# Did Tesla predict the smartphone?
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-tesla-predict-the-smartphone/716220
**Category:** Factual Questions
**Created:** [March 28, 2015, 5:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-tesla-predict-the-smartphone/716220 "2015-03-28T17:33:44Z")
**Posts on this page:** 20
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@Nature\_s\_Call](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nature_s_Call)
#### Post date: [March 28, 2015, 5:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-tesla-predict-the-smartphone/716220/1 "2015-03-28T17:33:44Z")
Vala Afshar [tweeted a quote](https://twitter.com/ValaAfshar/status/581772800769163264) attributed to Nikola Tesla:
> [@Vala Afshar's tweet](#):
>
> “From the inception of the wireless system,” he says, "I saw that this new art of applied electricity would be of greater benefit to the human race than any other scientific discovery, for it virtually eliminates distance. The majority of the ills from which humanity suffers are due to the immense extent of the terrestrial globe and the inability of individuals and nations to come into close contact.
>
> "Wireless will achieve the closer contact through transmission of intelligence, transport of our bodies and materials and conveyance of energy.
>
> "When wireless is perfectly applied the whole earth will be converted into a huge brain, which in fact it is, all things being particles of a real and rhythmic whole. We shall be able to communicate with one another instantly, irrespective of distance. Not only this, but through television and telephony we shall see and hear one another as perfectly as though we were face to face, despite intervening distances of thousands of miles; and the instruments through which we shall be able to do his will be amazingly simple compared with our present telephone. A man will be able to carry one in his vest pocket.
>
> “We shall be able to witness and hear events–the inauguration of a President, the playing of a world series game, the havoc of an earthquake or the terror of a battle–just as though we were present.”
Before I start bringing this quote into conversations, I want to confirm it’s true.
It appears to be taken from [When Woman is Boss](http://www.tfcbooks.com/tesla/1926-01-30.htm), an interview with John B. Kennedy, published in Colliers in 1926. The site (TFC Books) appears to be a Tesla fan’s online bookstore. In trying to validate the quote above, I came across other Tesla fan sites that claim the quote (or perhaps quotes along these lines) range from 1906 to 1939, with no cites.
I have no reason to distrust TFC Books, and the quoted interview truly seems legit. But given the unbelievable accuracy and specificity of the quote, I also have no reason by that site alone to believe it is true.
My internet connection is acting up. It’s taken a frustrating hour of waiting for pages to load to get this far. I turn to you for help in tracking down the original source.
Did Tesla predict the smartphone?
---
### Author:  [@Indistinguishable](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Indistinguishable)
#### Post date: [March 28, 2015, 5:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-tesla-predict-the-smartphone/716220/2 "2015-03-28T17:40:50Z")
What would be so surprising about Tesla saying this in 1926? The telephone was old hat, radio had been invented, and television was being demonstrated. Combine all those together and make it small, and you have a mobile video phone, which is all the quote seems to be addressing. (The idea of automated computation, which might be held to be the other major component of a “smartphone” and the Internet infrastructure more generally, doesn’t figure into the quote at all)
---
### Author:  [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)
#### Post date: [March 28, 2015, 6:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-tesla-predict-the-smartphone/716220/3 "2015-03-28T18:06:55Z")
Lots of books use this quote and attribute it to the 1926 \*Collier’s \*interview. I have no doubt that’s correct. The magazine date was January 30, 1926. I can’t find the whole article online but that’s probably because it is still in copyright.
Indistinguishable is right when he says that 1926 is maybe even a late date for this. Tesla was himself a nut on wireless: he thought anything could be sent that way, including energy. But just about everybody else who was predicting the future assumed that wireless telegraphy and sound were just around the corner long before 1926. People getting news from all over the world were being depicted in the late 19th century. The first inauguration speech on radio was in fact Calvin Coolidge’s in 1925. Television was the talk of the day, and everybody assumed it was closer than in fact it would be.
Beamed wireless power was a common prediction, especially for flight since it solved the problem of those heavy and inefficient early engines. The problem with Tesla is that he believed in beamed power long after everybody else realized it was unworkable. He wasn’t a genius predictor on the subject; he was a crank.
