TECH AHEAD OF ITS TIME

Some of today's technology goes back much further than you'd imagine

- EMMA DAVIES

Much of the technology we take for granted today seems like it must have been a fairly recent invention. Science and technology progress rapidly, after all. It's only been 36 years since Tim Berners-Lee first proposed the World Wide Web, and already life without it is unimaginable. But scratch beneath the surface and you'll find that there are plenty of seemingly modern creations that reared their heads many years ago — albeit in less successful forms. Sometimes, it appears, a piece of technology comes along before consumers are ready for it. Here are a few of the surprising forerunners of the technology many of us use every day...

FIRST WIRELESS PHONE

Not content with creating the telephone in 1876, Scottish inventor Alexander Graham Bell followed up his seminal invention in 1880 with a wireless version, the ‘photophone’. This used a beam of light to transmit speech, rather than the microwaves used by the mobile phones of today. The speaker’s voice was projected against a flexible mirror. The sound waves caused the mirror to alternate between being convex and concave, scattering the light. The receiver had a selenium cell that converted the light hitting it back into sound waves. Though the device could broadcast over distances of up to 213 metres, it was prone to interference.