*UPDATE (March 17)

It's great to see so much discussion of this technology on social media and the comments thread. There seems to be a lot of interest in the contribution of Nikola Tesla's experiments to the development of this technology. Dr Hall discussed Tesla briefly in her interview with Nick Glass: Nick Glass: Given that Tesla and others realized all this over a Century ago, why's it taken so long? Dr Hall: I don't think they realized exactly what we've done. They were certainly dreaming of wireless power -- there's no question about that. In those days, it was a different problem, because they were really thinking about: how do they get the power from where it's generated to where it's used. And in that case they might have been thinking about Niagara Falls generating the power and getting it to New York City -- and that's a long distance. We're not proposing that the technology we have here at WiTricity would be used for that kind of application. When we came around, power's already being transferred by wires to homes and rooms and things of that nature, so we had a much different problem, which was really just this much shorter distance. As WiTricity have mentioned on their website the Highly Resonant Wireless Power Transfer technology they have developed is also distinct from Tesla's creations -- and, crucially, is efficient enough to be economically viable.