100 Years Later: Smartphone, Texting

While smartphones seem pretty modern day, it turns out that the legendary inventor and electrical engineer Nikola Tesla (1856 to 1943) predicted mobile phones in 1909.

Popular Mechanics magazine Tech Editor Seth Porges says that Serbian-born electrical engineer and physicist Nikola Tesla, one of the fathers of modern alternating current (AC) electrical power systems, posited in Popular Mechanics in 1909 that it would in the future be possible to send wireless messages back and forth across the globe. He projected this communication via an easy-to-use handheld device that would be available to the masses.

Tesla expected this wireless-messaging wave to bring along with it an entirely new era of technology, Telegraph reports. And he also predicted the coming of "wireless power," which is in its infancy today but is already in use in products like Powermat's charge pads for devices including BlackBerry smartphones and the iPhone.

Porges spoke during the presentation "108 Years of Futurism" and told New York industry members about the magazine's many tech-prediction hits and misses over the past century, among other things, according to Telegraph.co.uk.