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25 Years Ago, a Meeting Spawned Wi-Fi

Posted by Soulskill on from the necessity-is-a-mother dept.

alphadogg writes: It was retail remodeling that spurred NCR, a venerable cash-register company, to find out how it could use newly opened frequencies to link registers and mainframes without wires. Its customers wanted to stop drilling new holes in their marble floors for cabling every time they changed a store layout. In 1985, the U.S. Federal Communications Commission voted to leave large blocks of spectrum unlicensed and let vendors build any kind of network they wanted as long as they didn't keep anyone else from using the frequencies. NCR jumped at the chance to develop a wireless LAN, something that didn't exist at the time, according to Vic Hayes, a former engineer at the company who's been called the Father of Wi-Fi.

75 comments

  1. Why was my comment deleted? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    I worked for NCR at that time.

    1. Re:Why was my comment deleted? by laosland · · Score: 1

      I started working there in 93 at the CAE facility. In fact I worked there again in 2000 as well, although in a different capacity.

  2. Also in the 1960s by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    At DARPA, they invented The Cloud!!!

  3. Histroy by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    Here is some history about WiFi

    http://www.qsl.net/k/kb9mwr/projects/wireless/plan.html

    Says nothing about a cash register company...

    1. Re:Histroy by ciscoguy01 · · Score: 1

      Yeah, I think it was mostly TAPR in Tucson, Tucson Amateur Packet Radio that blazed those trails.
      I'd be interested in hearing insights.

      --
      .
    2. Re: Histroy by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Tapr did (mostly Vhf) packet radio, after university of Hawaii started it in the early 1970s

  4. Don't say that this side of the Pacific... by Goonie · · Score: 1, Flamebait


    Every Australian politician and science bureaucrat knows that Australian radio astronomers invented Wi-Fi...
    </sarcasm>

    --

    Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo
    --Andy Finkel (J. Klass?)
    1. Re:Don't say that this side of the Pacific... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Wow! Are things that bad now that we have to tag everything so we don't get sued, arrested, shot, or worse?

      Oh, and I bet the Brits were really first! They invented everything first, except the indoor toilet...

    2. Re:Don't say that this side of the Pacific... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      US patent 5487069, "Wireless LAN".

    3. Re:Don't say that this side of the Pacific... by PolygamousRanchKid+ · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Yes, CISRO has the patent . . . and charges outrageous fees to companies that use the technology. In turn, foreign software companies charge even more outrageous fees for software sold in Australia . . . because it needs to be "translated" from "English" into "Australian".

      Who wins? Certainly not you normal Aussies . . .

      --
      Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
    4. Re:Don't say that this side of the Pacific... by Ozoner · · Score: 5, Informative

      As always there were many who help develop a given technology.

      Many companies marketed ISB band links, but it was Lucent (owned by NCR) who developed the WaveLan system which evolved into the various WiFi standards we have today.

      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

      But it was the Australian CSIRO who patented the modulation scheme (FFT with multiple carriers) that was the foundation technology for WiFi.

      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

    5. Re:Don't say that this side of the Pacific... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Heh, software companies overcharging Australians has nothing to do with CSIRO patents.

    6. Re:Don't say that this side of the Pacific... by digitalchinky · · Score: 2

      Which is unfortunate because there's nothing special about WiFi, satellite networks have been using the same (and vastly more complex) modulation methods for decades.

    7. Re:Don't say that this side of the Pacific... by Gadget_Guy · · Score: 4, Informative

      Which is unfortunate because there's nothing special about WiFi, satellite networks have been using the same (and vastly more complex) modulation methods for decades.

      Yes, it was the CSIRO satellite technology that they adapted for WiFi. And it was special because nobody else at the time could solve the problem. People like to simplify the issues by say that the CSIRO claim that they invented WiFi, but they have never said that.

    8. Re:Don't say that this side of the Pacific... by msauve · · Score: 2, Informative

      "it was the Australian CSIRO who patented the modulation scheme (FFT with multiple carriers) that was the foundation technology for WiFi."

      802.11 products existed for years before CSIRO patented OFDM, which influenced the WLAN world when 802.11a came along. But it was the completely different 802.11b, which CSIRO had absolutely nothing to do with, which actually made wireless popular. Also, OFDM existed for decades before CSIRO patent-trolled it.

