1. Tesla’s Wireless System
There’s a reason the internet loves Nikola Tesla and Elon Musk’s automotive firm is named after the guy. Eccentric as he may have been, Tesla had great, world-changing ideas. One of the most astonishing things he came up with was his wireless system which was much ahead of its time and has proved to be the cornerstone of contemporary communication.
Arguably the greatest downside to Tesla’s proposal was the transfer of wireless electricity. In practical terms, they did not think what he was advocating realistic at all. But there are many who are certain that 5G technology provides the basis for the adoption of wireless power transfer.
Modern electronics can be charged wirelessly on things like charging pads and we don’t really think of it as strange or creepy sci-fi at all. The potential of a 5G network to transport electricity has already been established over small distances, so the prospect of scaling up to Tesla’s goals may not be that far-fetched. But even today it’s a scientific riddle that has to be worked out to make it more feasible across bigger distances. That said, the fact that it got from the pipe dreams of everyone’s favorite not-so-mad scientist to a practical reality is astounding.
2. Automatic Doors
The automated door is a ubiquitous and usually neglected component of contemporary living. You go to Wal Mart, you expect the doors to open. You only ever notice them when they don’t operate correctly. But certainly there was a period when this was a novelty, a wonder of modern science, right? The first installed contemporary automated door goes back to 1960, six years after a pair of inventors devised the concept. But our close friends in Ancient Greece enjoyed convenience too so you may go back to the first century to see automated doors in practical usage in Alexandria.
The main difference between current automated doors and Ancient Greek automatic doors is that convenience plainly signifies something different to us. Nowadays when you go up to a door a motion sensor recognises you moving towards it and opens the doors before you arrive. If everything goes as planned, you don’t need to slow your stride. The doors in Alexandria took hours to open, so ultimately they were designed to open once to start the day and that was it.
The system had a very crude hydraulic design. A brass pot of water was heated and other pots would fill with liquid, weighing them down. They were coupled to a pulley system and that would in turn open the doors. It definitely would have been much quicker and faster simply to have someone push them open, but the novelty of doors that opened on their own was undoubtedly quite lovely to everyone when they saw it the first time.
3. Virtual Boy
Virtual reality has been on a long, hard journey to there. The gaming industry has been sure, at least on some level, that this was the future of gaming since sometime in the early 1990s. The perplexing movie The Lawnmower Man exploited this as a significant narrative premise and as unimpressive as that movie was, it introduced the concept that a virtual world may be world altering. Prior to that, Star Trek: The Next Generation had been employing Holodecks as an immersive, virtual reality environment that even dignified individuals like Jean-Luc Picard could get lost in.
In the actual world, the technology proved sluggish to catch up with expectations. Nintendo’s Virtual Boy from 1995 aimed to make virtual reality a thing and revolutionise the face of gaming. Remember,this was back at a time when the first PlayStation had just been introduced and most people were still sporting a Super Nintendo.
The Virtual Boy wasn’t exactly virtual reality, so maybe that’s why it flopped very, very poorly. It was more of an unpleasant 3D gaming interface that had bad visuals and a restricted range of games. But at least their heart was in the right place.
The next feasible VR gaming device, the Oculus Rift, wouldn’t be commercially marketed until 2016. That’s a vast difference, particularly in terms of gaming where next gen consoles may be introduced in a matter of a few of years.
In 2021, there are VR gaming enterprises where you may go, put on a headset, and explore hundreds of games. But they’re still very specialised and although the business is developing, conventional gaming is still far larger. Is VR’s time coming? Maybe someday. But for now it’s still beset with flaws that damage the user experience, from motion sickness to the fact that you need a full place set up to use it and that it makes some people feel dumb and uncomfortable. But when the day does come, remember that Virtual Boy laid the groundwork.
4. Electric Cars
Automobiles have been ubiquitous for nearly a century now and the fossil fuel business has relished every minute of it. But from the very beginning, the concept that a vehicle didn’t have to operate on a combustion engine was evident. The current invention of electric automobiles is not really an innovation at all, merely a return to the better concepts of the past.
It was 1897 when the first battery powered car was shown, the Columbia Motor Carriage. It was not nearly as fancy as a present day Tesla by any means, particularly with a peak speed of 15 miles per hour. On the other hand, the Model T didn’t come out until 10 years later and it only had a peak speed of 45 miles per hour. So there was always the possibility for greater and better power.
The primary difficulty with the early electric automobiles was that the battery had to be replaced and not replenished, which clearly reduced viability. However, if the technology had been explored with greater seriousness, then possibly the concerns of battery size, cost, and recharging might have been solved decades sooner than it was. We’ll never know now, but with the electric vehicle boom that’s presently occurring, it’s exciting to imagine what may have been.
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