Frequency hopping and Hollywood stars: the story behind Wi-Fi, our gateway to the Internet
How an Austrian-born actress and Hollywood composer patented a technology that laid the foundation for the Wi-Fi we know and love today.
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Today, we’re talking about one of the most ubiquitous pieces of technology that laid the foundation of the Internet revolution. As of 2021, the internet economy grew seven times faster than the total U.S. economy. The digital economy makes up ~10% of the GDP. The Internet is amazing, but getting access wouldn’t be possible without the technology we’re talking about today - Wi-Fi.
If you’ve been a reader for a while, you may have picked up on the love I have for the stories that take us back to the earliest days of a certain technology — this one is perhaps my favorite of them all. Ffirst, we’ll get a little technical about how Wi-Fi works, then we’ll go back to how it came to be.
Mixed signals might be a good thing!
Wi-Fi uses radio frequencies, instead of wires like Ethernet, to send information between a router and other devices, enabling communication with the Internet. Yes, this means that Wi-Fi and the Internet are different things! Your device, like the phone you’re probably reading this on, connects to Wi-Fi by sending out a radio signal in search of a router. The router than is able to process incoming and outgoing data signals. The router is where signals are received and also sent to the right recipient.
Wi-Fi relies on frequency-hopping spread spectrum (FHSS) to send signals. FHSS is a method of transmitting radio signals by rapidly switching the signal between many frequency channels, using a sequence that appears random, but is known by the sender and receiver.
Though seemingly more complex, frequency-hopping is advantageous over fixed-frequency signal transmission (where the signal doesn’t hop frequencies) for several reasons. With frequency hopping, you reduce the likelihood of interference (noise, other data, stuff you don’t want) from other signals, which is common in fixed frequency.
If you were to send a packet of data along a single frequency, it is easy for a third party to intercept that data as it travels from sender to receiver. With frequency hopping, it’s much harder to intercept data as it hops between frequencies because only the sender and receiver know the expected sequence of frequencies to hop between. A major benefit of frequency hopping is security. Now, let’s go back to 1930s Austria, where this security was top of mind.
The woman behind it all
In 1914, Hedy Lamarr, born Hedwig Kiesler, was born in Vienna, Austria into a Jewish family. From a young age, she was claimed to have a brilliant mind. Lamarr was discovered at age 16 by a director, which started off a life of acting in Europe. She quickly found an adoring fan in Fritz (note: some sources use Fredrik) Mandl, who she married in 1933. Mandl, however, was an Austrian munitions dealer, selling to the Nazis in the mid-to-late 30s. Mandl would bring Hedy to dinners with the highest ranks of Nazi officers, where Hedy would overhear of the horrors ahead, and of the plans to use technology, like radio signals, to communicate military plans across Europe. These conversations on the future of wartime weaponry would stick in Hedy’s mind as she fled her marriage and landed in London in 1937.
Her time in London launched her to success, when she was fast-tracked to fame after meeting Louis B. Mayer, the co-founder of MGM Studios. She made her way to Hollywood and was called the “most beautiful woman in the world”. It was during her time in Hollywood that her innovative spirit was being nurtured again, especially after meeting George Antheil, a well known composer. They spoke of their worries about the impending war — Antheil says, “Hedy said that she did not feel very comfortable, sitting there in Hollywood and making lots of money when things were in such a state.” So, they got to work.
Hedy’s mind took her back to the dinners, hearing talks of using radio signals, which were vulnerable to attack, to target wartime enemies. With Antheil’s expertise in sound and frequencies, and Hedy’s creativity and ingenuity, the two built a new communication system. In this system, the sender and receiver of radio waves hopped to new frequencies at the same time and pattern, helping prevent interference. This technology guided torpedoes to their targets, safe from radio jamming, which is the blocking of radio communications for interference. The duo was awarded a U.S. Patent in 1942 for their frequency-hopping invention. She didn’t make a penny for this work during her lifetime. In 2014, Hedy Lamarr was inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame for the invention.
P.S: I first heard this story on the Acquired podcast about the history of Qualcomm. It is a must listen for Wi-Fi and network nerds in the making!!
Putting it all together
The same technology that Hedy patented back in 1942 inspired the backbone of much of the Wi-Fi technology we use today. Frequency hopping has shifted to more advanced signal transmission methods. Modern day Wi-Fi, which, by the way, is short for "Wireless Fidelity," is the wireless communication technology that allows devices to exchange data, without the use of wires, within a local area network (LAN or WLAN for wireless). The network relies on the IEEE 802.11 standard, which ensures uniform and standardized data transfer that a wireless network can handle.
Many more teams across the globe, armed with Hedy’s foundational technology, should be credited for accelerating the building and adoption of Wi-Fi:
The University of Hawaii, who created the first wireless data packet transfer in 1971, enabling inter-island communication through ALOHAnet.
Victor Heyes, nicknamed “Father of Wi-Fi” and the IEEE 802.11 team who set networking standards and enabled early access to the Internet
The CSIRO Division of Radiophysics, who created chips that could easily transmit wireless connections, constructing the first wireless local area network (WLAN)
Where would we be without Wi-Fi
Wi-Fi has powered a macroeconomic shift of epic proportions. Enabling public access to information such as the Internet has had massive downstream effects. Wi-Fi is something I most definitely take for granted. Thank you to the Wi-Fi network that enabled me to access the Internet to learn all this history - how cool!? I’ll save the story of Bluetooth for another day, but talk about something else that has changed how we work! See you all next time. Have a great week.
Additional references
Hedy Lamarr’s Forgotten, Frustrated Career as a Wartime Inventor — The New Yorker
Women’s History - article
Gaby Lamarr! Thats my new name for you.