As you probably already know, RFID stands for 'Radio Frequency Identification' - it is the device that makes ID tags work - but you probably only started hearing about it over the last couple of years. So, how much do you know about RFID? In this piece of writing, I want to have a short look at the history of this seemingly new invention, which has intruded upon almost every facet of a city-dweller's life and that of many animal farmers too.
The beginning of it all was in 1915, say some, when the British come up with a system called IFF, which is short for 'Identification: Friend or Foe'. Whoever invented it, the first known installation of the IFF transponder was into the FuG German aircraft in 1940 during the Second World War.
However, IFF does not distinguish enemy aircraft, it can only identify friendly aircraft. All others have to be treated with misgivings. The same sort of technology is still in use in military and civilian airplanes today. The British managed to interpret the FuG's signals and reply suitably, giving them a false positive, which gave them the drop in a dog fight.
At the end of the war and the commencement of the Cold War, Leon Theremin invented a device for the Soviet Union which retransmitted incident radio waves and other audio details. It is not true RFID, but it is accredited with being a predecessor of RFID, because it was a passive device which was activated by an outside source.
In 1948, Harry Stockman wrote a paper entitled: "Communication by Means of Reflected Power", in which he stated: "... considerable research and development work has to be done before the remaining basic problems in reflected-power communication are solved, and before the field of useful applications is explored".
This was true. The difficulties were basically threefold: the systems needed a lot of power to work effectively; they were too large for use in anything but big items like aircraft and they were very costly. However, people could already imagine uses for the technology when these three issues had been surmounted.
(In 2009, researchers at Bristol University stuck RFID devices to live ants to track their movements).
The first modern predecessor of the RFID device was something that Mario Cardullo demonstrated to the New York Port Authority in 1971. It was a passive transponder which relayed information using power supplied by an external source. It's intended use was to identify ships to the Port Authority for the purpose of collecting toll charges.
Steven Depp, Alfred Koelle, and Robert Freyman demonstrated a set-up in 1974 which employed RFID tags. This has become the basis of the system which is now extensively used all around the world to collect toll fees on autobahns and in car parks.
Charles Walton was granted the first patent to include the acronym RFID in 1983.
The principal user of RFID tags is the US Department of Defense and after that the civil aviation industry, although the manufacturing industry is catching up quickly with RFID tags being used to track goods from manufacture to point-of-sale.
The beginning of it all was in 1915, say some, when the British come up with a system called IFF, which is short for 'Identification: Friend or Foe'. Whoever invented it, the first known installation of the IFF transponder was into the FuG German aircraft in 1940 during the Second World War.
However, IFF does not distinguish enemy aircraft, it can only identify friendly aircraft. All others have to be treated with misgivings. The same sort of technology is still in use in military and civilian airplanes today. The British managed to interpret the FuG's signals and reply suitably, giving them a false positive, which gave them the drop in a dog fight.
At the end of the war and the commencement of the Cold War, Leon Theremin invented a device for the Soviet Union which retransmitted incident radio waves and other audio details. It is not true RFID, but it is accredited with being a predecessor of RFID, because it was a passive device which was activated by an outside source.
In 1948, Harry Stockman wrote a paper entitled: "Communication by Means of Reflected Power", in which he stated: "... considerable research and development work has to be done before the remaining basic problems in reflected-power communication are solved, and before the field of useful applications is explored".
This was true. The difficulties were basically threefold: the systems needed a lot of power to work effectively; they were too large for use in anything but big items like aircraft and they were very costly. However, people could already imagine uses for the technology when these three issues had been surmounted.
(In 2009, researchers at Bristol University stuck RFID devices to live ants to track their movements).
The first modern predecessor of the RFID device was something that Mario Cardullo demonstrated to the New York Port Authority in 1971. It was a passive transponder which relayed information using power supplied by an external source. It's intended use was to identify ships to the Port Authority for the purpose of collecting toll charges.
Steven Depp, Alfred Koelle, and Robert Freyman demonstrated a set-up in 1974 which employed RFID tags. This has become the basis of the system which is now extensively used all around the world to collect toll fees on autobahns and in car parks.
Charles Walton was granted the first patent to include the acronym RFID in 1983.
The principal user of RFID tags is the US Department of Defense and after that the civil aviation industry, although the manufacturing industry is catching up quickly with RFID tags being used to track goods from manufacture to point-of-sale.
About the Author:
Owen Jones, the author of this article writes on several topics, but is now involved with the best RFID printer. If you would like to know more, please go to our website at Active RFID Management.
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