Internet / World Wide Web / Bluetooth / Wi-Fi
The Internet has become an
essential part of our lives. Now, most people cannot imagine life without this
revolutionary invention. In 1957 the US Department of Defense was the first one
that thought about reliable information transmission. It was necessary to
create a message transmission system that, even in case of a nuclear war, would
not fail. The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency came up with the idea
of using the computer to receive and transmit information (Featherly). Very
soon, the agency started creating and developing the first computer network. Four
US universities were tasked with implementing the idea: the University of
California in Los Angeles, the University of Utah, the University of Santa
Barbara, and the Stanford Research Center.
In 1969, a talented group of scientists created a computer network called ARPANET (Advanced Research Projects Agency Network), which united the four universities. By 1973, the ARPANET network became international—organizations from Norway and Great Britain connected to the network with the help of a transatlantic telephone cable. By the end of the 70s, they began to work on standardizing data protocols. This mission was accomplished between 1982-1983 (Featherly). John Postel took an active part in the development of network protocols. Since he was the author of many network protocols that are used today, many call him the man who created the Internet or the father of the Internet.
By early 1983, after the ARPANET network had switched to the newly created TCP/IP network connection protocol, the name we now know as the Internet was established. All this time, the computer network was available to a limited number of people. And only in 1991, after the standardization of WWW (World Wide Web) pages, the World Wide Web became publicly available. It is hard to tell in which year the Internet was invented. The "Internet" that we use daily and the World Wide Web appeared much later than the very idea of its predecessor, the ARPANET network (Featherly). So, when was the Internet created? I think there are three answers, and they all are correct. In 1957, specialists from DARPA (US Defense Research Projects Agency) came up with the idea, and 12 years later, a group of talented university scientists created the first ARPANET computer network. In 1983, when the very concept of "The Internet" appeared. And in 1991, the network became public property. It is also tough to single out one person that created the Internet. Humankind was gradually approaching this discovery. Even Nikola Tesla, in 1908, was talking about the idea of using electrical information communication.
The World Wide Web (abbreviated
as WWW) is a unity of information resources interconnected by means of
telecommunications and based on a hypertext representation of data scattered
around the world. 1989 is considered to be the birth year of the World Wide
Web. That year Tim Berners-Lee came up with the hypertext project, later known
as the World Wide Web. The creator of the "web" was working in the
particle physics laboratory of the European Center for Nuclear Research
"CERN" in Geneva (Switzerland). Together with a partner Robert
Cailliaud, they dealt with the problems of using hypertext to build an
environment that would simplify the exchange of information (Greenemeier).
The result of this work was a
document that discussed concepts of fundamental importance for the
"web" in its modern form. They proposed URLs, the HTTP protocol, and
the HTML language. Without these components, the modern Internet simply would
not function. Also, Berners-Lee created the world's first web server and the
world's first hypertext web browser. On the world's first website
http://info.cern.ch, he described what the World Wide Web is, how to set up a
web server, and how to use it. It is important to mention that the website is
still up (Nix). Here's what it looked like in 1992 (below).
Hedy Lamarr was a famous movie star
and inventor. Thanks to her, Wi-Fi and Bluetooth technologies appeared. She was
very worried about the second world war and decided to invent something that
could help the Allied forces. Lamarr began to think about torpedoes, which were
already quite powerful but not very accurate weapons in those days. In the
process of thinking about how to solve this problem, Lamarr drew attention to
the remote control from the radio lying in her living room - a relatively
recent invention of that era. She thought that radio-controlled torpedoes could
be much more accurate. However, she understood that the enemy could jam the
radio signal. As a result, Lamarr came up with the idea of the technology
that would allow the radio signal to jump quickly from one frequency to
another, which could significantly complicate the jamming process.
