Consumers charging their devices wirelessly today have two scientists to thank, Michael Faraday and Nikola Tesla. English scientist Faraday experimented with the physics of inductive charging. Tesla was a Serbian-American inventor, electrical engineer, mechanical engineer, physicist, and futurist best known for his contributions to the design of the modern alternating current electricity supply system. Both are so well-regarded that electric car companies are named in their honor: Faraday Future and Tesla Motors, said a recent story in the Automotive News.
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ikola Tesla experimented with transferring energy wirelessly from Niagara Falls to Wardenclyffe Tower on Long Island in 1901-1902. Wall Street mogul J.P. Morgan financed the structure for about $200,000.
At the time, Tesla said he hoped to “supply power to distant localities on this earth without the medium of wires. At Niagara it may be possible to generate electrical energy that can be used to drive mills in New England, railroad trains across the prairies and steamships across the sea.”
But the tower never functioned as planned. It was torn down and sold for scrap to help pay Tesla’s debts in 1917.
Tesla was prescient, however, about wireless power and what would eventually become cell phones. In 1926, he said: “When wireless is perfectly applied the whole earth … we shall be able to communicate with one another instantly, irrespective of distance. Not only this, but through television and telephony we shall see and hear one another as perfectly as though we were face to face, despite intervening distances of thousands of miles; and the instruments through which we shall be able to do this will fit in a vest pocket.”
Faraday preceded Tesla by about 70 years. He showed that current could be generated by inserting a moving electric magnet in a coil of wire, according to Automotive News.
In 1831, the MIT Spectrum publication reported that Faraday showed that “an oscillating electric current in one coil of wire creates a magnetic field that induces current in a nearby separate coil of wire.” Ten years prior, Faraday demonstrated the use of electromagnetic force, which eventually led to the invention of the electric motor and electric generator.
Albert Einstein reportedly had two pictures in his office of people who inspired him: Issac Newton and Michael Faraday.
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