Csiro invented wifi

[merser]

Been a reader of Hackaday for more than 15 years but here's a cropper of an article. The author Lewin Day poors sh#t on the claim our Csiro developed and patented wifi. Whats the go I always accepted the story. Has he got any basis to make such a claim.

[merser]

https://hackaday.com/2024/08/20/australia-didnt-invent-wifi-despite-what-youve-heard/
Link to article

[soldar]

It seems to me that Wi-Fi was developed by many companies using technologies protected by many different patents and it makes no sense to say one single company or country invented it.

Most modern inventions are like that.

[brucehoult]

The article seems fair.

After all, we all know that Hedy Lamarr invented WIFI.

[Andy Chee]

Might as well claim that Marconi invented WiFi

[Tation]

Might as well claim that Marconi invented WiFi

Sorry, but Marconi didn't invent WiFi.

Tesla did 

[nctnico]

Nope, Wifi was invented in the Netherlands. First known as WaveLAN: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WaveLAN

[ebastler]

Might as well claim that Marconi invented WiFi

Come on, you know it was Tesla! 

[Marco]

OFDM was a result of DACs/ADCs developing, everyone was going to reinvent it around the same time ... but someone had to win the lottery.

PS. no I see that was invented in the 80s, what fundamental concept does CSIRO claim to have invented exactly? Was it just one of those patents of "... but on the internet?" (Or in this case, ethernet.)

[coppice]

OFDM was a result of DACs/ADCs developing, everyone was going to reinvent it around the same time ... but someone had to win the lottery.

PS. no I see that was invented in the 80s, what fundamental concept does CSIRO claim to have invented exactly?

The comms book I studied in 1974 documented OFDM. It didn't call it that, and it said it seemed unlikely it would ever be commercially feasible. It was the book's hypothesis for "could you get really close to Shannon, if money were no object?".

What kept OFDM out of the 3G cellular standards seems to have been mostly that everyone could see how to make OFDM work for continuous operation, like broadcast TV (it went into the digital TV and ADSL standards in the 90s), but not for bursty operation, like a multiple access system (e.g. cellular or Wi-Fi) needs. That took a bit more thinking. I assume people like CSIRO have claims on solutions to the bursty problem.

[SteveThackery]

Might as well claim that Marconi invented WiFi

Come on, you know it was Tesla! 

Tesla was Dutch.  Didn't you know?

[SteveThackery]

After all, we all know that Hedy Lamarr invented WIFI.

We can joke about Wi-Fi, but in fairness she did invent the idea of frequency hopping spread spectrum as a means of avoiding both jamming and interception.

Her male friend in America was a musician, and her insight occurred when she was watching a player piano (pianola). She saw the patterns on the paper reel as it rolled upwards, observing that the horizontal position of the holes represented the frequency of the played note. Her inventive leap was realising that the notes could represent radio frequencies rather than sound frequencies, and that all it would need is for the receiver to have the same paper reel, synchronised, such that the transmitter and receiver would both be tuned to the same frequency at the same time. The "tune" could be random and never repeating, making it impossible to predict.

She was obviously extremely smart, but also perhaps her mind was already prepared because her husband in Austria headed an armaments factory. Also, at the time it was difficult for a woman to be recognised as intellectually equipped to come up with inventions like this, so at first it was assumed her friend should take most of the credit. Later, she did get a patent with her name on it. It was probably fair to recognise both of them as co-inventors.

[SiliconWizard]

Might as well claim that Marconi invented WiFi

Come on, you know it was Tesla! 

Tesla was Dutch.  Didn't you know?

Nope, he was of serbian origin, but had the austrian and US citizenships. Nothing much dutch that I can tell?

[SteveThackery]

Tesla was Dutch.  Didn't you know?

Nope, he was of serbian origin, but had the austrian and US citizenships. Nothing much dutch that I can tell?

It was just a little joke. A response to this from @nctnico:

"Nope, Wifi was invented in the Netherlands. First known as WaveLAN: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WaveLAN".

Y' know, so both "by Tesla" and "in the Netherlands" could be true.

[SiliconWizard]

Maybe they meant "Holland".

[coppice]

After all, we all know that Hedy Lamarr invented WIFI.

