Sven mattisson biography books
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The Garden of Forking Paths
Thank you for reading The Garden of Forking Paths. I published this edition when this newsletter had a few hundred subscribers; now there are roughly 25, of you. Since I love this bit of forgotten history that connects distant past with technological present, I’ve decided to resurrect it for your enjoyment. I’ll be back with a new edition early next week—one of the wildest stories you’ve probably never heard.
This is the tale of an ancient and long forgotten Viking king, the scattered bones of his grandson, a curious calamity during the English civil war, and the ursprung story for the name and logo of a modern technology that you’re likely to use today.
Around , Harald Gormsson became the Viking king of Denmark. As his name suggests, he was the son of King Gorm the Old (they just don’t name kings as well as they used to, do they? Charles III? C’mon.). There aren’t many sources from the period, but we do know that he was an accomplished builder
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Founders of Bluetooth technology mark anniversary at Viking site
The seven founders of Bluetooth technology have just celebrated its 25th anniversary by visiting the Viking site in Denmark that helped inspire its name.
When American engineer Jim Kardach from Intel was looking for a name for the new technology he and his team had invented, he recalled a conversation with his Swedish counterpart at Ericsson, Sven Mattisson.
The major technology companies Intel, Ericsson, Nokia, and Toshiba had worked together in the s to create a common standard for wireless transmission between computers and mobile phones.
The seven pioneers behind Bluetooth technology honored its 25th anniversary by gathering at the very Viking site in Denmark that influenced its unique name. Photo: Kongernes Jelling
In beer veritas
Mattisson had traveled all the way to Toronto in to meet Kardach and present their ideas during a one-hour strategy meeting at a seminar.
At the time, their project receiv
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A Swede and American tell the story of how they hatched the idea for the moniker &#;Bluetooth&#; over beers.
At the end of the s, Sven Mattisson, a Swedish engineer working at telecom group Ericsson, and Jim Kardach, an American employed by Intel, were among those developing the revolutionary technology.
In , at the dawn of the “wireless” era, the two men were part of an international consortium that created a universal standard for the technology first developed by Ericsson in
But prior to that, they had struggled to pitch their wireless products. Intel had its Biz-RF wireless programme, Ericsson had MC-Link, while Nokia had its Low Power RF. Kardach, Mattisson and others presented their ideas at a seminar in Toronto in late
“Jim and I said that people did not appreciate what we presented,” Mattisson, now 65 and winding down his career at Ericsson, recalled in a recent interview with AFP.
The engineer, who had travelled all the way