This is so cool. Nikola Tesla, the noted and influential inventor who contributed so much to early research and development of electricity, predicted cell phones . . . in 1909. It may have taken almost a century for his vision to come true, but it did.
Long before others were making similar predictions, Tesla said:
“It will soon be possible, for instance, for a business man in New York to dictate instructions and have them appear in type in London or elsewhere. He will be able to call from his desk and talk with any telephone subscriber in the world. It will only be necessary to carry an inexpensive instrument no bigger than a watch, which will enable its bearer to hear anywhere on sea or land for distances of thousands of miles.”
You can view the whole 1909 New York Times article over at Recombu.
Predicting the future is very dangerous work—you are much more likely to be wrong than to be right—but when somebody really hits the nail on the head, especially so far ahead of time, it’s always a little spooky.