An FBI sting operation on corrupt commodity traders was a key enabling event in the history of Wi-Fi.

As a result of this 1989 sting operation - called “Operation Sourmash” - the US Federal Government forced both the Chicago Board of Trade and the Chicago Mercantile Exchange to replace their fraud-prone manual trading system with a wireless network of handheld terminals. Over 40 companies bid on this project, and the procurement was eventually won by a team that included both Ken Biba and Greg Ennis. Ennis had primary responsibility for the design of the wireless network. Both Biba and Ennis would subsequently play key roles in the creation of the winning “foundation protocol” proposal for the IEEE’s wireless standard — soon to be known as Wi-Fi.

Many of the concepts developed by Ennis for this Chicago trading network found their way into the DFWMAC foundation protocol design, developed jointly with Wim Diepstraten and Phil Belanger. DFWMAC was selected as the foundation by IEEE 802.11 over competing proposals from IBM and others on November 11, 1993.

Read more about the history of Wi=Fi in Beyond Everywhere.