In 1908 — about a century before the iPhone — inventor Nikola Tesla mused about creating a device "no bigger than a watch" that would allow someone to hear "music or song [or] the speech of a political leader" and transfer "any picture, character, drawing or print."
The Tesla Coil
Among the most famous of Nikola Tesla's inventions, the Tesla coil forms the basis of much of his work.
Tesla was highly intrigued by high-frequency electricity. He knew that light was electricity — vibrating at a high frequency. And Tesla believed he could harness it.
The problem was that the higher the frequency, the more unstable the equipment. Tesla had tried building rotary generators that could run at high speeds, but they fell apart at 20,000 cycles per second.
Thus, the Tesla coil was born. It consists of essentially two coils that bounce energy back and forth, creating extremely high frequencies and voltages.
They could be used to send radio messages or to power a lightbulb from across the room.
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