Child prodigies throughout history...

A child prodigy is someone who is a master of one or more skills or arts at an early age. One generally accepted heuristic for identifying prodigies is the following: a prodigy is someone who, by the age of roughly 11, displays expert proficiency or a profound grasp of the fundamentals in a field usually only undertaken by adults.
The term wunderkind (from German: Wunder, wonder/miracle + Kind, child, kid) is sometimes used as a synonym for prodigy, particularly in media accounts, although this term is discouraged in scientific literature. Wunderkind is also used more generally of adults who achieve success and notoriety early in their careers, such as Steven Spielberg and Steve Jobs.

There are other individuals who have received historical acclaim for achievements - classed as "amazing" - such as Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (who played the piano a bit), and Pablo Picasso (who actually couldn't really paint or draw things that people would recognise), whereas other did not receive the aclaim that they truly deserved.

It is rare in history to find examples of children (below the age of 11) who have invented items that are so far in advance of current scientific thinking - basically so far "ahead of their time" that to uncover for the first time such an example, which has remained hidden for so long, is quite remarkable.

Leonardo Da Vinci conceived ideas vastly ahead of his own time, notably conceptually inventing the helicopter, a tank, the use of concentrated solar power, the calculator, a rudimentary theory of plate tectonics, the double hull, and many others. Relatively few of his designs were constructed or were feasible during his lifetime, but that has never been deemed to be important - it has been the concept & the ability to think in such a way, that has given him his rightful place in history.

It has long since been thought that the mobile telephone was invented by Motorola in 1975, and the 3G Videophone was not made commercially available until the 1990's.

However, the concept of a mobile phone, incorporating the ability to view TV style pictures was actually conceived in 1970 when yours truly, at the age of 9(!!), brought the concept to the attention of the acclaimed author E. W. Hildick.

The original documentary evidence of this exists today and is reproduced here.

Whilst recognition of this invention has not yet reached the acclaim achieved by Da Vinci - well not yet anyway! - this will shortly be rectified by approaches from the conceptual designer to the mobile telephone companies. More soon.......