About Wireless Charging

Wireless charging is a demanding piece of technology. While the advantages are obvious, the concept has yet to see mass popularity and adoption. Let's look at this underperforming technology’s history, a few applications that could be seen down the road, and the current holdups.

The History of Electricity
Wires have been getting in people’s way since electricity was a widely adopted concept. This was one of the problems that inventor and engineer Nikola Tesla spent a significant amount of his life trying to solve. Eventually, he built a device that would leverage magnetic fields to transfer electricity, a device we know today as the Tesla coil.

Alas, some guerilla marketing from his rival Thomas Alva Edison shifted the public opinion away from Tesla’s approach and towards Edison’s. Essentially, Edison took a murderous circus elephant named Topsy that was to be put down and volunteered to do it with Tesla’s electricity. Still, not even the film Edison produced of Topsy being exposed to alternating current (a key component to Tesla’s European-inspired approach) was enough to prevent AC from becoming the standard.

Tesla’s coil was eventually improved upon further. It ultimately found a place in contemporary radar systems. However, even as the technology became more powerful, it was difficult for a market to be found wherein to utilize it. This had the apparent effect of wasting the work done by the people of multiple private-sector businesses, as well as NASA and the U.S. Department of Energy.

The Smartphone
One of the largest barriers to the progress of wireless charging was the fact that, while wireless charging is logically connected to mobile devices, there was a lack of truly mobile devices until recent years. Cellular phones changed that; the device was now meant to be fully portable, or mobile. Other devices quickly followed suit with charging capabilities.

Still, even this revitalization of wireless charging due to mobile phones couldn’t alter one fact: a wire was always going to be required. Even the most recent wireless chargers need to be plugged in before they will work.

What it Means to Actually Be Wireless
In order for any technology that we construct to be marketable, it’s basically required to meet two key criteria: it has to work, and it shouldn’t inflict too much damage to the user.

While this may seem like a low bar, that bar has yet to be met, or even attempted to be met. This lack of trying doesn’t reach quite all the way up the chain, though. Companies like Energous in Silicon Valley, Ossia from Bellevue, Washington, and uBeam from Santa Monica, California, have all worked on technologies that meet the criteria outlined at the opening of this section. As they find more success in developing uncoupled power solutions, a new paradigm arises.

It may not be uncommon one day to see wireless charging spreading to more devices than smartphones. More and more IoT devices, like wearables, as well as medical devices like hearing aids, may one day not require a dedicated charge cycle during which it can’t be utilized. Until then, though, we wait.

Until that day arrives, wireless charging will be futile or underutilized… but what devices would you like to be able to charge wirelessly?