A Discussion About Spotify-Enabled Smartphones... In 1908

Wednesday, May 09, 2012
by paul

An inexpensive instrument, not bigger than a watch, will enable its bearer to hear anywhere, on sea or land, music or song, the speech of a political leader, the address of an eminent man of science, or the sermon of an eloquent clergyman, delivered in some other place, however distant. In the same manner any picture, character, drawing, or print can be transferred from one to another place. Millions of such instruments can be operated from but one plant....

More important than all of this, however, will be the transmission of power, without wires, which will be shown on a scale large enough to carry conviction. These few indications will be sufficient to show that the wireless art offers greater possibilities than any invention or discovery heretofore made, and if the conditions are favorable, we can expect with certitude that in the next few years wonders will be wrought by its application."

Nikola Tesla, 1908.

...as published in "The Future of the Wireless Art," Wireless Telegraphy and Telephony: Popularly Explained (p.67)

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Comments (7)

Visitor Wednesday, May 09, 2012

funny, he doesn't look like David Bowie...

Visitor Wednesday, May 09, 2012

I must've missed where he mentioned Spotify by name, considering you could easily take this as iTunes or Youtube or anything else, but good brand promo on your part.

MDTI Thursday, May 10, 2012

Hi, I am sorry to brag my audio history knowledge like that, but you are a few years late Paul :-)

On that page about the invention of the Theatrophone in 1881 ( ;-) http://100ansderadio.free.fr/HistoiredelaRadio/1880.html )

you can see an advert poster of the Theatrophone company (founded 1889) with the headphones system. It is "streaming" (well, not all all). You called, and you could buy a song, information, theatre.... Failed due to overly expensive pricing (plus it couldn't be downloaded on hard disk, lol, but they didn't even have tapes or records in that time, so, no media (like 120 years later, may be ;-) ).

However, the city of Budapest had a very popular phone News services as soon as 1893. But the wireless "telegraph dates" back to 1896 (Marconi) and led to the Radio as we know it (1st national public radio show on 24 dec 1921, over a 4 miles area).

Tesla is one of them, a great and may be ignored inventor, but not one to receive the credit for being a visionary in the area of the topic. He was one of a long list :-)

mdti Thursday, May 10, 2012

+ Tesla talks about the transmission of "power", which is not yet done and not near to be seen (except for some inductive tablets but it doesn't power your fridge). You can see the tesla expeiments used in many shows nowadays to produce lightning and noisy flashes, but i wouldn't plug my pc or my guitar into one of those things :-) .... concerts where the music is "killing you" are better when it remains a metaphor ;-)

mdti Thursday, May 10, 2012

and as early as the first Data transfer networks (military at first), there was piracy. Beware "spotify" (lol, they don't get to have any credit as they are reinventing the radio ;-)

http://100ansderadio.free.fr/HistoiredelaRadio/1792.html

(free translation)

1794 - The Chappe network (1st telegraphe) included 534 stations of semaphores on nearly 5000 km and covered 29 cities in France. It resembled much to the future radio, telephone, and even internet: Progressive cover of the territory, antennas located on heights, principal and secondary relays, affected personnel specialized with this trade.

- Another characteristic which will be the same later for the radio: the telegraph network was a monopoly of the State, the transmission of private messages was not allowed in spite of some attempts to pirate and private networks. The monopoly over telegraphy will be registered in laws in 1837 but will be softened after 1850.

@Evan_Guerin Thursday, May 10, 2012

That Telsa was a pretty smart guy.

mdti Friday, May 11, 2012

he was !

It's a pity that his name is trendy nowadays.... you get tesla this and tesla that in a romantic beleif to repair the injustices done to this man, but this leads to injustice done to others.But well, the music industry/business has never been about about giving credits or justice, right ? ;-)

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