Norman Abramson, the leader of a group of scientists and engineers who pioneered the development of wireless computer networks, died on Dec. 1 at his home in San Francisco. 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. “It was an incredibly audacious idea, real out-of-the box engineering,” said Vinton Cerf, a computer scientist at Google and the co-author, with Robert Kahn, of the technical standards for linking computer networks on the internet.

Source: New York Times December 11, 2020 17:34 UTC