Norman Abramson Builds ALOHA.net, the First Packet-Switched Wireless Data Network

In 1970 American engineer and computer scientist Norman Abramson at the University of Hawaii built ALOHAnet, the first wireless packet-switched data network, using packet radio.

Unlike the ARPANET where each node could talk to a node on the other end, ALOHA used a shared medium for transmission and revealed the need for contention management schemes. ALOHA’s situation was similar to issues that were later faced by Ethernet (non-switched) and Wi-Fi networks.