computers to wireless headsets that they were planning to bring to the market. In 1990, Jaap Haartsen was nominated by the European Patent Office for the European Inventor Award.

The name "Bluetooth" is an anglicized translation of Danish King Harald Blåtand's surname. During the 10th century, the second King of Denmark was famous in Scandinavian lore for uniting the peoples of Denmark and Norway. In creating the Bluetooth standard, the inventors felt that they were, in effect, doing something similar in uniting the PC and cellular industries. Thus the name stuck. The logo is a viking inscription, known as a bind rune, that merges the king's two initials.

Lack of Competition

Given its ubiquity, some may also wonder why there aren't any alternatives. The answer to this is a little more complicated. The beauty of Bluetooth technology is that it allows up to eight devices to be paired together via short-range radio signals that form a network, with each device functioning as a component of a larger system. To achieve this, Bluetooth-enabled devices must communicate using network protocols under a uniform specification.

As a technology standard, similar to Wi-Fi, Bluetooth's isn't tied to any product but is implemented by the Bluetooth Special Interest Group, a committee charged with revising the standards as well as licensing the technology and trademarks to manufacturers. For instance, Bluetooth 4.2 (released in 2014) uses less power and features improved speeds and security compared to previous versions. It also allows for internet protocol connectivity so that smart devices can be linked.

That isn’t to say, however, that Bluetooth doesn’t have any competitors. ZigBee, a wireless standard overseen by the ZigBee Alliance was rolled out in 2005 and allows for transmissions over longer distances, up to 100 meters, while using less power. A year later, the Bluetooth Special Interest Group introduced Bluetooth low energy, aimed at reducing power consumption by putting the connection into sleep mode whenever it detected inactivity.

Vocabulary:

pivotal role – ключевая роль, главная роль stoplight design – конструкция стоп-сигнала deploy – использовать, развертывать

WiFi

You may have presumed that the terms "WiFi" and "the Internet" meant the same thing. They are connected, but they are not interchangeable.

What Is WiFi?

WiFi (or Wi-Fi) is short for Wireless Fidelity. WiFi is a wireless networking technology that allows computers, some mobile phones, iPads, game consoles, and other devices to communicate over a wireless signal. Much the same way a radio can tune in-

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to a radio station signal over the airwaves, your device can pick up a signal that connects it to the Internet through the air. As a matter of fact, a WiFi signal is a highfrequency radio signal.

And just the same way that the frequency of a radio station is regulated, the standards for WiFi are as well. All the electronic components that make up a wireless network (i.e. your device, the router, etc.) are based on one of the 802.11 standards that were set by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers and the WiFi Alliance. The WiFi alliance trademarked the name WiFi and promoted the technology. The technology is also referred to as WLAN, which is short for wireless local area network. However, WiFi has definitely become the more popular expression used by most people.

How Does WiFi Work?

The router is the key piece of equipment in a wireless network. Only the router is physically connected to the Internet by an ethernet cable. The router then broadcasts the high-frequency radio signal, which carries data to and from the Internet. The adapter in whichever device you are using both picks up and reads the signal from the router and also sends data back to your router and onto the Internet. These transmissions are called upstream and downstream activity.

Who Invented WiFi?

After understanding how there are several components that make WiFi, you can see how naming a single inventor would be difficult.

First, let's take a look at the history of the 802.11 standards (radio frequency) used for broadcasting a WiFi signal. Secondly, we have to look at the electronic equipment involved in sending and receiving a WiFi signal. Not surprisingly, there are many patents connected with WiFi technology, though one important patent stands out.

Vic Hayes has been called the "father of Wi-Fi" because he chaired the IEEE committee that created the 802.11 standards in 1997. Before the public even heard of WiFi, Hayes established the standards that would make WiFi feasible. The 802.11 standard was established in 1997. Subsequently, improvements to the network bandwidth were added to the 802.11 standards. These include 802.11a, 802.11b, 802.11g, 802.11n and more. That's what the appended letters represent. As a consumer, the most important thing you should know is that the latest version is the best version in terms of performance. Therefore, this is the version you would want all your new equipment to be compatible with.

Who Owns the WLAN Patent?

One key patent for WiFi technology that has won patent litigation lawsuits and does deserve recognition belongs to the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) of Australia. CSIRO invented a chip that greatly improved the signal quality of WiFi.

According to the tech news site PhysOrg, "The invention came out of CSIRO's pioneering work in radioastronomy, with a team of its scientists cracking the problem of radio waves bouncing off surfaces indoors, causing an echo that distorts the signal. They overcame it by building a fast chip that could transmit a signal while reducing the echo, beating many of the major communications companies around the world that were trying to solve the same issue."

