Catching (radio) waves
In 2000, five MIT Media Lab alumni co-founded ThingMagic to help bring radio-frequency identification (RFID) technology — wireless readers and data-transmitting tags — to the supply chain. This meant companies would be able to track products, from the warehouse to delivery.This mission served as the technological spark that catapulted ThingMagic into a leading role in a new generation of RFID systems that were, among other things, cheaper, faster, and more efficient than similar technologies. At the time of ThingMagic’s founding, available RFID readers — which collect information by reading tags that transmit electronically stored information over radio waves — were insufficient for supply-chain use: They were too pricey, could only read one tag at a time, and suffered from other technological issues.Based on work at MIT’s Auto-ID Center, ThingMagic developed RFID readers for the supply chain that could read many tags, simultaneously, across multiple radio frequencies and from greater distances....