Wireless Wonders !!

There are days when I doubt whether even a tiny part of me is an engineer and there are days when the engineer within me engulfs me completely. On such days I dismantle appliances, break them down and then try hard to fix them back (although I know, engineering is much more than that).Other than that I am constantly reviewing all the electronic gadgets in the house and brain storming how they could be improvised to make them more user friendly.

One of the many such things that I have tried to improvise on, is to keep the thousands of wires jetting out from the various appliances I own, off the floor so that I don't trip and also keep the dirt balls they manage to collect at bay. I was bitten by this bug three years ago and since then have been trying to disappear these countless black wires into thin air (at times even wishing I had a magic wand, which is very un-engineer like the hard core ones would say). I have been to umpteen hardware shops looking for paraphernalia to keep the wires together, reduce their lengths and to malls looking for wireless versions of my appliances. Some were beyond my budget and others not compact enough. So I resorted to wait in anticipation that either the prices of the wireless gadgets would fall over the years or a technological revolution would provide an entirely new solution.

So my heart leapt with joy when I saw this news on TV. I kind of knew it was coming, but did not know we were so close. It is a genius creation. This man, Eric Giler ,has created a device which converts electricity to magnetic waves, which are then transmitted to the appliances we intend to use and on reaching it gets converted back into electricity to run it. So gone are the hundreds of wires, their sockets, socket holders and all the clutter that comes with it. Your mobile gets charged even as it lays in your pocket and your Television can start without a single wire attached to it.

What is more astonishing is that the basic concept of wireless energy transfer was invented way back in 1893 by Nicolas Tesla (the unit measuring magnetic field Tesla is named after him) and Mr Giler is honest enough to give the man his credit. Tesla had then demonstrated this concept on incandescent light bulbs.

As much as I was glad to hear about this development, it has also kind of strengthened my belief that man was much more intelligent back then as he was closer to nature. The enormity and plain nudity of nature and the extreme proximity our ancestors had with it must have definitely given them a kind of understanding no amount of formulas and theories in books can. Science like everything else in life has to be felt, seen and experienced in totality. Although we may be born with the same number of digits and other body parts, the more we go further away from nature in to tightly closed apartments, the more we stand to lose the sharpness of our senses. Perhaps that could be a reason we have improvised on many concepts but invented few, although I do not say either of them is easy. Also, it comes to us as a reminder to keep going back to history books, for one is sure to find something there. Panning them as meaningless old stuff could be our greatest folly.

Till then, splurge on mobiles, i pods, laptops, cameras so on and so forth. And all without chargers. Here is a link to the video... Hope you'll enjoy.

http://www.ted.com/talks/eric_giler_demos_wireless_electricity.html