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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."
Tesla was a freakin genius.
Our entire modern world wouldnt exist without him. And he never got any credit while he was alive.
Hell, theres STILL stuff he came up with that we have no understanding of. Yet.
So the guy predicted text messaging. Impressive. But why does everything have to be a product placement nowadays?
This case is especially stupid, since what really enables worldwide access to messaging are $20 phones.
Not sure why this article claims he predicted the Blackberry. Maybe he predicted the iPhone. Or the Droid. Or just the generic cellphone. Or the walkie-talkie. It's nice that Blackberry is getting some face time but I don't really see the necessity to focus the article on a specific brand rather than the entire product category...
I don't find it very surprising that someone obsessed with perfecting the wireless transmission of electricity would envision the wireless transmission of information. The fact that he predicted Apple would abandon flash though, was a bit of a shock.
-=Bang Bang=-
Pure Blackberry advertising to increase usage in the UK. Why should they correlate "possible to transmit wireless messages all over the world." with the BB and not, say, any phone since the mid 90's?
Tom
Way back in the day when I was in high school I heard Tesla predicted the Internet, using exactly that quote. There's no arguing that Tesla did a lot of amazing things but he's no technological Nostradamus, no matter how much people try to shoehorn him into the role.
They say a little knowledge is a dangerous thing, but it's not one half so bad as a lot of ignorance. - Terry Pratchett
Tesla anticipating the advent of portable communication devices does not in any way equate to him having predicted the BlackBerry.
I've found that I'm making small scornful noises increasingly often while reading Slashdot and BetaNews headlines. I have yet to determine the threshold at which I will cease reading technology news altogether, but I feel it is rapidly approaching. I don't want to stop, so please, please, for the love of Christ please stop posting this frothy nonsense.
Actually, Tesla was talking about the Nokia N900, but the submitter never heard about that one.
At the turn of the century, Marconi, Tesla and Jagdish Chandra Bose demonstrated wirelessly turning on a switch over a distance. Marconi could never get the resonance circuit working right (what he called coherer). Got the idea from Bose in a conference, (or stole Bose's notebook depending on where you hear it from). Bose was an idealist and never thought of commericializing his inventions, and was stuck in Calcutta, India anyway. Marconi went into wireless signal propagation and Tesla went into wireless power transmission.
Despite his visionary predictions about wireless communications, Tesla's dream of wireless transmission of power has not yet been realized.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
Just wait until you read his letter on why the iPad sucks.
It appears that Tesla thought of everything. So let's just toss out all those silly mobile patents and let the real innovation -- and competition -- begin.
What did he have to say about audio and video encoding?
CUR ALLOC 20195.....5804M
From Francis Bacon's "New Atlantis" of 1623:
We represent also all multiplications of light, which we carry to great distance, and make so sharp as to discern small points and lines.
We find also diverse means, yet unknown to you, of producing of light, originally from diverse bodies.We have also houses of deceits of the senses, where were present all manner of feats of juggling, false apparitions, impostures and illusions, and their fallacies.
We have also sound-houses, where we practise and demonstrate all sounds and their generation. We have all means to convey sounds in trunks and pipes, in strange lines and distances.
Well, it makes a change from people round here talking about "Iphone-like device" to refer to "phone", and I'm surprised for once that the media have chosen Blackberry rather than Apple yet again.
Really though, looking at the article:
such a hand-held device would be simple to use and that, one day, everyone in the world would communicate to friends using it
There's nothing here that even implies a QWERTY keyboard, or even being so-called "smart" (which is ill-defined anyway, and simply means the high end at any given time). This description refers to mobile phones in general (whether it's communicating by speech, text, or Internet - almost all phones do all these things).
If anyone one company deserves the mention, it should be Nokia, who've shipped billions of these "hand-held devices" and have 40+% of the market. Other companies worthy of mention would be LG, Samsung, Motorola - in fact, RIM and Apple come rather low on the list.
(And I have to say, is predicting a device really that special? Communication devices already existed, and this just said, one day they'll be smaller and mobile. I'm going to predict that in the future we'll have faster computers, and they'll be smaller too.)
I have my secretary print out the slashdot comments and leave them on my desk every hour, you insensitive clod!
