WHO INVENTED IT AND WHY?

 

Ask a historian who invented radio, and you’ll get a very long, boring story about one of the most contentious debates in the history of science. The origins of radio throng with big, nineteenth-century names like Bose, Hughes, Hertz, Marconi, and Tesla. (Who also invented a death ray. Seriously. Look it up.) Experiments with the transmission of electromagnetic signals were already being performed in the early 1800s. By the 1890s, what was then known as “wireless telegraphy” had become a focus of intense study and ruthless competition. By the early 1900s, radio was ubiquitous and hugely popular.

The precursor to the modern RFID chip was invented in Germany during World War II. Transponders that functioned very much like RFID technology were installed in airplanes on both sides of the war. Clunky, stupid (from a computing perspective), and easily vulnerable to operator error, they often gave away the location of air formations to enemy forces. But they also allowed much more organized use of air assets. During the Battle of Britain, the ability of the British to swiftly organize and deploy their forces saved lives and handed the Nazis their first major defeat.

In the sixties, a technology known as Electronic Article Surveillance was invented to deter shoplifting. This tech is still in use today. EAS tags are those awkward plastic things that jab you in the kidneys every time you try on a shirt. They operate by radio or magnetism and are the truest ancestor to the modern RFID.

Fast forward to 1970, when a man named Mario Cardullo filed a patent for the original RFID—what he called an Encoder. Even at the very beginning, Cardullo saw the potential of his invention—the original patent includes automated toll collection and inventory tracking as possible uses for the technology. Interestingly, when Cardullo and his team presented the idea to the New York Port Authority as an automated toll collection system, the Port Authority rep expressed concerns about the unconstitutional violation of privacy the technology enabled.

Within a few years, several companies had developed their own versions of Cardullo’s Encoder. Despite the flurry of development, widespread adoption of the technology took almost twenty years; it wasn’t until the nineties that RFID saw use for toll collection, and it’s only now that the technology is being adapted to other uses.