Origin
A popular quote attributed to scientist Nikola Tesla describes a vest-pocket sized device built on a global wireless system. This putative statement of Tesla’s has been memed on numerous occasions because it sounds a like a prescient description of modern smartphones, despite the fact that Tesla allegedly said it in 1926:
This quote is correctly attributed to Tesla and to the year 1926. The statement was taken from an interview with Tesla conducted by journalist John B. Kennedy and published in a Jan. 30, 1926, article in
Collier’s magazine. The article highlighted several predictions of Tesla’s, teasing readers with this lede: