Thank Tesla for Your Cell Phone!

Thank Tesla for Your Cell Phone!


Before you sell your old mobile phone to upgrade to the newest and better option, it might be worth learning a bit about the history of the technology. For cell phone users of a certain age, it seems that we've come a long way since those six-pack sized bag phones of the 1980s.

But the truth of the matter is that wireless technology progressed much more slowly than most people think. A few fans of Warehouse 13 and die-hard science geeks are about the only ones that know wireless technology got its first big boost and international attention when Nikola Tesla began experimenting with the idea in the late 19th century. Know that wireless charger for all your mobile devices? Tesla came up with the idea in the 1890s.

One of the reasons for the appeal of a show like Warehouse 13 is that it unveils scientific knowledge that might otherwise be lost to time. It makes learning about science more fun and one of the ways it does so is with the devices the agents call Teslas, a sort of cell phone with video chat capabilities.

Imagine trying to sell your old mobile phone if it looked like that!

The fact that wireless technology, and many other of Tesla's ideas, took nearly a century to be developed for practical uses testifies to the fact that the inventor and scientist was a man out of time. He developed all the parts necessary for a man named Marconi to turn into a radio. In the 1940s, after Tesla died, the U.S. Supreme Court recognized that he should be given credit for inventing the radio. He also experimented with x-rays and invented radar.

Though few people know the name of Nikola Tesla, and fewer yet have any idea what he invented, the availability today of wireless technology - and of many things we've come to expect, like electricity in our homes - are a result of Tesla's discoveries and inventions.

Another interesting aspect of Tesla's inventions was that he was very focused on sources of renewable energy. He designed the original plan to harness Niagara Falls for hydroelectric power and suggested that solar energy should be used to meet many of our energy needs. He designed, but never implemented, a plan to send energy wirelessly across the Atlantic.

It can be fun to imagine how different the world would be if Tesla's technology had been adopted in his lifetime. Then, you might have trouble trying to sell your old mobile phone.