Fourier Transform and Spectral Analysis (FFT)

The Fourier Transform decomposes a time-domain signal into its constituent sinusoidal frequencies, revealing the spectral content hidden within complex waveforms. Joseph Fourier introduced the continuous transform in 1822, but the computationally efficient Fast Fourier Transform (FFT) was formalized by James Cooley and John Tukey in 1965. Their landmark algorithm reduced the computational complexity from O(N²) to O(N log N), making large-scale spectral analysis practical across engineering, physics, and data science.