Power to baffle butterflies
11 August 2009
Wireless electricity is now becoming a commercial reality, but do we know the full consequencies?
I was recently reminded of the early days of steam trains at the beginning of the 19th century when some people thought that any vehicle that could go faster than a man could run would result in the passengers suffocating, as human lungs could not cope with air travelling at such dizzying speeds. About the same time, a more realistic demonstration of the potential danger was exposed on the day of the opening of the Liverpool & Manchester Railway in 1830, when Stevenson’s Rocket knocked down and killed local MP William Huskisson.
Not that I am suggesting that the technology below may have unexpectedly fatal side-effects, but that there are some steps forward for mankind that some people feel unaccountably nervous about – a knee-jerk, unsubstantiated scepticism bordering on the open mistrust.
The reaction to electricity itself was probably another example – power that you can’t see, feel or hold – and the technology I am talking about is an extension of that – wireless electricity.
As a concept it has been around for a long time – Tesla started playing around with electromagnetism to this effect in the late 19th century. But more recently (about four years ago) the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) started developing this wireless technology and two years later a company was set up, WiTricity, to commercialise it. At the end of last month the company was over in the UK demonstrating TED Global conference in Oxford, and showed an iPhone and TV being charged by energy generated by resonating electromagnetic waves.
These waves go round corners and are relatively long distance – I believe that it works when the distance is shorter than one wavelength, which can be up to 30m. It clearly works – the question is how well and, I can’t help myself from thinking, with what consequencies. The WiTricity website (www.witricity.com) gives a pretty good summary of the technology and to me it seems clear that this is an exciting slice of the future.
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