Wi-Fi technology was invented through contributions from multiple people and organizations over time. The key contributors are:
- Hedy Lamarr, an Austrian-American actress and inventor, co-invented with George Antheil the foundational technology of spread spectrum and frequency hopping during World War II. This technology later became crucial for wireless communications including Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and GPS.
- The invention of modern Wi-Fi as a fast and reliable wireless LAN technology is credited mostly to John O'Sullivan and his team of Australian scientists at CSIRO (Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation) in the early 1990s. They developed the core technology and patents that are part of Wi-Fi standards.
- Vic Hayes, an engineer, is also famously called the "father of Wi-Fi" for his role in creating the IEEE 802.11 standards that underpin Wi-Fi.
Thus, Wi-Fi is the result of layered contributions: Lamarr and Antheil for the foundational spread spectrum technology, O'Sullivan and CSIRO for Wi-Fi's core wireless LAN technology, and Hayes for the standards development.