This particular quote is a nice collection of trends, and the bit about a vest pocket phone is particularly good. Instruments had steadily been getting more powerful at the same size or smaller than ever before, but bigger and better was probably still the norm for thought. That Tesla made a good hit on one of the thousands of predictions he made shouldn’t surprise anybody or be taken as evidence of a superior mind. He made many times more bad predictions than good ones. We cherrypick the past to pluck out a presciently successful prediction just as we do to pluck out seemingly ludicrous ones. We ignore that those often appears back-to-back in the same writing. People in the past were just as good as us when predicting the future. Now ask yourself how good that is.
---
### Author:  [@Nature\_s\_Call](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nature_s_Call)
#### Post date: [March 28, 2015, 6:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-tesla-predict-the-smartphone/716220/4 "2015-03-28T18:08:36Z")
You’re right. I guess the word “wireless” together with the talk of the world as brain primed my reading to imagine that the device in my vest pocket used YouTube to show me the inauguration.
And I am surprised that television was in the public mind that early.
So the unbelieveability is likely due to my equating today’s reality with what Tesla had in mind when actually his vision was of lesser scope than what we have today. Still remarkable, and I still wouldn’t mind confirming the article.
---
### Author:  [@Nature\_s\_Call](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nature_s_Call)
#### Post date: [March 28, 2015, 6:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-tesla-predict-the-smartphone/716220/5 "2015-03-28T18:23:54Z")
**Exapno** ninja’d me and typing on my cellphone I missed the edit window. The “you’re right” was to **Indistinguishable** but you’re right to.
It was the “lots of books” I was looking for when my connection crapped out. I’m certainly not in the “Tesla is super-genius” camp, and Your point on cherry picking is spot on. It’s just that my first reading of the quote left me with “that’s eerily cool” as well “it’s too good to be true”
---
### Author:  [@Amateur\_Barbarian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Amateur_Barbarian)
#### Post date: [March 28, 2015, 6:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-tesla-predict-the-smartphone/716220/6 "2015-03-28T18:44:18Z")
Nothing said about Tesla has been trustworthy, from any secondary source at all, since Cheney’s slobbering god-worship book was published. Frankly, the man accomplished his true wonders in a very narrow window, about 20-30, and never did a realistic, workable thing ever again. The claims of his troo bleevers are right up there with Nostradamus rewriters.
Me, I think Brian Daley’s detailed exposition of the “proteus” in his early 1980s trilogy is the most brilliant foreshadowing of the smartphone. Yes, it’s close enough in time that many people could have guessed the gist, or some details, but he laid it out over three books, down to subtle and not readily obvious points. It’s not a vague Heinleinian “pocket phone”… it’s an iPhone or Galaxy, right down to the flashlight app.
---
### Author:  [@whitetho](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/whitetho)
#### Post date: [March 28, 2015, 9:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-tesla-predict-the-smartphone/716220/7 "2015-03-28T21:11:13Z")
Some early examples:
[A letter in the October 26, 1901 issue of _The Spectator_](https://books.google.com/books?id=ZfIhAQAAMAAJ&pg=PA600&lpg=PA600#v=onepage&q&f=false) predicted: “Some day men and women will carry a wireless telephone as commonly as to-day we carry a card-case or a camera.”
And from the 1922 _The Radio Girls of Roselawn_:
“Seems to me we are disproving that right now in this radio business,” cried Jessie. “And it is going to be wonderful–just wonderful–before long. They say moving pictures will be transmitted by radio; and there will be machines so that people can speak directly back and forth, and you’ll have a picture before you of the person you are speaking to.”
```
"I tell you what," said Amy as, with their paddles, the girls wended their way down to the little boathouse and landing. "Won't it be great if they ever get pocket radios?"
"Pocket radios!" exclaimed Jessie.
"I mean what the man said in the magazine article we read in the first place. Don't you remember? About carrying some kind of a condensed receiving set in one's pocket--a receiving and a broadcasting set, too."
```
---
### Author:  [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)
#### Post date: [March 28, 2015, 10:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-tesla-predict-the-smartphone/716220/8 "2015-03-28T22:16:59Z")
> [@Amateur\_Barbarian](#):
>
> Nothing said about Tesla has been trustworthy, from any secondary source at all, since Cheney’s slobbering god-worship book was published. Frankly, the man accomplished his true wonders in a very narrow window, about 20-30, and never did a realistic, workable thing ever again. The claims of his troo bleevers are right up there with Nostradamus rewriters.
