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BlackBerry Predicted a Century Ago By Nikola Tesla

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the and-he-looks-like-david-bowie dept.

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."

17 of 253 comments (clear)

  1. Yet another example of why... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

    1. Re:Yet another example of why... by Jurily · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Agreed. Basically if it runs on electricity, Tesla has a hand in it.

    2. Re:Yet another example of why... by dave420 · · Score: 4, Insightful

      ... Stuff he completely refused to document or explain, making it perfectly indistinguishable from the rantings of once-great scientist who has slipped into mediocrity, or even insanity. It's strange how you think the 'stuff' he came up with, that you don't understand, is somehow noteworthy. Surely that is irrational, as you don't know what it is. It's as if you are worshipping at the altar of Tesla. You're not a conspiracy theorist, are you?

    3. Re:Yet another example of why... by Mindcontrolled · · Score: 5, Funny

      While this is surely a worthwhile endeavor for a young novice of the Church of St. Tesla, St. Tesla's day should be a great opportunity to just try your hands on some electronics.

      Just follow these simple commands:

      Thou shalt not presente your body as a path for ye electrone to reach ground, lest ye be smitten down.
      Thou shall only manipulate HV circuits with one hand, keeping the other behind your back, lest thou presenteth a path for ye electrone through thine hearte and be smitten down.
      Thou shalt not touch a big-arsed capacitor without discharching it before, lest ye be smitten down.
      Thou shall always remember that woode is only an isolator below a certain voltage, lest it presenteth a path for the electrone and filleth yer room with holy flame and smoke.
      Thou shall always use a decent head-sink for yer MOSFETs, lest ye olde magick smoke escapeth.

      Keep that in mind and rise from the lowly status of novice!

      --
      Ubi solitudinem faciunt, pacem appellant.
  2. Free advertising going too far by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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.

  3. Not Surprised by MaxwellEdison · · Score: 5, Funny

    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=-
  4. Funny, I heard that one differently. by Abstrackt · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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
  5. Re:That's all fine and good by Jurily · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Actually, Tesla was talking about the Nokia N900, but the submitter never heard about that one.

  6. Re:That's all fine and good by lxs · · Score: 5, Funny

    Just wait until you read his letter on why the iPad sucks.

  7. Prior Art! by rnturn · · Score: 5, Funny

    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
  8. Tesla in 1909? Try Francis Bacon in 1623 by benwiggy · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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.

  9. Count the misses, not just the hits. by SanityInAnarchy · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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!
    1. Re:Count the misses, not just the hits. by srmalloy · · Score: 4, Informative

      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.

      Tesla was, for the greater part of his life, badly hampered by a severe lack of money to carry out his more expansive projects. Some of this was due to his overgenerous nature, as when he gave up entirely the royalties Westinghouse owed him on the power-generation devices Tesla had designed, some was due to his lifelong habit of chasing ideas off in odd directions without consideration for their economic utility, and some was due to his inability to obtain funding from others -- Westinghouse, for example, refused to fund Tesla's development of a broadcast-power system after Tesla admitted that there would be no way to determine how much power any given end-user consumed, so there would be no way to bill them for it.

    2. Re:Count the misses, not just the hits. by Attila+Dimedici · · Score: 4, Informative

      While this article quotes Tesla predicting wireless technology, it is not very similar to what we actualy have. His prediction was for central switching stations, not distributed cell towers. What Telsa was talking about is not what we have today. It bears a superficial resemblance, but it is a completely different technology.

      --
      The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
    3. Re:Count the misses, not just the hits. by painandgreed · · Score: 5, Informative

      Note that this article predicts both the Internet and wireless technology, but with no mention of the digital aspects.

      But he did. Telsa was the inventor of the AND logic gate. When computers started to catch on and research was done and people went to patent their inventions, some of them found out that Telsa already had the patents some more than 50 years earlier because he was already developing the same techniques while trying to control devices wirelessly. So, he did do that, it just wasn't mentioned in the article probably because it wasn't seen as important at the time and because it was quite simply beyond everybody else.

      When Tesla developed weapons for the military and displayed them at a World's Fair, he demonstrated remote controlled submarines and torpedoes and tried to explain how both the submarines and torpedoes could be controlled and guided wirelessly by operators far away. In a time where a simply wireless system that allowed ships to talk to each other reliably, submarines, or torpedoes would have been a major military breakthrough, the army and navy just couldn't even comprehend what he was talking about let alone figure out how to use remote drones effectivly.

  10. Re:Blackberry Advert by grumling · · Score: 4, Informative

    TECHNICALLY, a satphone only transmits up to the closest satellite. Single sideband (PSK31 if you want data) on the HF bands can transmit all over the world.

    --
    "Well, good luck finding a judge that doesn't run a bestiality site."
  11. Tesla didn't predict this at all by AndyS2 · · Score: 4, Informative

    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.