      CISRO has no valid claim to creating 802.11. Finally, "Wi-Fi" isn't a technology, it's an industry group's marketing term.

      --
      "National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
    9. Re:Don't say that this side of the Pacific... by DRJlaw · · Score: 1

      Finally, "Wi-Fi" isn't a technology, it's an industry group's marketing term.

      Therefore 802.11 isn't a technology. It's an industry group's technical specification. Be warned, there is always someone who can pick finer nits than you.

      Yet what's in a name? That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet, and that which we call Wi-Fi would still be used to wirelessly transmit donkey porn.

    10. Re:Don't say that this side of the Pacific... by msauve · · Score: 1

      802.11 is a normative technical specification. Wi-Fi is a marketing term, like "Made for iPod," originally intended as an informative indication of compatibility.

      --
      "National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
    11. Re:Don't say that this side of the Pacific... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Typical moronic comment - CSIRO a patent troll.

      What is wrong with people. CSIRO researched, developed, implemented and patented the technology that was then used by other companies.

      CSIRO have never claimed to create 802.11, the garbage that it was.

    12. Re:Don't say that this side of the Pacific... by currently_awake · · Score: 1

      How long does this patent last, anyway?

    13. Re:Don't say that this side of the Pacific... by DRJlaw · · Score: 1

      802.11 is a normative technical specification.

      You added a wholly unnecessary "normative" to what I've said. IEEE doesn't even use the term. Care to identify a non-normative IEEE technical specification?

      Wi-Fi is a marketing term, like "Made for iPod," originally intended as an informative indication of compatibility.

      By marketing term, you mean "brand name. Now it has become the name used for the technology by 95+% of people who refer to the technology.

      Particularly in things relating to language, the majority rules. Deal with it.

    14. Re:Don't say that this side of the Pacific... by msauve · · Score: 1

      "brand name"

      Nope. It's a registered trademark. You're failing at your attempts to be pedantic.

      --
      "National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
    15. Re:Don't say that this side of the Pacific... by msauve · · Score: 1

      "CSIRO researched, developed, implemented and patented the technology that was then used by other companies"

      All true. Also true that what they "researched, developed, and implemented" already existed and was nothing new.

      --
      "National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
    16. Re:Don't say that this side of the Pacific... by DRJlaw · · Score: 1

      Registered trademarks are a subset of brand names. Don't tell me my own business, boy.

    17. Re:Don't say that this side of the Pacific... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      What was researched, developed and implemented as a consequence was novel but not necessarily unknown before. It was an efficient and low cost FFT IC that didn't exist at the time as Fourier transform technology was implemented on general computers. Certainly, it's true that Fourier transformation was used in other radio signal processing but at the time, people were not applying this technique to wireless local network links; teams around the world dedicated to wireless local network links couldn't figure out how to deal with multipath signals and therefore they couldn't data rates faster than one or two megabits/s. It was the CSIRO team who applied this technique and developed a physical module that would be called a "wifi chip".

    18. Re:Don't say that this side of the Pacific... by msauve · · Score: 1

      So you're incompetent at your business. OK.

      WI-FI - "The certification mark, as intended to be used, will certify that goods manufactured by authorized persons comply with interoperability standards." Straight from TESS. Nothing to do with branding. In fact, the Wi-Fi mark is purposely intended to be used by multiple brands, which is easily seen in practice.

      Furthermore, as a trademark, it is improper to use it as a generic reference to 802.11, which goes to my original point.

      --
      "National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
    19. Re:Don't say that this side of the Pacific... by DRJlaw · · Score: 1

      So you're incompetent at your business. OK.

      Or your research skills simply suck.

      "Our brands", straight from the horse's mouth.

      And as a trademark, it's perfectly proper to use it as a generic reference to 802.11 so long as the uses are licensed and the term is not used to refer to wireless communications generally. Again, don't tell me my own business, boy.

    20. Re:Don't say that this side of the Pacific... by msauve · · Score: 1

      Thanks for proving my point - "our brands" is clear proof that "Wi-Fi" is not itself a brand, but a trademark used by multiple brands.

      "generic reference to 802.11 so long as the uses are licensed"

      Generic != specific, fool.

      If you are in fact a lawyer, as implied by your username, I'm reminded of Saul Goodman. But I suspect you're actually a first year law student, so get prepared to flunk out - you're not as good as you think, and certainly incapable of coherent, consistent argument.

