Scientific Pioneering and Foundation 

The development of wireless communications began with the physicist Michael Faraday in the 19^th century.  Faraday’s background was a book-binder but he became very interested in conducting experiments, especially those involving electricity.  He discovered the principle of electromagnetic induction in 1831, which demonstrated the concept of electric currents producing magnetism.  Faraday’s qualitative discovery paved the way for the mathematician James Maxwell to quantify the discoveries.  Maxwell’s formulas for electricity and magnetism were published in A Treatise on Electricity and Magnetism (1873).  These equations are known as Maxwell’s equations, which also implicitly showed that electromagnetic waves propagate through free space at the speed of light.  This became a significant discovery because transferring signals via electromagnetic waves is hundreds of thousands of times faster than by sound and much more efficient than simple fire or smoke signals.

With the discovery that electromagnetic waves are propagated at the speed of light, things got underway to find a method for transferring information across those waves.  It was not until the late 19^th century when an Italian electrical engineer, Guglielmo Marconi, successfully transmitted the first wireless signal over a distance of one and a half miles.  Marconi used electromagnetic waves at frequencies near those of radio frequencies to transmit and receive the signals.  The Italian government took no interest in Marconi’s developments so he took his invention to England and worked there.  On December 12, 1901, Marconi successfully transmitted the first transatlantic wireless signal from Poldhu, Cornwall, to St. John's, Newfoundland, spanning a distance of 2100 miles.  This event sparked a global interest in wireless communication, and, within a century, there would be a number of innovations and much progress made on wireless communication. 

Innovations and Progress 

With Marconi’s successful broadcasting of wireless signals, the significance of radio and wireless forms of communication grew.  During World War I, Marconi continued his research on wave propagation, and by the 1930s he hypothesized the development of radar technology.  Since the discovery of electromagnetic induction, progressive innovations in wireless communication have been made, including radios, radars, telegraphs and Morse code.  More importantly, within the past 50 years the surge of cell phones and wireless internet development has enjoyed the global spotlight.  These inventions came to be used initially in warfare, especially in radio.  By World War II, the development of sonar and radar was used in warfare by both the Axis and Allies.  Germany’s land based radar called Freya and the sea based radar Seetakt were able to detect English aircrafts from a distance well over 100 miles.  The German technology was far ahead of its time and by the end of the war over 50,000 Allied bombers had been gunned down, a large number due to detection by radar.  The innovation during World War II is shown in the following graph of effective detection range and altitude; it shows that the range of German land based radars were as great as 290 km.

Figure 1: Detection range and altitude of German radars in WWII

The radio was also widely used in the World Wars for communicating along the front line and relaying messages to military headquarters.  However, it quickly spread to consumer use, and research began on the development of other forms of wireless communication.

The development of wireless phones began in the 1940s in America.  However, it was not until the 1980s and 1990s that cell phones began to expand as a substantial force in the global market.  The reason for this long delay is that the mobile phone struggled to gain investment and research effort during the Cold War, when money was poured into technologies such as artificial intelligence, computer graphics and nuclear weapons (Edwards 1997).  The delay in building up the mobile technology sector was elongated by Federal Communications Commission (FCC) regulations, inconclusive results in scientific research, and corporations unwilling to invest heavily into an uncertain market.  As the number of cell phone users grew from around 50 thousand in the 1940s to over 1.4 million by the 1960s, companies began to have more interest in this market.  A transition took place from investments in defense to researching and developing wireless communications began.  Over the next thirty years the industry would expand and by 1997 the number of mobile phone users had grown to over 50 million with thousands more added each day.  Along with mobile phones the development of wireless internet has also been prominent in the recent decade.  These developments provide a great benefit in giving users the freedom to conduct activities in a mobile setting, but the social implications and possible flaws also need to be considered in the continual use of this technology.