We can joke about Wi-Fi, but in fairness she did invent the idea of frequency hopping spread spectrum as a means of avoiding both jamming and interception.

Her male friend in America was a musician, and her insight occurred when she was watching a player piano (pianola). She saw the patterns on the paper reel as it rolled upwards, observing that the horizontal position of the holes represented the frequency of the played note. Her inventive leap was realising that the notes could represent radio frequencies rather than sound frequencies, and that all it would need is for the receiver to have the same paper reel, synchronised, such that the transmitter and receiver would both be tuned to the same frequency at the same time. The "tune" could be random and never repeating, making it impossible to predict.

She was obviously extremely smart, but also perhaps her mind was already prepared because her husband in Austria headed an armaments factory. Also, at the time it was difficult for a woman to be recognised as intellectually equipped to come up with inventions like this, so at first it was assumed her friend should take most of the credit. Later, she did get a patent with her name on it. It was probably fair to recognise both of them as co-inventors.

I had an interesting experience many years ago. I moved companies, and a year later was recruited back. Key people knew what I could do, and wanted me back. However, there were interesting tales going around the company when I returned. I had got the blame for things I had never even heard of, let alone been involved in. Things I was proud of as key successes somehow had someone else's name attached to them. Be very sceptical of who is being lauded or blamed for things. My experience was after one year. I assume as memories fade, and distortions will be countered less, the distortions get even worse.

[SteveThackery]

Be very sceptical of who is being lauded or blamed for things. My experience was after one year. I assume as memories fade, and distortions will be countered less, the distortions get even worse.

OK, but the history around Lamarr is not at all controversial. Are you applying that scepticism just to Hedy Lamarr, or all inventors?

One of the things that seems clear is that many inventions, and many scientific discoveries, almost seem like their time has come and if one person hadn't invented it, someone else would have the next day. That probably would not apply to frequency hopping spread spectrum because it wasn't adopted by the US Navy (for whom it was intended) and basically went forgotten for twenty years or more. So it seems fair to say it was an invention well ahead of its time.

[coppice]

Be very sceptical of who is being lauded or blamed for things. My experience was after one year. I assume as memories fade, and distortions will be countered less, the distortions get even worse.

OK, but the history around Lamarr is not at all controversial. Are you applying that scepticism just to Hedy Lamarr, or all inventors?

One of the things that seems clear is that many inventions, and many scientific discoveries, almost seem like their time has come and if one person hadn't invented it, someone else would have the next day. That probably would not apply to frequency hopping spread spectrum because it wasn't adopted by the US Navy (for whom it was intended) and basically went forgotten for twenty years or more. So it seems fair to say it was an invention well ahead of its time.

Express scepticism to any attribution. Who had the real interesting ideas? Who actually did the grunt work? Who wrote the paper? WTF did that name get on the patent application?

A huge number of brilliant steps forward were so ahead of their time nobody really thought they were feasible, or really grasped them for decades, until the original idea was lost. The original people sometimes get recognition long after the rediscovery. Like people finding that sampling was moderately well understood by multiple mathematicians and statisticians, like Whittaker and Kotelnikov, decades before it had high relevance in electronics. Problems there are unfortunate, but must be expected. That is quite different from the wrong people getting their names on work.

[brucehoult]

After all, we all know that Hedy Lamarr invented WIFI.

We can joke about Wi-Fi, but in fairness she did invent the idea of frequency hopping spread spectrum as a means of avoiding both jamming and interception.

It was a semi-serious suggestion, much more so than the later-mentioned Marconi or Tesla. Lamarr's work was recognised in an award by the Electronic Frontier Foundation in 1997, the year the first 2 Mbps 802.11 products went on sale.

https://web.archive.org/web/20071016063043/http://w2.eff.org/awards/pioneer/1997.php

Lamarr died January 19, 2000, six months after Steve Jobs introduced the iBook with WIFI on 21 July 1999. Jobs introduced the "Airport" WIFI base station as the "one more thing" announcement in the same keynote.

There were a few 802.11 2 Mbps products in 1997, but they were expensive and rare. The original 2 Mbps cards in 1997 cost around $1000. Apple was one of the first to have 11 Mbps 802.11b products and I'm pretty sure the actual first to have them in a low end consumer product -- the first iBook ($1499), not the "professional" MacBook or desktops. Lucent WaveLAN 802.11b cards cost $300 or $400. Apple's optional Airport card for the original iBook sold for $99.  Apple's Airport base station sold for $299. Lucent/Orinoco and 3COM base stations were around $400 and Cisco $1000.

