In 1998, Ericsson, IBM, Intel, Nokia and Toshiba led the bluetooth Special Interest Group (SIG) and launched Bluetooth v1.0 a year later. Soon after, this convenient, low-cost, power-hungry technology began to rapidly spread in consumer electronic devices that support short-range wireless communication. Fast forward 24 years, people have long been accustomed to using Bluetooth audio devices to call and play music.
As a modern invention, Bluetooth has become ubiquitous on mobile phones, PCs, keyboards and mice, headsets, in-cars, and countless smart IoT devices.
But back in the mid-1990s, when a number of U.S. companies were racing to develop a revolutionary technology called a short-range radio link.
Speaking of the birth of Bluetooth, we have to mention Sven Mattisson, a Swedish engineer who works at Ericsson, and Jim Kardach, an Intel mobile computing engineer in the United States.
In the late 1990s, Mattisson, Kardach and other engineers from the company gathered to present their competing standards and ideas at a symposium in Toronto.
Kardach then disclosed first-hand information about Bluetooth on his personal website: "At the Home-RF SIG conference, Mattisson and I introduced Biz-RF and MC-LINK, respectively."
After the workshop, Mattisson and Kardach went to a local bar for a drink. While lamenting the failed bid, the two discussed the history of the Vikings.
Mattisson, from Sweden, suggested that Kardach read The Long Ships, a historical book about Scandinavia seafarers written by Frans Gunnar Bengtsson.
The protagonist of the story is King Harald Gormsson, whose great achievement is the unified governance of many different tribes in Denmark and Norway. But what is more familiar to everyone is his nickname - Bluetooth.
Some historians claim that the king had a broken "blue" tooth. Others believe he is so fond of eating blueberries or licorice that he dyed his teeth blue. But for the truth of this history, no one can reveal it.
Interestingly, Mattisson and Kardach were very fond of so-called symmetry, and the Viking king had brought unity and communication to different ethnic groups, coinciding with their invention of wireless technology that opened up different electronic devices.
As can be seen from the "About Us" page on the bluetooth alliance official website, this name has been used "temporarily" for a long time. At first they hoped that marketing departments could come up with smarter candidates, such as "RadioWire" and "PAN" (Personal Area Network).
Embarrassingly, PAN was already in use by other projects, and they couldn't get a full search of the RadioWire trademark before it was officially released. As a result, after sticking with the "Bluetooth" name for a while, the term proved popular and was eventually officially normalized.
As for the current ubiquitous Bluetooth logo, Slash Gear points out that it is actually composed of the initials of Harald Bluetooth ,"" and "" and written by the ancient Norse rune letters called "futhark".
Source: cnBeta