Nikola Tesla predicted mobile phones in 1909

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:<p>"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."<p>Too bad he got screwed by Edison &#38; company. I think the world would have looked a lot more different if Tesla had finished his work on wireless transfer of electricity.<p>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 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radio" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radio</a> ).

Everybody was thinking about wireless telephony at the time:<p><a href="http://books.google.com/books?as_q=wireless+telephony&#38;num=10&#38;as_epq=&#38;as_oq=&#38;as_eq=&#38;as_brr=0&#38;as_pt=ALLTYPES&#38;lr=&#38;as_vt=&#38;as_auth=&#38;as_pub=&#38;as_drrb_is=b&#38;as_minm_is=0&#38;as_miny_is=&#38;as_maxm_is=0&#38;as_maxy_is=1908&#38;as_isbn=&#38;as_issn=" rel="nofollow">http://books.google.com/books?as_q=wireless+telephony&#38;nu...</a>

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

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.

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.<p>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.<p>That doesn't diminish the power of this vision, but even Tesla had to abide by the laws of physics.<p>One 'Nathan B. Stubblefield' apparently holds a 1908 patent on a wireless telephone: <a href="http://www.google.com/patents?q=887357" rel="nofollow">http://www.google.com/patents?q=887357</a>

I find this interesting, but not <i>that</i> impressive.<p>When I was about 5, I predicted the iPhone.<p>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.<p>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).<p>I also made a lot of drawings of cars with jet motors. That particular vision has not worked out very well. Yet.

"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."<p>Apparently he also predicted botnets...

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

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

Not to mention a global wireless Internet.

more insightful then Heinrich Hertz:<p>When asked what comes after his discovery that Maxwell's radio waves exist, he replied 'Nothing, I guess'.<p><a href="http://www.acmi.net.au/AIC/HERTZ_BIO.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.acmi.net.au/AIC/HERTZ_BIO.html</a>

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

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

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