      You bore me. You're no good at logic, or even trolling. Buh-bye.

      --
      "National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
    21. Re:Don't say that this side of the Pacific... by arglebargle_xiv · · Score: 1

      because it needs to be "translated" from "English" into "Australian".

      Fair dinkum cobber, those dunny rats are charging us prices that aren't within cooee of the US ones, it's all exy as, it's enough to make you want to hit the turps!

    22. Re:Don't say that this side of the Pacific... by DRJlaw · · Score: 1

      Thanks for proving my point - "our brands" is clear proof that "Wi-Fi" is not itself a brand, but a trademark used by multiple brands.

      Or proof that you don't understand grammar and the English language. Our = The Wi-Fi Alliance, not others. Brands = brands plural, such as the very first one listed, which is "Wi-Fi," in the presented list or registered and unregistered word marks. Where are these other "multiple brands" on the page, eh?

      But I suspect you're actually a first year law student, so get prepared to flunk out - you're not as good as you think, and certainly incapable of coherent, consistent argument.

      15 year of practice in BigLaw, but who's counting...

      You're no good at logic, or even trolling. Buh-bye.

      It was clear you'd never be convinced, if only because you'd reject any evidence to the contrary including the Wi-Fi Alliance's own materials. A third party reader, on the other hand...

      Loser.

  5. Your comment was moved by sethstorm · · Score: 2

    Your comment hasn't disappeared, it just got an offer to move to Atlanta.

    --
    Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
  6. Considering that IBM's origins were from NCR by sethstorm · · Score: 1

    NCR was drawn to open standards by years of frustration with IBM's control of computing through its mainframes, Hayes said. Like other vendors at the time, NCR constantly had to adapt its products to work with whatever IBM built. "We were tired of being a follower," he said.

    I'm both surprised and not surprised at hearing this statement. I'm surprised since they have followed IBM's path for hardware design, but not surprised since NCR was ahead of IBM for moving closer to services on commodity hardware (courtesy of AT&T's purchase, evisceration, and spin-off of the company).

    --
    Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
  7. Spread Spectrum by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Once I became aware of Direct Sequence Spread Spectrum technology ~1994, I knew WIFI was inevitable.

  8. Impossible by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    and not true. As we all know, only space provides the necessary motivation to invent technologies.

    1. Re:Impossible by Hognoxious · · Score: 1

      What about war?

      --
      Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
  9. What came first? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Microwave ovens at 2.4 GHz or Wifi? Need to know who to blame!

  10. is the math off on this or is it just me by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    umm 25 years ago it was 1990 not 1985 tho the decision to keep the frequencies open may have been made in 85 that would make it 30 years ago not the 25 stated

    1. Re:is the math off on this or is it just me by 91degrees · · Score: 1

      1985 was when the frequencies were made available (or when the vote was taken). 1990 is when people decided to do something with it.

  11. Not quite by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    ... a wireless LAN, something that didn't exist at the time ...

    Maybe not a commercial product, but a wireless LAN was built in 1968, making it among the first networks: Google ALOHAnet.

  12. IT IS RADIO by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Wireless is Marconi playing the mamba.

    Video did not kill the WIRELESS star.

    1. Re:IT IS RADIO by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      In Soviet Russia, city builds rock and roll on YOU!

  13. WiFi is STILL a bad idea for a POS system by leonbev · · Score: 2

    It's amusing that 25 years later, you would be crazy to set up a POS system with just a WiFi network connection.

    Even if you're not worried about wireless reliability, security, and interference issues (and you should be!), it will still never process credit card transactions as fast as a Gigabit wired connection.

    1. Re: WiFi is STILL a bad idea for a POS system by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Interesting

      My company has over 7,000 retail outlets. We have no need for anything over 128kbps at POS. a Cc authorisation takes less than a second, 99% of that is the time it takes our partner to respond to the request. Gigabit does nothing for us.

    2. Re:WiFi is STILL a bad idea for a POS system by fullgandoo · · Score: 4, Interesting

      It's amusing that 25 years later, you would be crazy to set up a POS system with just a WiFi network connection.

      Even if you're not worried about wireless reliability, security, and interference issues (and you should be!), it will still never process credit card transactions as fast as a Gigabit wired connection.

      That is a very uninformed comment.

