Wifi, its what I used to research and upload this video, it could very well be what you’re using
to watch
this video, unless you’re one of them… ETHERNET USERS. It’s come a long way in the past 30 years, and
the fundamentals for it have been around for even longer so I’m here to ask… how did we get here?
Why am I asking? Because I have nothing better to do. SO lets establish what exactly we’re talking
about. Wifi is a form of wireless network that follows something called the IEEE 802.11 standard which is
something I’ll come back around to when we get up to speed
(https://www.techtarget.com/searchnetworking/answer/Wireless-vs-Wi-Fi-What-is-the-difference-
between-Wi-Fi-and-WLAN) Because wifi is just a type of WLAN which is just a form of wireless network,
the actual technology that made it all possible is the fundamental for really any wireless communication
we have, from Bluetooth, to wifi, to cellular communications. If we’re being technical, the true start is in
1895 when an Italian by the name Guglielmo Marconi built the equipment that was able to transmit a
morse code signal wirelessly from a transmitting unit to a receiving unit and a few years later in 1901
was able to scale up his equipment to send and receive across the Atlantic ocean
(https://www.invent.org/inductees/guglielmo-marconi). This was the beginning of radio
communications and the first example of wireless communication in the world, and with a new major
improvement in 1914, Reginald Fessenden worked with General Electric to transmit voices and music
over long distances, a big step up from simple morse code (https://www.elon.edu/u/imagining/time-
capsule/150-years/back-1890-1930/#:~:text=The%20Development%20of%20Radio,more%20than%20a
%20kilometer%20away). Radio was slowly advanced and developed but our next big step towards wifi
came from the early 1940s by Hedy Lamarr and George Antheil. They created the technology known as
frequency hopping, initially proposed, and rejected as a tool to remotely control torpedoes without
interference by synchronizing rapid and random jumps between frequencies to prevent interference
(https://www.aps.org/publications/apsnews/201106/physicshistory.cfm#:~:text=June%201941%3A
%20Hedy%20Lamarr%20and,patent%20for%20radio%20frequency%20hopping). Radio continued to
advance and in 1942 a Swiss Inventor by the name of Gustav Guanella developed a technique known as
Direct Sequence Spread Spectrum when working for BBC (http://www.edubilla.com/invention/direct-
sequence-spread-spectrum/ ). A lot of different sources I found falsely credit Hedy Lamarr and George
Antheil as being involved in the creation of wifi by their invention of a similar technology, frequency
hopping spread spectrum, but while their frequency hopping rapidly switches radio frequencies, Direct
Sequence spreads information split into bits over several frequency waves and is able to transmit
information at a much faster rate (https://bits-chips.nl/artikel/wavelan-the-tech-that-brought-wi-fi-to-
the-world/ ). The next big jump was was in 1970 when the University of Hawai’i developed ALOHAnet a
wirelessly linked computer system that was able to share information across 4 islands, utilizing some of
the universities greatest minds, and a culmination of nearly 80 years of advancements in radio
communications, including frequency hopping (https://www.eng.hawaii.edu/about/history/alohanet/).
At around the same time we had a young engineer by the name John O’Sullivan working in the field of
radio astronomy, and he was attempting to create an algorithm that could detect the “cosmic noise” of
black holes mixed in with all the other frequencies coming to us from outer space. He was unsuccessful,
but his same algorithm eventually became the basis for his Fast Fourier Transform chip.
