Wireless Power

For years, the idea of sending power wirelessly has intruiged me. Yes, wireless data transmission is an every day thing now. I'm using it right now, and I have to say for someone in pc support, wireless seemed like a hassle when it first came around. The idea of not having a physical plug that you can check on bothered me. WEP keys, signal strength, all was this invisible gamble that only worked half the time. Our office WAN still sucks.

But now, stronger routers and homebrew can-tennas (google them, really good use for a pringles can) have solved the signal issue, unless you're dealing with concrete or fishtanks. So what's the next big chapter in wireless development? Power. Electricity. Tesla, quite early on, realized this was possible and in fact invented flourescent tubes that could be carried around his lab and still be plenty bright. In fact most people don't know that the now ubiquitous neon sign is a direct result of this experimentation.

Furthermore, his whole grand World Wireless Plan was more about broadcasting power than information. Yes, the entire radio and television industry is pretty much in debt to him just for conceiving of it. But he was talking about shooting electricty half way or all the way around the world using the earth itself as a conductor. He also believed he could beam electricity to the moon or mars with little or no loss.

Now, some of that may sound pretty far out, especially for over a hundred years ago. But, I was reminded of the Tragically Hip song the other day that goes "yeah, you are ahead by a century..." because Tesla pretty much was. Here's proof:

http://money.cnn.com/magazines/business2/business2_archive/2007/04/01/8403349/index.htm?postversion=2007033007

I'm impressed by the size of their receiver unit (about the size of a quarter I think it said). Also it sounds like they've already cooked up an alliance with the cellphone industry and with everyone carrying around blackberries and smartphones nowadays, the laptop market is the next obvious step.