Future Desks to Charge Gadgets Wirelessly

IronMan writes "Future desks may allow us to charge our phones, iPods, PDAs and other gadgets wirelessly. Office equipment maker Herman Miller is one of the first companies to license the eCoupled inductive coupling technology from Fulton Innovation, Engadget reports. The desk will allows wireless transfer of energy through a magnetic field. Motorola is working together with eCoupled, but still is not sure when the first consumer devices with this technology will appear on the market. From the article: 'Of course, cordless charging isn't an entirely new concept, with HP recently showing off some of its own ideas for juiced-up furniture, and Splashpower talking up its charge-on-contact system for a few years now. We guess we'll just have to wait and see if this new power-happy desk becomes the same status symbol for the Web 2.0 crowd that Herman Miller's Aeron chair was back in Web 1.0 days -- assuming we haven't moved on to Web 3.0 by the time the desk actually comes out, that is.'"

Comments

"Not exactly new"

[SilentBob0727]

The wireless transfer of energy through magnetic fields is called electromagnetic induction, and it's been a well-known phenomenon since 1831. It's also currently used the world over: see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transformer

Re:Health concerns

[Dun Malg]

Your opinion, as stated, gives the impression of there being no evidence whatsoever, due to the fact that "you" have not "heard" of any harmfull medical effects due to magnetic fields, and total ignorance (and scepticism) of any potential mechanism at all, which is far from a balanced reflection of the actual evidence at this time in the scientific community. OK, how about this: Over the last 100+ years of exposure to magnetic fields, the closest anyone has come to finding a statistical link between low-grade magnetic fields and any health problems is the now-famous study showing a correlation between leukemia and living under power lines--- but the notion of a causal link between the two is spurious at best. Studies of MRI technician, aluminum foundry workers, and electrical linesmen have shown no health effects that can be linked to their exposure to magnetic fields, and they are exposed to fields many times greater than you'd ever see from an inductively coupling charging system. Studies so far have shown that there is little negative reaction by organic systems to magnetic fields.

The problem here is that you are asking for proof of a negative. You see, in science, when someone asserts the condition X may have effect Y out of the blue like that, the only proper response is "I have seen no evidence of this, so unless you can show evidence of a link, I must assume it to be false". Claiming "just because it's not proven doesn't mean it's not true" is foolish and childlike. Claims must be supported by proof. The burden is not on the rest of the world to disprove. Science is built on facts, not speculations. Logical thinking--- it works!

It still amazes me how many people there are out there that apparently need this explained to them.