Wi-Fi is a wireless technology that allows you to access the internet. You can be 50-100 meters away from the router and access the network from multiple devices simultaneously, which offers a clear advantage over wired internet. However, Wi-Fi in its original form had a completely different purpose.
There are several versions of the origin of the word “Wi-Fi”:
The progenitor of Wi-Fi was Hedy Lamarr, an American actress and inventor. During World War II, she developed a technology that made torpedoes untraceable or jammable. This was achieved using pseudo-random frequency (transmission channel) hopping. Musician George Antheil helped her implement her idea. Together, they developed “hopping waves.”
Previously, data could only be sent over a single frequency, which could lead to the torpedo's control being hijacked. This system was declassified in 1980, revealing the knowledge that led to the invention of Wi-Fi.
John O'Sullivan, a scientist and radio astronomer from Australia, developed a more familiar Wi-Fi format. During experiments studying a black hole, the need arose for wireless data transmission. Hedy Lamarr's work was recalled, and a semblance of modern Wi-Fi was created. The data transfer rate of this first invention did not exceed 2 Mbps.
But the Wi-Fi, or wireless local area network (WLAN), we know today was developed by a group of engineers at NCR Corporation / AT&T in the early 1990s. In 1997, the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) published a wireless networking standard known as 802.11. IEEE is an acronym for the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers.
The first commercially available Wi-Fi product was introduced in 1999 by Lucent Technologies (now Alcatel-Lucent). Since then, Wi-Fi has become a widely adopted technology, used for wireless internet access and data transmission in local area networks.
Wi-Fi connectivity is constantly evolving. Seven generations of Wi-Fi have already been released. The latest generation of Wi-Fi delivers maximum speed and functionality for the most demanding users.