SO does this invalidate the claims in Nokia V. Apple lawsuit. If wireless connectiviry was anticipated in 1909, are practical methods for carrying that out truly surprising 100 years later?
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
Hell, theres STILL stuff he came up with that we have no understanding of. Yet.
That stuff is either genius or failed experiments. How would you know the difference?
Note that this article predicts both the Internet and wireless technology, but with no mention of the digital aspects. It also predicts wireless power, such that a ship could be sent across the Atlantic, powered by a single wireless power station on one side. It predicted all of this would happen in something like 5 years.
So he was wrong about how long it would take, and he threw out at least one other idea in that article that we haven't seen happen, and have no evidence can happen.
I like Tesla as much as anyone else, but I'm not sure how to call this one. Fuzzy, at best. I think Orwell had it closer.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
You're forgetting that he said it in a day and age where most people simply didn't have a telephone line at all, and if they did have one, they usually had a party line that they shared with their neighbours. Not only did he predict that communications devices would be smaller and mobile, he also said that everybody would have one, and that they'd be networked globally. That's a fairly big leap, and while you can argue in hindsight that the writing was on the wall, it's akin to predicting netbooks in 1943.
And there's a few things that Tesla got wrong in his prediction... he said that it would be possible and easy for a single tower to control millions of devices from thousands of miles away. In reality there's millions of cell towers in the world, and each may have a few thousand phones on it at a maximum. There's a few orders of magnitude difference there.
Nowhere does he say that we will use a complex network of machines to send and receive messages. He thought that you could easily transmit stuff directly to other devices even if they are hundreds of miles away and even if there are millions of them being used at the same time. This isn't true, just like the other things in the article are not possible with our current understanding of physics. I'm not very knowledgable about science, but I even doubt that this is at all possible in the way he described it.
And there's a few things that Tesla got wrong in his prediction... he said that it would be possible and easy for a single tower to control millions of devices from thousands of miles away. In reality there's millions of cell towers in the world, and each may have a few thousand phones on it at a maximum. There's a few orders of magnitude difference there.
Can you really say he got it wrong though? Also note that he was talking about devices "no bigger than a wristwatch". My Palm Pre is significantly larger than a wristwatch, as are ALL mobile phones, smart or otherwise.
Perhaps it is more correct to say that his vision hasn't been fully fulfilled yet, but that we are, for the first time, able to fully comprehend what he was talking about.
Official Heretic from the "Church of Global Warming". Proven right thanks to whistle blowers. AGW = Flat Earth Theory
Reading the New York Times column as reproduced on recombu.com, it seems that Mr. Tesla was more interested in the wireless transmission of power, and that he saw the wireless transmission of speech, pictures and other data as a trivial side-effect. His article implicitly seem to address the question: how to give a handheld device enough power so that it can transmit radio signals that have a practical range, and his answer is wirelessly transmitted power. This is somewhat ironic because his obsession with wireless power transmission is what caused friction with his financiers and made him be in debt for most of his later life. His wireless power transmission plans were never realized in a practical way; nowadays, people would find them laughable because they would incur enormous transmission losses and there would be concerns about the health effect of having ultra-high-intensity radio waves all over the place. And even without the technical hurdles, it would be hard to force people to pay for the power they use... Powering handheld communication devices was ultimately made possible possible by advances in battery technology, energy-efficient electronics, and sensitive receiving stations placed at a very high geographic density (aka. cellular networks), reducing the powered needed to transmit signals. That said, there are some contemporary applications of wireless transmission of power, but most of them are low-power short-range, or use different technologies than the ones proposed by Tesla. The most interesting ones are devices that dissipate stray radio waves to prolong their own battery life; I believe Nokia has been toying with this technology. Tesla did predict something in those lines, although he envisaged using natural sources of radio waves.
Of course, the incorrect parts of Tesla's prediction doesn't make the correct part any less impressive.
Most normal people simply say, "just a sec, I got a message on my phone."
What wierdos call it a blackberry? is it the same ones that say, "I dont know, let me check my IPHONE. SEE IPHONE! LOOKIE!!!!! I'm trendy..... stop mocking me...."
disclaimer: I have an iphone. I like it because it's the best tool for a business person at the moment.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Kay proposed his Dynabook in 1972... but before that Gene Roddenberry and company proposed the PADD in Star Trek circa 1966. The iPad looks (and sounds) a lot more like PADD than the Dynabook.