Yeah to all this except the ages. He was born in 1856 and did real work until the end of the century. There’s a real dividing line around 1901. It’s possible that nothing he did in the 20th century was of major import, though he did have a few minor patents that might have been useful if he were capable of talking rationally to an investor.
> [@whitetho](#):
>
> Some early examples:And from the 1922 _The Radio Girls of Roselawn_:
> “I mean what the man said in the magazine article we read in the first place. Don’t you remember? About carrying some kind of a condensed receiving set in one’s pocket–a receiving and a broadcasting set, too.”
I wouldn’t be surprised if the article were from a Hugo Gernsback magazine. He’s known today solely for starting the first science fiction magazine, _Amazing Stories_, but he was far better known in the 1920s as the leading proponent of the wonders of radio technology. He did not coin the term television - SF people want to claim everything as an invention of somebody in the field - but he used it as early as 1909 in an article about a telephot, a kind of two-way videophone. Didn’t have to be old Uncle Hugo - there were numerous other popular science magazines making these predictions, too - but the odds are very good.
---
### Author:  [@marshmallow](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/marshmallow)
#### Post date: [March 28, 2015, 10:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-tesla-predict-the-smartphone/716220/9 "2015-03-28T22:34:55Z")
I’ve seen many past predictions about modern electronics that are more or less accurate, though they usually say how great it’ll be for education, personal correspondence, and other wholesome activities. But I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone predict it would lead to the largest influx of pornography in history.
---
### Author:  [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)
#### Post date: [March 28, 2015, 10:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-tesla-predict-the-smartphone/716220/10 "2015-03-28T22:58:30Z")
> [@marshmallow](#):
>
> I’ve seen many past predictions about modern electronics that are more or less accurate, though they usually say how great it’ll be for education, personal correspondence, and other wholesome activities. But I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone predict it would lead to the largest influx of pornography in history.
That was something that could never be said in public, so its absence isn’t surprising.
One nitpick. When AB mentioned Cheney’s slobbering god-worship book I automatically assumed he was talking about John J. O’Neill’s _Prodigal Genius: The Life of Nikola Tesla_, which was the only biography for decades. O’Neill was a friend and a science reporter. Reporters loved Tesla because he flung out headline-worthy quotes every time he opened his mouth. Compared to O’Neill, Cheney was a Dawkins-level skeptic. O’Neill is the source of all the claims made about Tesla’s hundred-years-ahead-of-their-time inventions, not Cheney.
---
### Author:  [@Sage\_Rat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sage_Rat)
#### Post date: [March 28, 2015, 11:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-tesla-predict-the-smartphone/716220/11 "2015-03-28T23:04:29Z")
> [@Tesla?](#):
>
> When wireless is perfectly applied the whole earth will be converted into a huge brain, which in fact it is, all things being particles of a real and rhythmic whole.
The fact that this part sounds slightly nutty makes me think that it’s probably a real quote from Tesla.
---
### Author:  [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)
#### Post date: [April 5, 2015, 9:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-tesla-predict-the-smartphone/716220/12 "2015-04-05T21:53:16Z")
Just to hammer it home conclusively that Tesla was late as the first predictor of the cellphone, here’s a quote from Herbert Gubbins’, _The Elixir of Life or 2095 A. D. A Novel of the Far Future_, which written in 1913 and published just before the start of WWI.
> [@](#):
>
> Just then the wireless telephone tinkled in the Professor of Physics’ waistcoat pocket. He put the receiver to his ear. “Hello — is that you — what? Oh, very well. Send it at once, will you?”
Wireless does a lot more than make phone calls. It sends sounds and images around the world.
> [@](#):
>
> Now I should not be surprised if you told me that I could by wireless telegraphy or something of that sort correspond with a person say two or perhaps three thousand miles distant."
>
> The Professor of Physics and the Historian both laughed outright.
>
> “Then it would surprise you, Sir Thomas, if I told you that the first part of our conversation has been heard by several million people throughout the world.”
>
> “You are joking,” gasped Sir Thomas Browne, looking hard at them both and giving a quick glance round the room.
>
> “No I am not,” said the Professor of Physics, rising from his seat. " We are going to telephone now."
