Wi-Fi was developed through contributions from multiple inventors and innovations over several decades:
- Hedy Lamarr and George Antheil invented a frequency-hopping system during World War II to prevent radio jamming of torpedoes. Their 1942 patent laid the groundwork for spread spectrum technology, which is fundamental to Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and other wireless communications
- In the 1970s and 1980s, further advances occurred, but a key breakthrough came in the early 1990s from an Australian team led by Dr. John O’Sullivan at CSIRO (Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation). They developed a technology that made wireless local area networks (WLAN) fast and reliable by solving issues with radio wave reflections indoors. This technology was patented in 1992 and is directly linked to modern Wi-Fi standards
- Vic Hayes , known as the "father of Wi-Fi," chaired the IEEE committee that established the international 802.11 wireless networking standards in 1997, which standardized Wi-Fi for commercial use
In summary, Hedy Lamarr and George Antheil pioneered the early concept of frequency hopping, John O’Sullivan and his team invented the core technology enabling fast wireless LANs, and Vic Hayes led the standardization that made Wi-Fi widely usable. Thus, Wi-Fi is the result of cumulative innovations rather than a single inventor
