Wireless downloads existed long before WiFi ever did

Wireless downloads existed long before WiFi ever did. In the early 1980’s the hosts of British radio show Datarama figured out an easy way (at the time) for fellow programmers like themselves to share their homemade video games with the masses.

The process was simple: “converting digital data into analog tones, recording them onto a cassette, and broadcasting the sounds over the radio,” according to a video by Machinima (watch, runtime: 1:41). “The listeners would then record the broadcast with a tape recorder allowing them to insert the tape into a cassette tape drive attached to their personal computer,” which then allowed them to turn the data back into digital form. The process, which also picked up in Serbia and the Netherlands, was not just exclusive to games, but programmers could also load “all kinds of applications, including encyclopedias and calculators.”