Marin Solja?i? couldn't sleep. The problem was his wife's Nokia cell phone. The tyrannical device beeped on the bedside table when it needed to be plugged in. It could not be disabled.

Instead of taking a hammer to the phone, Solja?i? marveled at the fact that this device, and billions of others like it, was sitting a few feet away from all the electricity it could ever need. Why couldn't it receive power wirelessly, just as laptops get Wi-Fi?

A physics professor, Solja?i? dug into the problem and learned that if you could get two magnetic fields to resonate — to sing the same note, in effect — they could transfer an electric current. With two large magnetic coils, he found a way to throw 60 watts across a room, powering a lightbulb. MIT, his employer, quickly patented the technology and encouraged Solja?i?to start a company.

WiTricity's 15 employees are hard at work proving that Solja?i?'s magnetic coils can power almost any electrical device. Most of the company's potential customers have one major question: safety.

“There's a real perceptual problem,” says CEO Eric Giler. “People think we're putting electricity in the air, and that's called lightning, and they know to stay away from that.”

via Next Little Thing 2010 – Electricity without wires (1) – Small Business.