I seriously think Hedy has as much claim to have invented WIFI as CSIRO do, if not more. Both had key ideas and got patents. Neither commercialised anything. Neither had anything to do with the actual standard or products that eventually went on sale.

[coppice]

After all, we all know that Hedy Lamarr invented WIFI.

We can joke about Wi-Fi, but in fairness she did invent the idea of frequency hopping spread spectrum as a means of avoiding both jamming and interception.

It was a semi-serious suggestion, much more so than the later-mentioned Marconi or Tesla. Lamarr's work was recognised in an award by the Electronic Frontier Foundation in 1997, the year the first 2 Mbps 802.11 products went on sale.

https://web.archive.org/web/20071016063043/http://w2.eff.org/awards/pioneer/1997.php

Lamarr died January 19, 2000, six months after Steve Jobs introduced the iBook with WIFI on 21 July 1999. Jobs introduced the "Airport" WIFI base station as the "one more thing" announcement in the same keynote.

There were a few 802.11 2 Mbps products in 1997, but they were expensive and rare. The original 2 Mbps cards in 1997 cost around $1000. Apple was one of the first to have 11 Mbps 802.11b products and I'm pretty sure the actual first to have them in a low end consumer product -- the first iBook ($1499), not the "professional" MacBook or desktops. Lucent WaveLAN 802.11b cards cost $300 or $400. Apple's optional Airport card for the original iBook sold for $99.  Apple's Airport base station sold for $299. Lucent/Orinoco and 3COM base stations were around $400 and Cisco $1000.

I seriously think Hedy has as much claim to have invented WIFI as CSIRO do, if not more. Both had key ideas and got patents. Neither commercialised anything. Neither had anything to do with the actual standard or products that eventually went on sale.

Do modern wi-fi chips still support those old spread spectrum modes, for backward compatibility, or are they pure OFDM now? Interestingly, the 5GHz bands have always been exclusively OFDM. Spread spectrum was only used at 2.4GHz.

[SteveThackery]

I seriously think Hedy has as much claim to have invented WIFI as CSIRO do, if not more. Both had key ideas and got patents. Neither commercialised anything. Neither had anything to do with the actual standard or products that eventually went on sale.

I don't think Lamarr could possibly be described as the (or 'an') inventor of WiFi. She invented frequency hopping spread spectrum. That is maybe 5% of WiFi - there's so much more to it.

[SteveThackery]

Do modern wi-fi chips still support those old spread spectrum modes, for backward compatibility, or are they pure OFDM now? Interestingly, the 5GHz bands have always been exclusively OFDM. Spread spectrum was only used at 2.4GHz.

Hey, @coppice, do you have time to expand on the differences? I thought OFDM was one example of spread spectrum, but I'm no expert and keen to learn.

[coppice]

I seriously think Hedy has as much claim to have invented WIFI as CSIRO do, if not more. Both had key ideas and got patents. Neither commercialised anything. Neither had anything to do with the actual standard or products that eventually went on sale.

I don't think Lamarr could possibly be described as the (or 'an') inventor of WiFi. She invented frequency hopping spread spectrum. That is maybe 5% of WiFi - there's so much more to it.

Its now 0% of wi-fi. I wonder how many things are left using spread spectrum? More importantly, does it have any interesting qualities that would make people use it for anything new going forwards? Perhaps in ULP applications that need some robustness?

[jonpaul]

Lots of myths here...

See IEEE Spectrum in Heday Lamarr, SIGSALY and  spread spectrum.

Jon

[brucehoult]

I seriously think Hedy has as much claim to have invented WIFI as CSIRO do, if not more. Both had key ideas and got patents. Neither commercialised anything. Neither had anything to do with the actual standard or products that eventually went on sale.

I don't think Lamarr could possibly be described as the (or 'an') inventor of WiFi. She invented frequency hopping spread spectrum. That is maybe 5% of WiFi - there's so much more to it.

I didn't claim she invented WIFI.

I said she has as much claim as CSIRO do -- a very different thing.