Hey, credit where credit is due!
Alternately it could be sarcasm.
There are cell phone watches out there. It's just that the demand for something so small is not around as it's not very convenient to use.
But cell towers are a terrible way to design a system. Sure, they are the best method we have for overcoming signal quality and bandwidth requirements now, but a central station like Tesla envisions would be much better. Just like people laugh about the 4 watt suitcase cell phone from 1990, people might be laughing about the "There's a map for that" commercials from 2010.
Plus I believe that we won't get down to wristwatch size without some leap in innovation. Even Star Trek had big wrist mounted devices because your fingers can't get any smaller.
It was stolen, since Alan Kay will always be a researcher who would rather have his innovations used. Alan Kay used to work for Apple and told Steve his he should increase the size of the iTouch and could rule the world. The Apple Newton could be consider a Dynabook v1, with the iTouch being v2 and the iPad being version 3 of Alan's dream computer. Also after Alan left Xerox Parc, he went to work for Apple in 1994, he is currently heading the institute he founded.
Here is Alan's view on the iPad... http://www.tomshardware.com/news/alan-kay-steve-jobs-ipad-iphone,10209.html
I meant, iPad wasn't Stolen by Apple.
He did some amazing stuff, and figures out AC. No real argument there.
But he also predicted a ton of stuff, was a little mad, and everyone ignores the crap that didn't seem to pan out.
At this point he is becoming Nostradamus of technology.
Did some really advance stuff, but people only talks about his wild ass guess that may or may not have claimed with the person reading them says that claim.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Edison was a businessman that did invention when he had to. He had a pretty kickass PR department, but he's a Bill Gates. He may've done some of the earlier work, but he essentially became management, directing his underlings toward discoveries. Tesla was the polar opposite. Pretty crappy at business, but a LOT of ideas. Some of them worked out (AC power, the concept of remote power transmission), some more would have worked given more time and money, and some would never work (teleportation, time travel, etc). Tesla was an eccentric, and maybe a little off his rocker....but I think he deserves more respect than Edison for his crazy ideas, drive to get them to work, and the fact that he *did* get some of them off the ground.
It is pitch black. You are likely to be eaten by a grue.
It's not just that the tendancy to worship someone. There's that that tendancy to choose a devil as well. It's human nature to always find a good vs evil struggle in something. Tesla and Edison both contributed greatly to the technological world we enjoy today. Yes, Tesla was a little insane. Yes, Edison was a businessman. Yes, they didn't like each other. They still both made great contributions. Without them progress would have been delayed. Someone would no doubt have made their discoveries but it would have been some time later. I couldn't say if it would be a long or short time but given most major inventions and discoveries in history have at least a little controversy as to who was actually first my bets are on shorter. Still, the other discoveries and inventions which built on there's would also be delayed. We would probably be living in a world equivalent to 1 to 3 decades in the past.
Not only did J.P. Morgan suppress Tesla's most revolutionary work (by halting the flow of money)...
That's like saying the lead investor suppressed Pets.com by halting the flow of money to it.
Want to improve your Karma? Instead of "Post Anonymously", try the "Post Humously" option.
Most normal people simply say, "just a sec, I got a message on my phone." What wierdos call it a blackberry?
The same weirdos who ask for a Kleenex instead of a facial tissue? Or who ask "Would you like a coke?" when they're asking if you'd like a carbonated beverage? Or who ask for an Aspirin instead of a tablet of acetylsalicylic acid?
Want to improve your Karma? Instead of "Post Anonymously", try the "Post Humously" option.
This would be the same Edison that resisted our modern electrical transmission standard tooth and nail until he finally hijacked it from Tesla.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
This is an idiotic story that I am ashamed made it on to Slashdot. Tesla never predicted BlackBerry; he predicted mobile technology for sending communications wirelessly (not to mention electricity transmission without wires). This technology is not exclusive to BlackBerry devices and writing an article with the the name BlackBerry (or any other name implying exclusivity) in the title smells of advertising being disguised as journalism. And that this article made it to Slashdot stinks even more, as I would have expected this to scrutinized and thrown out before it ever got proliferated to readers.