One evening, Lamarr shared her work with avant-garde composer George Antheil. Together they developed a technique that involved using a piano-like layout to randomly switch signals sent from the control center to the torpedoes. The machine that they created also had 88 keys. Their signal communication system is still used for wireless communication between digital devices (Kiersz). Lamarr and Antheil filed the necessary documents with the National Invention Bureau and, in 1942, received a patent for the "Secret Communications System." They immediately donated the technology to the US Navy. However, military representatives were not in a hurry to adopt it. The US Navy only started thinking about her ideas in the 50s (Bush).
Bluetooth was originally developed by
a group of Swedish scientists led by Dutch inventor Jaap Haartsen (Athulya). He
is considered responsible for the creation of this technology. Bluetooth was
named after the Danish King, Harald Blatand. He loved blueberries and was
famous for uniting the warring tribes of Denmark, Norway, and Sweden. The name
Blatand literally means "blue tooth." As for the logo, it is a
combination of Danish runes: H (Hagalaz) and V (Berkana), which correspond to
the king's initials (Nuwer).
The initial prototype of the modern Wi-Fi was a wireless connection developed in the Netherlands by the team of Vic Hayes (Hetting). It was meant to improve money transactions in supermarkets. Back then, the data transfer speed was 2 Mbps. As it was mentioned before, Hollywood movie star Hedy Lamarr played a massive role in the evolution of wireless transmission of information. Hayes decided to use her idea and improve it. Vic Hayes has been called the "father of Wi-Fi" because he chaired the IEEE committee that created the 802.11 standards in 1997 (Hetting). Before the public even heard of Wi-Fi, he established the standards that would make Wi-Fi feasible. In 1985 the Federal Communications Agency of the United States allowed people to use some radio frequencies privately. Representatives of other countries supported this decision. As a result, companies began to develop devices that could support wireless networks. Thus began the history of Wi-Fi. The name Wi-Fi does not mean anything. A marketing company created the term because the wireless industry was looking for a user-friendly name to refer to some not-so-user-friendly technology (Goodwin).
Works Cited
Featherly , Kevin. “ARPANET.” Encyclopædia
Britannica, Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.,
https://www.britannica.com/topic/ARPANET.
Goodwin, Richard. “What Does WIFI
Actually Stand for? A Brief History...” Know Your Mobile, 15 Feb. 2022,
https://www.knowyourmobile.com/user-guides/what-does-wifi-mean-stand-for/.
Nuwer, Rachel. “Why Is Bluetooth
Called Bluetooth? (Hint: Vikings!).” Smithsonian.com, Smithsonian
Institution, 27 Aug. 2012,
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/why-is-bluetooth-called-bluetooth-hint-vikings-16270647/.
Athulya. “How Jaap Haartsen Changed
the World with Bluetooth.” Your Tech Story, 2 Mar. 2020,
https://www.yourtechstory.com/2020/02/29/how-jaap-hassrtsen-changed-the-world-with-application-bluetooth/.
Bush, Lawrence. “August 11: Hedy
Lamarr, Inventor.” Jewish Currents, 201AD, https://jewishcurrents.org/august-11-hedy-lamarr-inventor.
Greenemeier, Larry. “Remembering the
Day the World Wide Web Was Born.” Scientific American, Scientific
American, 12 Mar. 2009,
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/day-the-web-was-born/.
Hetting, Claus. “Vic Hayes &
Bruce Tuch Inducted into the Wi-Fi Now Hall of Fame.” Wi, 11 Nov. 2019,
https://wifinowglobal.com/news-and-blog/vic-hayes-bruce-tuch-inducted-into-the-wi-fi-now-hall-of-fame/.
Kiersz, Andy. “How a 1940s Actress
and an Avant Garde Composer Pioneered a Powerful Communication Technology.” Business
Insider, Business Insider, 15 July 2014,
https://www.businessinsider.com/hedy-lamarr-george-antheil-frequency-hopping-2014-7.
Nix, Elizabeth. “The World's First
Web Site.” History.com, A&E Television Networks, 4 Aug. 2016,
https://www.history.com/news/the-worlds-first-web-site.
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