      POS terminals don't stream high definition videos. They transmit small financial transactions that are hardly a few kilo bytes, even with the EMV chip cards of today. Until the recent past with magnetic stripe transactions, the data used to be only a few hundred bytes.

      The advantage of a Gigabit wired connection over a 10Mbps wireless network is primarily of bandwidth. The wired network might offer a little less latency, but nothing that would make a measurable difference in transaction processing speed in this target environment.

      Furthermore, the POS terminals would only use the wireless network within the store to send transactions to a local server. From there on, the transactions are sent to the issuer bank over a variety of inter-connected networks and servers, generally speaking. So the local wireless network is only involved in fraction of the overall lifecycle of a financial transactions.

    3. Re:WiFi is STILL a bad idea for a POS system by drinkypoo · · Score: 2

      Even if you're not worried about wireless reliability, security, and interference issues (and you should be!), it will still never process credit card transactions as fast as a Gigabit wired connection.

      Guess what? You can do that with a POTS modem. That's how every single retailer with just one or two stations did it until just recently, like the last couple of years. Now most people are using an internet connection, but it's not because of bandwidth. It's because of convenience. Every day people successfully make sales via iPhones, Android tablets, etc etc, and almost all of it is wireless. If they are smart, they have cell data as a backup. The devices will automagically detect if the wifi is down and fail over.

      --
      "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
    4. Re:WiFi is STILL a bad idea for a POS system by Dr.+Evil · · Score: 1

      Problem: Dropped frames on gigabit.

      Solution: check switch ports, check wiring.

      Problem: Dropped frames on wifi.

      Solution: retransmit and see if things time out.

      You're right that the data is only a few hundred bytes. An industrial rs232 connection would be better than wifi.

    5. Re:WiFi is STILL a bad idea for a POS system by Solandri · · Score: 2

      Even if you're not worried about wireless reliability, security, and interference issues (and you should be!), it will still never process credit card transactions as fast as a Gigabit wired connection.

      As I said last time this came up, current trends in wifi technology are moving in a direction which overcomes Shannon's law. The theorem assumes a shared communications channel. That is, if you transmit your signal at -45 dB, then everyone else using that same channel sees -45 dB of noise. Your signal is noise to them, and interferes with their signal.

      Beam-forming and MIMO (multipath) techniques being used in 802.11ac subvert this assumption. For a visual analogy, it's why you can see your smartphone display in the sunlight, even though the sun is much, much brighter (its signal strength at optical wavelengths far exceeds your phone display's signal strength). Although the sun is very bright, the light it gives off is highly directional. By using sensors (the lens structure of your eyes) which can "tune in" to light coming from a narrow angle, you can basically filter out all that sunlight noise and pull out a clear signal from the smartphone display.

      So the way wifi is progressing, you're going to be able to transmit almost as if you were the only person transmitting on those wavelengths. The only time you'll get interference from other wifi transmissions is if a radio source is directly in line with your source. And even that can be overcome with multipath techniques (similar to how a wide-aperture camera lens can selectively blur the background while keeping the subject in sharp focus).

      Speed, bandwidth, interference, and reliability won't be the issue. Security will be.

    6. Re:WiFi is STILL a bad idea for a POS system by ericloewe · · Score: 2

      Card terminals that don't attach to a larger POS system (in other words, they're not integrated into the POS and work completely independently) almost exclusively connect via GPRS these days. Card transactions use a trivial amount of bandwidth and GbE levels of latency are not required.

    7. Re: WiFi is STILL a bad idea for a POS system by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      dB? dBm?

  14. ALOHAnet by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    Hello, wasn't ALOHAnet the basis for WI-FI? Invented in 1968 and operational in 1971? Anyone?

    1. Re:ALOHAnet by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Hello

      Hi!

      wasn't ALOHAnet the basis for WI-FI? Invented in 1968 and operational in 1971?

      No.

      Anyone?

      Yes?

    2. Re:ALOHAnet by Osgeld · · Score: 1

      sending packets over radio is not the entire process of wifi

    3. Re: ALOHAnet by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Well, if you read what Wikipedia says about Wi-Fi under the history section:

      In 1971, ALOHAnet connected the Hawaiian Islands with a UHF wireless packet network. ALOHAnet and the ALOHA protocol were early forerunners to Ethernet, and later the IEEE 802.11 protocols, respectively.

      https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wi-Fi

    4. Re:ALOHAnet by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      ALOHA is still used for "channel access" by some frequency hopper modems. I think it was used in early Ethernet as well.

