Counterclockwise: the wireless charging format wars

Last week we talked about obsolete cable connectors and at the end suggested that cables may go extinct altogether because of wireless data transfer and charging. This week we wanted to look into the history of the latter - wireless charging. Sometimes called inductive charging (as induction is what makes it work), this is hardly new technology - the Tesla Tower was built in 1901. Tesla believed wireless power transfer is the future. It took a while for the idea to catch on in practice, most makers were content with using exposed pogo pins to achieve much the same effect - put the...