Recently the New Media department at the Walker completed a cubicle shuffle. In the process I stumbled across this great lost peice of technology that fulfills no useful function but still I haven’t been able to part with. It is the Radio LAN.
A precursor to WIFI the Radio LAN extended a 10Base T Network ao the FM radio waves by means of this “backbone” and transmitter (a 50mW transmitter). The instruction manual claims to have had a range of 150-200 feet.
On the other end of the transmission you need one of these cards. A standard PCMCIA card that has some sort of gigantic plastic thing on it to receive the signal. I have it plugged into my 15″ powerbook just so you can get an idea of scale.
The copyright from the instruction book is from 1998 so it seems way ahead of it’s time. Nice to see the Radio LAN company is still in business but it looks like their products have changed into more long range wireless solutions.
Now that I have successfully documented and shared this great step in wireless history I think it’s finally time to get rid of it.
Get Walker Reader in your inbox. Sign up to receive first word about our original videos, commissioned essays, curatorial perspectives, and artist interviews.