The groundwork may have been laid by Nikola Tesla for wireless transmission of electricity, but Intel is putting it to good use through a new effort to charge a laptop in much the same manner.

At the Intel Developer's Forum in San Francisco this week, a demonstration was shown where researchers were able to power a 60 watt light bulb from an energy source that was three feet away. About 75% of the power from the source was retained.

Researchers based their tests on work done by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology last year. In the simplest terms, the transmission of electricity occurs through the use of two resonant objects of the same frequency. This allows the transmitted power to react strongest with those objects.

They were able to transmit the power at a distance of seven feet, although apparently with less efficiency. Similar technologies, known as power induction, are already fairly widely used. A current example would be Philips' Sonicare electric toothbrushes, which don't have contacts but which draw their power charge through induction, just by sitting in contact with the base.

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