>
> "To telephone! " he exclaimed. " Are your wires underground; I have not seen any? "
>
> “We have long dispensed with wires,” he said. " I said ‘telephone’ because the word would most nearly convey to you what I meant. But telegraphy and telephony now are not merely wireless — that, I should have thought was in your time, it is so simple. But now the means of instant communication more nearly approach what we call telepathy, though I assure you there is nothing occult about it, but that our friends have merely learned to control the ethereal vibrations by simpler means, and those at the command of men. Kindly step this way, Sir Thomas, and let me show you first of all the unisophone, one of the most important mediums of communication by which one can speak a long distance without going near it."
>
> He led the way to one end of the room, followed by Sir Thomas and the Historian.
>
> “Here it is,” he said, pointing to a small rectangular box about five inches wide and four inches deep.
>
> “Quite a diminutive affair, you see,” remarked the Historian, casually. Flush with its front face were two circular places about two inches in diameter. The upper one reminded Sir Thomas Browne of a small hopper to an ancient coffee-mill, for it had a receding cone reaching almost to the back of the receptacle.
>
> “This is the receiver or talker,” said the Professor of Physics, touching it with his fingers, " and this is the transmitter," he went on, pointing to a ring of small holes bored in the circumference of the circle beneath the receiver." The little holes all lead inward to a steel tympanum, but the sound-waves are so deflected that they all arive simultaneously on one small point of the diaphragm, or really much amplified or intensified. This sensitive transmitter is a wonderful piece of mechanism," said the Professor of Physics." The most ingenious of the great telephone inventors and electrical experts had worked for years to create a transmitter that could reproduce faint sounds perfectly and divorce it of all cluttering effects. Now throughout the world, in every town of any note, are several large buildings each containing a unisophone. This day people who were unable to see you awaken here, crowded to these places to hear you speak and to see you. Hundreds were unable to obtain admission."
>
> "Did you say to see me ? " reiterated Sir Thomas Browne, slowly.
>
> “Yes,” answered the Professor of Physics, smiling slightly. “Do you observe that small glass case on the top of the unisophone?” He touched a small mirror, and Sir Thomas nodded.
>
> “Well, on every unisophone is this glass to be found, and to-day, if you were to see it in any part of the world you would observe a picture of this room and its occupants. Every movement you made has been seen by millions of people, being magnified by the glass and thrown on a sheet, and every time you spoke it was heard by this vast congregation of people.”
>
> “Marvellous!” ejaculated Sir Thomas Browne. “Marvellous!”
There’s obviously good reason why works like these are forgotten today. As i said earlier, cherrypicking the good predictions - or, for that matter, the silly ones - out of the dozens made is simply foolish. They tell us much more about their contemporary world than they do about what they thought the future would be like.
Also important is remembering that most futuristic wonders were first thought of far earlier than most people think. And that SF writers of the Golden Age didn’t come up with very many that hadn’t been around in principle for decades.
---
### Author:  [@sweat209](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/sweat209)
#### Post date: [April 6, 2015, 2:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-tesla-predict-the-smartphone/716220/13 "2015-04-06T02:24:28Z")
> [@Nature\_s\_Call](#):
>
> Vala Afshar [tweeted a quote](https://twitter.com/ValaAfshar/status/581772800769163264) attributed to Nikola Tesla:
>
> Before I start bringing this quote into conversations, I want to confirm it’s true.
>
> It appears to be taken from [When Woman is Boss](http://www.tfcbooks.com/tesla/1926-01-30.htm), an interview with John B. Kennedy, published in Colliers in 1926. The site (TFC Books) appears to be a Tesla fan’s online bookstore. In trying to validate the quote above, I came across other Tesla fan sites that claim the quote (or perhaps quotes along these lines) range from 1906 to 1939, with no cites.
>
> I have no reason to distrust TFC Books, and the quoted interview truly seems legit. But given the unbelievable accuracy and specificity of the quote, I also have no reason by that site alone to believe it is true.
>
> My internet connection is acting up. It’s taken a frustrating hour of waiting for pages to load to get this far. I turn to you for help in tracking down the original source.
>
> Did Tesla predict the smartphone?
No he was more into the idea of building large towers and when lighting strike it use that to power homes and also into the idea of tapping energy from the ionosphere.
