BlackBerry Predicted a Century Ago By Nikola Tesla

andylim writes "According to the Telegraph, the BlackBerry was first predicted more than a century ago, by Nikola Tesla, the electrical engineer. Seth Porges, Popular Mechanics' current technology editor, disclosed Tesla's prediction at a presentation, titled '108 Years of Futurism,' to industry figures recently in New York. Recombu.com has published the original Popular Mechanics article in which Tesla predicts a mobile phone revolution."

Comments

Tesla's messaging system was a little different

[bl8n8r]

Tesla's view of messaging involved wearing a small silver oxide dome on top of your head. You had a DC battery pack, capacitor, a nylon jacket, tinfoil shoes with rubber soles, and schrodinger's cat (dead of course).

You would generate current by standing in a puddle (or wet grass) and rubbing the dead cat against the nylon jacket. The DC battery pack would begin to charge but since you were insulated from ground, the electricity had nowhere to go and would build exponentially with each stroke of the cat. The Capacitor would charge itself by harvesting the free electrons on the surface of the jacket until finally, it would discharge creating a vertical bolt of electricity shooting out of the silver oxide dome on your head.

The bolt would travel to the nearest (or tallest) person and ground through the top of their heads and get their attention. Tesla demonstrated this at the World's Fair in 1910 creating a message which traveled 4 miles to nearby goat farm in Brussels (where it ignited and killed a pygmy goat). Due to the unpredictability of the recipient, and the awful stench on the receiving end, it just never really caught on.