One of the most famous modern technologies has a name and a logo for a Viking-era king with a bad tooth: a quarter of a year ago, two engineers came up with the idea for the “Bluetooth” moniker over beer.
In the late 1990s, Sven Mattisson, a Swedish engineer working at the telecom company Ericsson, and Jim Kardach, an American hired by Intel, were among those developing the revolutionary technology.
In 1998, at the beginning of the “wireless” era, the two men were part of an international alliance that created a universal standard for the technology first developed by Ericsson in 1994.
But before that, they had struggled to show their wireless results.
Intel had the Biz-RF wireless program, Ericsson had MC-Link, while Nokia had the low RF power. Kardach, Mattisson, and others presented their views at a conference in Toronto in late 1997.
“Jim and I said people didn’t appreciate what we put forward,” Mattisson, who is now 65 and ending his career at Ericsson, recalled in a recent interview with AFP.
The engineer, who had traveled all the way to Canada from Sweden for the hour-long park, decided to hang out with Kardach for the evening before flying home.
“We got a lukewarm reception of our vague recommendation, and it was only at this point that I realized we needed codename for the project that everyone could use,” Kardach explained in long account of his webpage.
To drown out their grief, the two men went to a local Toronto bar and ended up talking about history, one of Kardach’s victims.
“We had a bit of a beer … and Jim is interested in history so he asked me about the Vikings, so we talked a lot about that,” Mattisson said, admitting his memory of the Vikings. that historic night is now somewhat hazy.
Kardach said he didn’t know about the Vikings but that they were “running around with horned helmets plundering and blasting places, and that they were cunning leaders.”
Mattisson suggested that Kardach read a famous Swedish historical novel about the Vikings, entitled “The Long Ships”.
Set in the 10th century – a “chauvinistic story” about a boy who became hostile to the Vikings, Mattisson says – one name in the book caught the attention of Kardach: the name of the Danish king, Harald “Bluetooth” Gormsson.
An important historical figure in 10th-century Scandinavia, the nickname of the Danish king is said to refer to a dead tooth, or, as other stories call it, a favorite for blueberries or even simple translation error.
During his reign, Denmark turned its back on its pagan beliefs and Norse gods, gradually converting to Christianity.
However, he is best known for uniting Norway and Denmark in a union which lasted until 1814.
King united Viking rivals – the parallel brought joy to those who wanted to integrate the PC and cellular industries with a short range wireless connection.
And the description of the king goes beyond the name: the Bluetooth logo, which at first glance resembles a geometric squiggle, is in fact a true reflection of the verses for the letters “H” and “B”, the king’s initials.
With low cost and low power consumption, Bluetooth was finally launched in May 1998, using technology that allowed computer devices to communicate with each other in a short range without fixed cables.
The first consumer device with the technology hit the market in 1999, and the name, which was originally intended to be temporary until something better was designed, became permanent.