RFID and its history

Filed in archive RFID Basics on October 5, 2007

I come across a lot of people who ask me innumerable questions with regards to RFID and one of the most common questions is whether RFID is a new concept and I feel there is a strong urgency to educate people on this concept. Today I will tell you something about the history of RFID and on reading it you yourself will be able to decide whether RFID is a new or an old technology.




Let me tell you that during World War II there was no means to identify whether the plane entering the airspace was of a friend or a foe and this created a lot of confusion for the forces out there. In order to deal with this problem the British came up with a friend or foe system where a transmitter was placed on all their planes so that on communication they came to know that the plane belonged to them and it wasn't shot down in an air of confusion. It was only during the fifties and the sixties that Europe, Japan and United States that research was conducted in the area of RFID and companies started using it in anti theft systems. In the seventies U.S. Energy Department requested Los Alamos National Laboratory for devising a technique for tracking nuclear material and after that it even came up with an RFID system for tracking cattle. Mario Cardullo patent for a passive radio transponder with memory in 1973 is regarded as the first true ancestor of modern RFID. In 1983 Charles Walton got the first patent with the name RFID and the rest all you know is history but I heard a lot many people saying it is a new technology, do you all still agree with it?

I hope I didn't put you all to sleep. Wishing you a great weekend ahead!!