Wireless Charging Cuts Power Cords

I know that my comment here is not going to change the terms people use but I dislike calling this wireless charging. As the picture shows, loops of wire are needed for this to work. More important than this technicality, people cannot charge their devices anywhere they go that the term wireless implies. A loosely coupled coil charge circuit must be in close proximity to the other coil for power to transfer. The point of this charging technique is that it is connector-less charging. Contact failures and the annoyance of aligning the mating connection will be gone.

The "Inverse Square Law" says that it isn't going to be a very efficient method of power transfer, given the combination of production tolerances and consumer mishandling.

Didn't Tesla devise a system of transmitting power without wires?

Yes and he cheated by using a fluorescent tube and moving it into a resonant radio frequency peak node. Then again a cute parlor trick to loosen the pockets of a stingy banker is all part of business.

I don't think the fluorescent tube was invented yet.

Alexandre Becquerel started research into what became the fluorescent tube in the middle of the 19'th century. The lamp Tesla used was certainly primitive compared to the chemistry found in todays fluorescent tubes. It is just easier to get people today to relate to fluorescent tubes than to try and describe Tesla's 1893 demonstration using phosphorescent lamps at the World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago. Nickolai was certainly a showman.

Wireless charging using magnetic fields would interfere with pacemakers???

Only if you are wearing one...pacemaker...that is.

Same "problem" as why people with pacemakers can't have MRI's done: the induced currents into leads generate both voltage and heat.

Thank you Redfred for the Tesla update. Didn't Tesla build his coupled coil tower on Long Island?

Yes he did. I once lived in walking distance to the site of the Wardenclyffe tower and research facility. Half a century ago that site was home of the Agfa military grade camera film used during the cold war in the SR-71, U2 and the satellite surveillance program where exposed film was ejected from a low orbit satellite. (For the life of me I cannot remember the name of this significant project.) While Tesla deserves many accolades, I fear that the cold war era work done quietly at this site will fall to obscurity.

redfred -- that was Project Corona, I believe.

I think project Corona was it. However, the Wikipedia page states that Kodak made the special film. Maybe this site was a second source, Wikipedia is wrong, or I have some bad data.