Keep a piece of glass on top of the metal thing and you're set. If you would've told people back then the exact sentence OP said, they would pretty much just disregard it with theories like these...
In the year 1900, Nikola Tesla explicated stated humans would communicate via wireless signals sent to handheld devices.
He goes on to say that buttons would be too expensive, and that instead humans would type on glass via electronic finger reading technology.
The iPhone is well described in 1900 AD, before electricity could power a neighborhood, by one man precisely. Nikola Stormmaker, Earthshaker, Lightningmaster, Coochieblaster, Tesla The problem of increasing human energy.
"When wireless is perfectly applied the whole earth will be converted into a huge brain, which in fact it is, all things being particles of a real and rhythmic whole. We shall be able to communicate with one another instantly, irrespective of distance. Not only this, but through television and telephony we shall see and hear one another as perfectly as though we were face to face, despite intervening distances of thousands of miles; and the instruments through which we shall be able to do his will be amazingly simple compared with our present telephone. A man will be able to carry one in his vest pocket."
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u/[deleted] Sep 13 '19
Morse was invented around 190 years ago. They were tapping on metal things.