Hasta La Gadget!

It turns out Nikola Tesla, the famed electric engineer, first predicted the existence of the BlackBerry over 100 years ago.

As the UK-based Telegraph reports, Tesla, who died in 1943, made a prediction about a portable messaging service in Popular Mechanics magazine in 1909. He wrote in the magazine that one day it would be possible to transmit wireless messages all over the world, and that wireless was the only way the use of electricity could truly thrive.

Tesla “imagined such a hand-held device would be simple to use and that, one day, everyone in the world would communicate to friends using it,” and that this “would usher in a new era of technology.”

The prediction was part of a magazine presentation titled “108 Years of Futurism,” made by Seth Porges, the magazine’s current technology editor, to industry executives in New York, the report said. (Popular Mechanics launched 108 years ago in 1902.)

Tesla’s name lives on in Tesla Motors, the electric car company. Meanwhile, we’re still waiting for flying cars and personal helicopters. Can someone get on that already?