radio http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radio, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Remote_control#History http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Remote_control#History or 300 of his other inventions http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Tesla_patents http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Tesla_patents
- jeffreyg 16y agomore 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 http://www.acmi.net.au/AIC/HERTZ_BIO.html
- ErrantX 16y agoTesla 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 16y agoTeslas 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 http://www.pbs.org/tesla/ll/ll_mispapers.html
- ErrantX 16y agoWell, 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.
- docgnome 16y agoPeople forgot Tesla because he A) wasn't American and B) wasn't into electrocuting puppies, kittens and elephants. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_of_Currents#Edison.27s_publicity_campaign http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_of_Currents#Edison.27s_publ...
- emarcotte 16y agoNot 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 16y agoProbably because this was written at the dawn of wireless communications--shortly after the invention of radio.
- emarcotte 16y agoSure, 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.
- gmurphy 16y agoIt feels just a little more novel when you consider just how late into last century sci-fi stories were getting written with little or no notion of universal mobile communication. (Some excuses may be made on the grounds of story flow and building a comprehensible universe, but that's weak sci-fi).
- RyanMcGreal 16y agoIt's novel because unlike us, Tesla was a product of a time when telegraph, telephone, radio and distributed electricity were still new. It's easy - even obvious - to note in retrospect how a disruptive technology or cluster of technologies plays out, in part because we are ourselves a product of the environment in which we grew up and formed our ideas about how things work. By contrast, it's visionary to be able to understand the full implications of a new technology that disrupts the environment in which we formed our ideas. In Tesla's case, not only did he understand the implications of that technology, but he actually invented much of the technology himself. It would be no less remarkable if Gutenberg invented the printing press and then used it to print tracts explaining how his press was going to undermine the Catholic Church's monopoly gatekeeper status and launch an explosion in the rate and density of accumulated human knowledge.
- ivanzhao 16y ago"The only new thing in the world is the history you don't know"
- fhars 16y agoEverybody was thinking about wireless telephony at the time: 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= http://books.google.com/books?as_q=wireless+telephony&nu...
- amix 16y agoNikola 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 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radio ).
- madmaze 16y agothis is why i honor tesla with a framed print of him, sitting in his lab, watching over my bed.
- jarin 16y agoWe do have wireless transfer of electricity, take a look at your electric toothbrush or Palm Pre charging puck.
- amix 16y agoWe 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 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."
- madmaze 16y agoTesla 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
- doki_pen 16y agoI see some great predictions, but I bet he didn't predict goatse.
- pavel_lishin 16y agoHis papers were confiscated.
- smallhands 16y agoWe could have been ave living in a different world now have Tesla worked with Steve Job during his life time.