Norman Abramson, Pioneer Behind Wireless Networks, Dies At 88

Norman Abramson, one of the pioneers behind wireless networks, has died at 88. The cause was skin cancer that had metastasized to his lungs, his son, Mark, said. The New York Times reports: Professor Abramson's project at the University of Hawaii was originally designed to transmit data to schools on the far-flung Hawaiian islands by means of a radio channel. But the solution he and his group devised in the late 1960s and early '70s would prove widely applicable; some of their technology is still in use in today's smartphones, satellites and home WiFi networks. The technology they created allowed many digital devices to send and receive data over that shared radio channel. It was a simple approach that did not require complex scheduling of when each packet of data would be sent. If a data packet was not received, it was simply sent again. The approach was a departure from telecommunications practices at the time, but it worked. The wireless network in Hawaii, which began operating in 1971, was called ALOHAnet, embracing the Hawaiian salutation for greeting or parting. It was a smaller, wireless version of the better known ARPAnet, the precursor to the internet, which allowed researchers at universities to share a network and send messages over landlines. The ARPAnet was led by the Pentagon's Advanced Research Projects Agency, which also funded the ALOHAnet. "The early wireless work in Hawaii is vastly underappreciated," said Marc Weber, an internet historian at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, Calif. "Every modern form of wireless data networking, from WiFi to your cellphone, goes back to the ALOHAnet."

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