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Recognize the mother of Wifi (i.imgflip.com)

submitted 6 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

151 comments fedilink hide all child comments

What's your evidence, Richard Easton??!?

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[–] [email protected] 23 points 6 months ago (1 children)

It may be dropped, but it was used in the beginning

Wouldn't that not still make her the mother of Wifi?

[–] [email protected] -2 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (2 children)

Hehehe, you can call her the mother of early 802.11 and Bluetooth.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 months ago

For the Bluetooth development, the developers of the technology didn't know about her patent until their IP department was about to file for a patent. They added this patent to the list and then they got connected. As is the case with many, patent and patent connections. It's a quite common way of how patents are connected, and part of the IP industry. R&D people come up with an idea, these people don't read tons of patents but solve issues in an intuitive way. Then IP lawers dig into existing patents and make the legal connections.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (2 children)

that's not how it works. edit: others pointed it out already it seems. you would still call the inventor of a first car the father lf cars even though it has nothing to do with modern cars

edit2: but considering that she didn't really invent wifi, just frequency hopping, I would maybe call her grandmother or something

[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (1 children)

She didn't invent frequency hopping, Nicola Tesla did. She invented a system that used a piano roll (from a player piano) to alternate frequencies. Also she shared the patent with another person.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 months ago

Or rather she was part of a team, with her husband and one more, that patented that idea, never really got it to work in real torpedos, and the technology was forgotten until someone referred to it in a later patent. Then her role as background got expanded to take the role of other more influential women, maybe because she had a nicer picture.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago)

Yeah, I think I get it. I mean the analogy is a bit flawed. What she invented is that alike synchronizing the rolls of player pianos, you could build a mechanism that hops frequencies (instead of piano keys) to make remote controlling torpedos resilient against jamming.

Idk. To me it feels like calling the inventor of three-wheeled vehicles the father/mother of cars, if we want to stay with that analogy. It's remotely related, not an integral part and nowadays solved differently. But the first car was a tricycle. (Benz Patent-Motorwagen)

But I don't want to invalidate her achievements either... It's one (important) contribution to technology. And it's not always that one single person invents the whole concept of a radio. Or a car. And get's to be the whole parent of it. Things build upon each other. Sometimes it needs a lot of contributions of several individuals to make something possible... Nowadays more so than in the old times.