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Wireless Power Demonstrated
Necroloth and other readers sent in the story of Witricity's latest demo at the TED Global conference in Oxford, UK. The company is developing a system that can deliver power to devices without the need for wires. The idea is not new — electrical pioneers Thomas Edison and Nicola Tesla assumed that power would be delivered wirelessly. The BBC quotes the inventor behind Witricity's tech as saying that Tesla and Edison "...couldn't imagine dragging this vast infrastructure of metallic wires across every continent." eWeek Europe notes some hurdles the technology must overcome: "The 2007 experiment it is based on had an efficiency of only around 45 percent, but [Witricity's CEO] promised power delivered wirelessly would start out 15 percent more expensive than wires, and improve on that." Intel has also demonstrated wireless charging.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
My grandmother worked for Thomas Edison - so I the FUD on Edison I can speak to directly as she was my intellectual mentor growing up - and yes we spent hours and hours talking about that crazy Edison.
...and by the way - it was Marconi that invented most of what was later attributed to Tesla... and returned to Marconi only recently by world courts.
Some points you should know:
Most of the consumer devices you use today are direct descendants of Edison's inventions.
Edison was no Crook either - even if only paying my sweet grandmother ~17 cents a day around the 1920's.
He was indeed eccentric toward the later years of his life however, and experienced what many would consider a form dementia today.
His list of inventions towers over just about all other modern inventors - I suggest all of you look them up - there are many, many stories to tell. From movies to music, refrigeration to your TV, he's been involved in some way.
To quote John Dvorak: "My toothbrush has been doing this for years."
(ducks)
Okay ... so what about a taser that works by firing the "head" of the taser but without the trailing wires.
Heck, if that sort of approach worked (a huge "if" personally), the next obvious steps would be to miniaturize the "heads", perhaps make them burn out after a single use (cheap materials, built in resistor that burns out as the current crosses it) ... ... then pack a few of them into a magazine and we've created a rather nice "Assault Weapon" when you're trying to keep casualties to a minimum and are only dealing with "soft" targets (Law Enforcement/Security/Hostage applications sound the most likely).
I predict these are "five to ten years away". ;)
YMMV but I still think it sounds like a neat concept, even if the technology can't/won't support the idea. The single biggest hurdle to the idea is the current need for a stun gun to have those wireless leads leading back to the "body" of the gun. If you can find a away to remove those (even if it means you are now firing a small projectile that isn't expected to penetrate much if anything), it can open the advancement up quite a bit.
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