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Vocabulary:

wireless Fidelity – беспроводная точность воспроизведения

upstream and downstream activity – восходящая и нисходящая деятельность network bandwidth – пропускная способность сети

cracking the problem – решение проблемы

Radio

Roots of Radio

Radio owes its development to two other inventions: the telegraph and the telephone. All three technologies are closely related, and radio technology actually began as "wireless telegraphy."

The term "radio" can refer to either the electronic appliance that we listen with or to the content that plays from it. In any case, it all started with the discovery of radio waves electromagnetic waves that have the capacity to transmit music, speech, pictures, and other data invisibly through the air. Many devices work by using electromagnetic waves, including radios, microwaves, cordless phones, remote controlled toys, televisions, and more.

Scottish physicist James Clerk Maxwell first predicted the existence of radio waves in the 1860s. In 1886, German physicist Heinrich Rudolph Hertz demonstrated that rapid variations of electric current could be projected into space in the form of radio waves, similar to light waves and heat waves.

In 1866, Mahlon Loomis, an American dentist, successfully demonstrated "wireless telegraphy." Loomis was able to make a meter connected to a kite cause a meter connected to another nearby kite to move. This marked the first known instance of wireless aerial communication.

But it was Guglielmo Marconi, an Italian inventor, who proved the feasibility of radio communication. He sent and received his first radio signal in Italy in 1895. In 1899, he flashed the first wireless signal across the English Channel, and two years later received the letter "S," which was telegraphed from England to Newfoundland (now part of Canada). This was the first successful transatlantic radiotelegraph message.

In addition to Marconi, two of his contemporaries, Nikola Tesla and Nathan Stubblefield, took out patents for wireless radio transmitters. Nikola Tesla is now credited with being the first person to patent radio technology. The Supreme Court overturned Marconi's patent in 1943 in favor of Tesla's.

Vocabulary:

radio waves – радиоволны light waves – световые волны heat waves – тепловая волна

electric current – электрический ток

wireless aerial communication – антенны беспроводной связи

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feasibility – осуществимость, целесообразность, обоснованность cordless phones – беспроводный телефон

Invention of Radio Telegraphy

Radiotelegraphy is the sending by radio waves of the same dot-dash message (Morse code) used by telegraphs. Transmitters, at the turn of the century, were known as spark-gap machines. They were developed mainly for ship-to-shore and ship-to-ship communication. This form of radiotelegraphy allowed for simple communication between two points. However, it was not public radio broadcasting as we know it today. The use of wireless signaling increased after it was proved to be effective in communication for rescue work at sea. Soon a number of ocean liners even installed wireless equipment. In 1899, the United States Army established wireless communications with a lightship off Fire Island, New York. Two years later, the Navy adopted a wireless system. Up until then, the Navy had been using visual signaling and homing pigeons for communication.

In 1901, radiotelegraph service was established between five Hawaiian Islands. In 1903, a Marconi station located in Wellfleet, Massachusetts, carried an exchange between President Theodore Roosevelt and King Edward VII. In 1905, the naval battle of Port Arthur in the Russo-Japanese war was reported by wireless. And in 1906, the U.S. Weather Bureau experimented with radiotelegraphy to speed up notice of weather conditions.

Robert E. Peary, an arctic explorer, radiotelegraphed "I found the Pole" in 1909. A year later, Marconi established regular American-European radiotelegraph service, which several months later enabled an escaped British murderer to be apprehended on the high seas. In 1912, the first transpacific radiotelegraph service was established, linking San Francisco with Hawaii.

Meanwhile, overseas radiotelegraph service developed slowly, primarily because the initial radiotelegraph transmitter was unstable and caused a high amount of interference. The Alexanderson high-frequency alternator and the De Forest tube eventually resolved many of these early technical problems.

Space Telegraphy

Lee de Forest was the inventor of space telegraphy, the triode amplifier, and the Audion, an amplifying vacuum tube. In the early 1900s, the development of radio was hampered by the lack of an efficient detector of electromagnetic radiation. It was De Forest who provided that detector. His invention made it possible to amplify the radio frequency signal picked up by antennae. This allowed for the use of much weaker signals than had previously been possible. De Forest was also the first person to use the word "radio."

The result of Lee de Forest's work was the invention of amplitude-modulated or AM radio, which allowed for a multitude of radio stations. It was a huge improvement over the earlier spark-gap transmitters.

Broadcasting Begins

In 1915, speech was first transmitted by radio across the continent from New York City to San Francisco and across the Atlantic Ocean. Five years later, Westinghouse's

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