Many people say that is pseudoscience.
It would change the world we live in today if we can harness energy from lighting or from the ionosphere.
It would be more of major breakthrough than the rocks or air planes. It would be clean,free and lots of energy for everyone.
The problem is how do you harness energy from lighting or from the ionosphere? And how do you store it. There no special battery that can store that about of electricity.
---
### Author:  [@Derleth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Derleth)
#### Post date: [April 6, 2015, 5:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-tesla-predict-the-smartphone/716220/14 "2015-04-06T05:21:48Z")
> [@sweat209](#):
>
> The problem is how do you harness energy from lighting or from the ionosphere? And how do you store it. There no special battery that can store that about of electricity.
Well, technically, those are problems, but the primary ‘problem’ with the idea is that it’s competing for development resources with a lot of _other_ ideas, many of which are either proven to work, are _not_ the decades-old rantings of a man who had fallen increasingly behind the science of his era by the time he uttered them, or, most likely, _both_.
We don’t _need_ to undertake the massive engineering challenges inherent in trying to harvest lightning. We already have better methods off the drawing board, on the production lines, and in real-world use around the globe.
So the idea might be pseudoscience. The point is, we don’t especially need to care if it is or not, because we don’t need the idea in the first place.
Tesla has gotten a lot of good press recently. Too bad it’s due to a confluence of ignorant “gee-whiz” reporting, second-option bias (“I used to think Edison was great. Now I think Edison is _literally the Devil_ and Tesla is amazing!”), and conspiracy-mongering of the “suppressed technology” sub-type.
---
### Author:  [@Amateur\_Barbarian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Amateur_Barbarian)
#### Post date: [April 6, 2015, 12:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-tesla-predict-the-smartphone/716220/15 "2015-04-06T12:26:39Z")
> [@Exapno\_Mapcase](#):
>
> Yeah to all this except the ages. He was born in 1856 and did real work until the end of the century. There’s a real dividing line around 1901.
Okay, 20-40 or so. But nearly everything before that dividing line is (1) fairly prosaic stuff like pneumatic brakes or (2) his brilliant insights into AC power. No one much cares about any of it except that the latter establishes the level of his genius. All of the stuff after 1900 or so is wild, hand-waving, contra-physics nonsense… and that’s what the fanboys over at Kwacked just jizz in their jeans about. None of it has turned out to be viable. None of it was based on Science Yet Undiscovered By Mere Mortals. He went down completely wrong roads about “earth energy” and so forth and only the most careful interpretation from a late 20th perspective gives any of it any credence or value at all.
It’s like a cult that’s insane about the brilliance and world-changing possibilities of Newton’s astrology.
> [@](#):
>
> One nitpick. When AB mentioned Cheney’s slobbering god-worship book I automatically assumed he was talking about John J. O’Neill’s _Prodigal Genius: The Life of Nikola Tesla_, which was the only biography for decades. O’Neill was a friend and a science reporter. Reporters loved Tesla because he flung out headline-worthy quotes every time he opened his mouth. Compared to O’Neill, Cheney was a Dawkins-level skeptic. O’Neill is the source of all the claims made about Tesla’s hundred-years-ahead-of-their-time inventions, not Cheney.
I don’t recall O’Neill’s book at all, although I must have read it. I have Cheney here somewhere and read it twice, once very slightly on the fanboy side and once later when I’d put together the “dividing line” thoughts. If Cheney is better than O’Neill, I’m sorry I ever wasted time on him.
---
### Author:  [@Son\_of\_a\_Rich](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Son_of_a_Rich)
#### Post date: [April 6, 2015, 1:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-tesla-predict-the-smartphone/716220/16 "2015-04-06T13:18:00Z")
Some prognosticator- who wears vests anymore? 🙂
---
### Author:  [@whitetho](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/whitetho)
#### Post date: [April 6, 2015, 1:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-tesla-predict-the-smartphone/716220/17 "2015-04-06T13:32:02Z")
> [@Amateur\_Barbarian](#):
>
> If Cheney is better than O’Neill, I’m sorry I ever wasted time on him.
