Blue Scream of Jeff: August 2017

Wednesday, August 30, 2017

When it comes to wireless technology, there’s nothing like a Dane

Think you know who invented Bluetooth? It was this

guy, a Viking King named Harald Bluetooth who

unitedDenmark in the late 900s.

Vacations are supposed to be about getting away from work and relaxing, but sometimes your profession has a way of finding you in unexpected ways even when you are trying to get away from it all.

That happened to me this month when Mrs. BlueScreamOfJeff and I were cruising on the Baltic Sea visiting the Viking homelands.

So what could this group of great explorers and warriors possibly have to do with my job working with computers and other high-tech gadgets more than a millennia after they began raiding their way across Europe, overrunning England and eventually making it to the shores of North America?

It turns out quite a lot, actually.

On our visit to the Copenhagen, the capital and most populous city in Denmark, we learned that their country’s first king “invented” Bluetooth – the short-range wireless technology that connects things like keyboards and mice to computers, headphones or speakers to your portable music player and even connects your smartphone, smartwatch and car together.

Okay, so maybe King Harald Bluetooth, the man who united Denmark and made it a Christian nation, didn’t actually invent that technology.

That was done by Dr. Jaap Haartsen, an engineer working at the Ericsson corporation, based out of Sweden.

But according to our tour guides, it was old King Harald who inspired it.

It seems this Viking king had a pretty good knack for getting people from different lands to work-together for the betterment of all, much the way the technology he inspired gets dissimilar devices to work together for our betterment. Legend also has it that he had a penchant for snacking on blueberries which would then make his mouth appear blue.

Oh and that now ubiquitous little blue, Bluetooth logo you see on everything these days?

Well that’s not a symbol used to denote electronic circuits or something cool just dreamed up by a graphic designer. It’s actually a combination of the old Danish runes for “H” and “B,” the good king’s initials.

So the next time you’re pairing those fancy new wireless headphones you just got with your ultra-modern smartphone, thank the Vikings and lift a horn of ale and shout “Skål!” in their honor.