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Wireless Power Recharging Nears Fruition
AlexanderT writes "Mobileread.com is reporting that wireless power recharging of mobile devices may become commercially available by the end of this year. Various recently filed patents by Cambridge UK-based Splashpower Ltd. indicate how close the company is in realizing this technology."
Stuff like this was always on StarTrek and I thought, no way, but now, that's amazing.
I've had my electric toothbrush that charges without contact for years. It's not very special. It's just a magnetic field that works like the two parts of a transformer.
Link to ABB press release
I've actually seen one of those demoed in reality. Quite interesting seeing a sensor, not connected to anything, giving of useful information to a control system...
They were talking big about this thing in 2001/2002. It's been vaporware for years, because they haven't found anyone to actually fund and manufacture the things. A couple of prototypes is nice, and a few c|net and CNN mentions is nice, but it's not on my desk right now, three years later.
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err... correct me if I'm wrong on this, but previous commercial applications based on this property were soley used for specific proprietry devices. What is unique and news worthy about this application is that it will be a standard in the same way that firewire and blue tooth are... i.e. you will be about to buy devices from diffrent manufacturers that are all inter compatable, so your mobile (cell) phone that requires 3.8v to rechange will charge on the same pad that your PDA that needs 12v. I beileve the ultimate extension of this would be that the entire surface of your desk acts as a pad, and anything you place upon it that uses batteries will recarge istself. The fact that i won't have to carry 20 diffrent powerpacks will be the major benifit to myself. the fact that my desk at home is a little less cluttered with recahrging cables.
Just to drive home how silly this company is, realize that not only is their "Wireless Charging" really just inductive coupling, but that inductive coupling is basically what a Transformer does. You know Transformers, which have been ubiquitous since electricity came into widespread use. They're in every freaking wall dongle and virtually every electronic device's power supply. The difference between "Inductive Coupling Chargers" and transformers is that a transformer is housed in a single case, whereas the charger split the transformer out into two distinct coils in seperate package, which you place close to each other to transmit the inductive energy.
For that matter, my Sonicare toothbrush has been recharging via an inductive coupler for years now, so it's not like even this particular incarnation is new to the commercial world.
11*43+456^2
Edison was a very capable and not entirely scrupulous businessman, and he wasn't going to let the fact he had a system that was far less safe or efficient than Teslas - so he called Telsla a crank and a dreamer that was promising the impossible. Some of the mud stuck, since Edison was more or less a national hero, and Telsa was from some bit of Eastern Europe full of untrustworthy Jews and Slavs (nineteenth century USA attidudes folks), and since no-one would go against Edison initially Telsa would tell anyone that would listen that there was a conspiricy against him - which was effectively true, but made him look more like a crank.
In the end it was Edisons system that we use at low voltages (transmitting DC is impractical), and Teslas system to move the current long distances and run motors of any decent size. There's nothing weird or mystical about AC current or even broadcast power (which is just high intensity radio waves).
A lot of information about Tesla's accomplishments is apocryphal. That's not to belittle Tesla himself: some of the things he did were astounding, particularly given the times in which he lived. Truly, he was a genius at applied physics, and far more scientific in his approach than many of his contemporaries (Edison, for example, who was an empiricist to the core.) Tesla, however, has achieved a sort of cult status today, and many mysterious, unexplainable inventions have been attributed to him. One "eyewitness account" I read some years ago had Tesla connecting a wooden box containing several vacuum tubes and a complex circuit to an electric brougham, which then drove around for several hours powered solely by this device, the vehicle's batteries having been previously removed. Uh huh. The usual explanation for why he never released such a remarkable piece of technology is that he "felt the world wasn't ready for it." Sure. And when Westinghouse foundered and couldn't pay royalties on Tesla's existing patents, you don't think Tesla would have brought that out in a heartbeat to stay out of the poorhouse.
There's a similar story about a man who buys a car and drives it from Chicago to New York on a single gallon of gas. He then drives back to Chicago and takes it back to the dealer he bought it from. The dealer then insists that he give the car back, since he had accidentally gotten an experimental model with a special "trick carburetor". So-called "free energy" nutjobs are famous for promoting stories like this, which usually involve some dark conspiracy. Of course, the fact that we would have to toss the laws of thermodynamics out the window escapes them.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.