Cheney isn’t much better, unless you are impressed with such things as: “But today, now that science has begun to take an interest in little-understood biological phenomena, Tesla’s strange vacuum tube may hold new interest. It could, for example, have application in the control of autonomic functions of the body through biofeedback techniques. Or perhaps it might help to understand the mysterious Kirlian effect. Kirlian photography, used in conjunction with high-frequency voltages of a Tesla coil, has created scientific interest in the human aura by disclosing to ordinary vision what may have always been apparent to psychics. Tesla’s 1890 research showed the high-frequency currents move on or near the surface of conducting materials, similarly to the phenomenon of superconductivity. It has been speculated that coronas appearing in Kirlian photographs may be the modulation of some kind of ‘carrier field’ surrounding life forms. (Acupunture may be related to such force fields.) It is thus possible to entertain the suggestion of a contemporary electrical engineer that Tesla’s hypersensitive vacuum tube might make an excellent detector not only of Kirlian auras but of other so-called paranormal phenomena, including the entities called ghosts.”
A more recent – and more reality based – biography was published in 2013, “Tesla: Inventor of the Electrical Age”, by W. Bernard Carlson. But even he has trouble finding what, if any, reality lies beneath the various myths.
---
### Author:  [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)
#### Post date: [April 6, 2015, 1:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-tesla-predict-the-smartphone/716220/18 "2015-04-06T13:42:36Z")
Wireless telephones were apparently a _reality_, not merely a prediction, as early as 1908:
> [@](#):
>
> Before the devices that are now referred to as mobile phones existed, there were some precursors. In 1908 a Professor Albert Jahnke and the Oakland Transcontinental Aerial Telephone and Power Company claimed to have developed a wireless telephone. They were accused of fraud and the charge was then dropped, but they do not seem to have proceeded with production.[2] Beginning in 1918 the German railroad system tested wireless telephony on military trains between Berlin and Zossen.[3] In 1924, public trials started with telephone connection on trains between Berlin and Hamburg. In 1925, the company Zugtelephonie A. G. was founded to supply train telephony equipment and in 1926 telephone service in trains of the Deutsche Reichsbahn and the German mail service on the route between Hamburg and Berlin was approved and offered to 1st class travelers.[4]
> **[History of mobile phones](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_mobile_phones)**
>
> The history of mobile phones covers mobile communication devices that connect wirelessly to the public switched telephone network.
> While the transmission of speech by signal has a long history, the first devices that were wireless, mobile, and also capable of connecting to the standard telephone network are much more recent. The first such devices were barely portable compared to today's compact hand-held devices, and their use was clumsy.
> Drastic changes have taken place in both the networki...
---
### Author:  [@Amateur\_Barbarian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Amateur_Barbarian)
#### Post date: [April 6, 2015, 4:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-tesla-predict-the-smartphone/716220/19 "2015-04-06T16:38:50Z")
> [@whitetho](#):
>
> Cheney isn’t much better, unless you are impressed with such things as…
I think you missed the context. I was tap-dancing on Cheney’s book, which I saw sold in the back columns of iffy magazines for many years and IMHO is responsible for the Tesla cult. Exapno was pointing the finger at O’Neill and saying Cheney was better than he was… which is in no way an exoneration. 🙂
---
### Author:  [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)
#### Post date: [April 6, 2015, 5:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-tesla-predict-the-smartphone/716220/20 "2015-04-06T17:19:12Z")
> [@Amateur\_Barbarian](#):
>
> All of the stuff after 1900 or so is wild, hand-waving, contra-physics nonsense… and that’s what the fanboys over at Kwacked just jizz in their jeans about.
That’s why I say that 1901 is a dividing line. All of Tesla’s Big Ideas were nuts. I’m not technical enough to know whether the minor patents he filed were. I don’t think so. There’s some nuts and bolts stuff in there that could be just fine.
Reporters loved both Edison and Tesla because both were willing to make the most gigantic sweeping statements that were great for headlines Edison was completely capable of taking both sides of any argument and stretching each to an extreme - he would never use an invention to hurt people, but when he invented a weapon it would be so terrible it would end war. Tesla talked about Martians and death rays.
Edison was less than a decade older, but he too didn’t do much great stuff in the 20th century besides running his mouth. They weren’t all that far apart in the end. And both would have hated my saying that.
[Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-tesla-predict-the-smartphone/716220.md?page=2)