{"id":1107,"date":"2007-03-30T20:43:49","date_gmt":"2007-03-31T01:43:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mathewingram.com\/work\/2007\/03\/30\/cut-the-power-cords-that-bind-you\/"},"modified":"2007-03-30T20:43:49","modified_gmt":"2007-03-31T01:43:49","slug":"cut-the-power-cords-that-bind-you","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/2007\/03\/30\/cut-the-power-cords-that-bind-you\/","title":{"rendered":"Cut the power cords that bind you"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Is wireless power about to become a reality? It sure sounds that way, according to a piece in Business 2.0 magazine about <a href=\"http:\/\/money.cnn.com\/magazines\/business2\/business2_archive\/2007\/04\/01\/8403349\/\">a company called Powercast<\/a>, which says it has developed a way of powering devices (albeit fairly low-voltage ones for now) without power cords or bricks. And electronics giant Philips has signed a deal with Powercast to bring its technology to market.<\/p>\n<p><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"left\" id=\"image1108\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.mathewingram.com\/work\/wp-content\/uploads\/snipshot_d4178gifo0i7.jpg?w=525\" alt=\"snipshot_d4178gifo0i7.jpg\" \/>It may sound incredible &#8212; and Ben Metcalfe seems to think it&#8217;s an April Fool&#8217;s joke come early &#8212; but wireless power is not a fantasy. In fact, the eccentric genius <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Nikola_Tesla\">Nikolai Tesla<\/a>, who invented alternating current or AC power, was <a href=\"http:\/\/www.tfcbooks.com\/articles\/tws8c.htm\">pretty close<\/a> to developing wireless power around the turn of the century, but didn&#8217;t quite make it &#8212; in part because his financial backer, J.P. Morgan, <a href=\"http:\/\/query.nytimes.com\/gst\/fullpage.html?res=9901E4D6163CF931A35753C1A9659C8B63\">pulled out<\/a>. It&#8217;s possible that his feud with fellow genius Thomas Edison (who favoured direct current power) had something to do with it, but I can&#8217;t say for sure.<\/p>\n<p>And there is already what amounts to a wireless-power company, a company called Splashpower.com, which uses adapters that attach to electrical devices, and then charges those devices whenever they are placed on a special mat. But that involves actual contact between the device and the mat &#8212; Powercast says it can broadcast power to devices up to six feet away, through relatively small and inexpensive chips the size of a dime.<\/p>\n<p>(in unrelated news, some guy likes to <a href=\"http:\/\/tesladownunder.com\/\">build giant Tesla coils<\/a> in his garage).<\/p>\n<div class=\"syndication-links\"><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Is wireless power about to become a reality? It sure sounds that way, according to a piece in Business 2.0 magazine about a company called Powercast, which says it has developed a way of powering devices (albeit fairly low-voltage ones for now) without power cords or bricks. And electronics giant Philips has signed a deal &hellip; <\/p>\n<p class=\"link-more\"><a href=\"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/2007\/03\/30\/cut-the-power-cords-that-bind-you\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;Cut the power cords that bind you&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_crsspst_to_mathewingramblogwordpresscom":false,"mf2_syndication":[],"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1107","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1107","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1107"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1107\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1107"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1107"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1107"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}