Wireless technology progressed as an invaluable tool used by the U.S. Military during WWII when the Army began sending battle plans over enemy lines and when Navy ships instructed their fleets from shore to shore. Wireless proved so valuable as a secure communications medium many businesses and schools thought it could expand their computing arena by expanding their wired local area networks (LAN) using wireless LANs. The first wireless LAN came together in 1971 when networking technologies met radio communications at the University of Hawaii as a research project called ALOHNET. The bi-directional star topology of the system included seven computers deployed over four islands to communicate with the central computer on the Oahu Island without using phone lines. And so, wireless technology, as we know it, began its journey into every house, classroom, and business around the world. .
Digital wireless and cellular communications can trace its roots to a series of discoveries and innovation in the mid to late 1940's. Though, the argument could be made that its roots reach as far back as the original discovery on February 22,1880 by Alexander Graham Bell and his cousin Charles Bell when they communicated over the Photophone. This device transmitted voice over a light beam. A person's voice projected through a glass test tube toward a thin mirror which acted as a transmitter. Acoustical vibrations caused by the voice produced like or sympathetic vibrations in the mirror. From the time of Graham Bell's discoveries on through the nineteen thirties, various technological breakthroughs continued to build the foundation for what would later become the wireless network. In 1935, Edwin Howard Armstrong unveiled his invention, Frequency Modulation (FM) to improve radio broadcasting. Because of the urgency for battlefield communications that were spawned from World War II, companies like AT&T (Bell Labs), Motorola and General Electric focused on refining mobile and portable communications.