    5. Re:ALOHAnet by SuiteSisterMary · · Score: 1

      Packet radio is to WLAN what telegraph is to the modern Internet.

      --
      Vintage computer games and RPG books available. Email me if you're interested.
  15. No, more relevant to NCR than that by sethstorm · · Score: 2

    When AT&T bought NCR in the 1990s, they offered to move lots of people over to Atlanta. Since more people accepted than they could hire, that resulted in people moving hundreds of miles to receive a pink slip.

    In 2008-2009, the World Headquarters was moved from Dayton, Ohio to an Atlanta suburb called Duluth - due to political incompetence at the city and state levels in Ohio. NCR did about everything they could to make a case for Dayton, but they couldn't get a response.

    If you want to be politically incorrect, feel free to blame Rhine "but they'll never move!" McLin, part of a Dayton family thriving more on diversity status than competence. Not only did the McLins let 125 years of Fortune 500 history walk out the door, their family blocked economic development in the 1980s and one of them mishandled human remains of over 50 people. Race did not save them from justice, thankfully.

    --
    Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
  16. 300 baud much faster than 9600 for credit cards by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Gigabit? Back when credit card terminals ran on dialup, it was MUCH faster to use 300 baud than 9600. A credit card transaction's about 100 bytes, and the 300 baud modem syncs up in 3 seconds and transmits the data in 3 more, vs. taking 45 seconds to sync 9600 baud and transmitting in 0.1 seconds. If you're not waiting for modems any more, because you're online with WiFi, the difference between 0.1 seconds and 0.000000001 seconds is still less than it takes the customer to swipe their card or find the pen-like-thing to press "Is this credit or debit" or "Is $45.63 ok?"

  17. But... But... Hedy Lamarr invented WiFi!!! by jsrjsr · · Score: 1

    According to CBS News.

  18. John Sullivan is what the patents and academic pap by zeppi · · Score: 1

    John Oâ(TM)Sullivan is an Australian electrical engineer whose work in the application of Fourier transforms to radio astronomy led to his invention with colleagues of a core technology that made wireless LAN fast and reliable. This technology was patented by CSIRO and forms part of the 802.11a, 802.11g and 802.11n Wi-Fi standards and thus John O'Sullivan is also credited with the invention of WIFI. CSIRO is the Australian Government science research organization. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

  19. Re:John Sullivan is what the patents and academic by tlhIngan · · Score: 1

    John OÃ(TM)Sullivan is an Australian electrical engineer whose work in the application of Fourier transforms to radio astronomy led to his invention with colleagues of a core technology that made wireless LAN fast and reliable. This technology was patented by CSIRO and forms part of the 802.11a, 802.11g and 802.11n Wi-Fi standards and thus John O'Sullivan is also credited with the invention of WIFI. CSIRO is the Australian Government science research organization. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

    That ignores the fact that 802.11 and 802.11b actually exist without CSIRO's patents.

    When what we knew as WiFi came out, or rather, 802.11b, a few data rates were defined - 1 and 2 Mbps using basic frequency hopping. This, not entirely coincidentally, is what the Lucent WaveLAN units worked at (prior to standardization).

    802.11b added the 4/5/11Mbps using what we effectively call CDMA coding now, using a high-bitrate PRNG chip code. 802.11a added 54Mbps, 802.11g did the same on 2.4GHz using ODFM, which is the technology patented by CSIRO.

    But 802.11b basically was what brought the WiFi revolution around no doubt helped by Apple and its consumer price friendly Airport base stations and built-in WiFI chipsets.

    It's also why disabling stuff like long preambles and setting your AP to "G-only" mode do little - because the 802.11 header on 2.4GHz must be decodable to legacy clients. Even if they're not on the same network - just the same frequency. Otherwise your chances of collision increase greatly. So if the frequency is mostly unused, G-only and short preambles (and fast headers) work great, but the moment there's a legacy 802.11b or slower device in range, it steps down and re-enables the legacy stuff. This is especially so since the legacy client can occupy the frequency a really long time, so being able to lock the frequency (which was always in the standard - a virtual carrier) means it squelches other clients who may not be able to detect the data portion of the packet.