Bluetooth: A tale of a King and a Technology

"Bhai send me this song from your phone", asked Priyam, while we were listening the soulful song from the newly released blockbuster Rang De Basanti. "Ok bro. Bluetooth open karo", responded Shikhar while switching on the Bluetooth on his Nokia N-Gage phone. "But my phone supports Infrared only ☹️", Priyam said nervously. "What bro, Infrared is an old technology. Buy yourself a new phone na. Lucknow ke Yuvraj ho tum, but your phone doesn't live up to your stature", winced Shikhar while pulling Priyam's leg. But he was right. Using Infrared to transfer data was really a thing of the past, even back in 2005, when this conversation happened.

Before the likes of Gaana.com seeing the light of the day, we depended heavily on crowd-sourcing the songs. And Bluetooth provided us the platform to share songs and other data files easily with one another. Instead of keeping the phones in line-of-sight as was required for Infrared enabled file sharing, Bluetooth permitted data transfer with only 1 condition: The paired phones should not be more than 10 metres away. Amazing technology, which gained importance with every passing day, carved its niche in various applications used by one and all in our daily lives today. But are you aware as to how does it work and what is the history behind its uncanny name ? Let us find out. 😊

History behind the name 'Bluetooth'

The leading technology giant Apple, got its name because the founders thought the name was "fun, spirited and not intimidating". The name cropped up in the first place when Steve Jobs suggested it to Steve Wozniak while returning from an Apple orchard. But how did Bluetooth get such an odd name? There is quite a story behind it.

The legend goes back some 1000 years back. There was a King by the name of Harald Blatand who reigned between 958 AD to 986 AD. He is credited with uniting the two warring northern European regions (present day Denmark, Norway and Sweden). A point worth mentioning here about the King is his special liking for blueberries. His affinity to the indigo coloured fruit was the reason he earned the nickname Bluetooth i.e. King Harald Bluetooth. However, people or even the King himself wouldn't have known that he would be famous all across the world one day, albeit by his nickname!

Blueberries

When did Bluetooth come into existence?

Ericsson is accorded to be the progenitor of the Bluetooth technology. The company started working on creating a wireless technology in the year 1994. However, it wasn’t until 1999 when Ericsson, along with 4 other companies Intel, Toshiba, IBM, Nokia (called Special Interest Group or SIG) launched the first version of Bluetooth.

The credit for naming the technology goes to an Intel engineer Jim Kardach. As was the case with Steve Jobs who happened to visit an Apple orchard before the discussion on the company name, Jim was reading about our protagonist King Harald. The name of the King struck him as similar to the way the new wireless technology connected or united multiple devices, the King was known for his noble deed of uniting two belligerent factions. He suggested it to the SIG group and the name Bluetooth was coined.

How does Bluetooth work?

For the technology to work, applications are installed with a device called Transceiver which acts as a both Transmitter and Receiver. During pairing, the device that initiates the transmission is called the Master, while the responding device is called Slave. Typically, a master can connect up to 7 slaves to form a personal area network. The connected devices match up w.r.t. clock timings for sending and receiving data. The data, in the form of packets, is then transferred between the paired devices in the frequency range of 2.40 GHz - 2.48 GHz. To avoid interference, the devices hop between the frequencies in the available range until all the data is transferred (Frequency hopping spread spectrum method).

So this is the story of the commonly used technology. The nerd notes below share some other important facts w.r.t. Bluetooth.

Nerd Notes:

1. The Bluetooth logo is derived from the King Harald's initials, written in ancient Germanic text 
2. Today, the Bluetooth Special Interest group(SIG) comprises 33,000 companies
3. TVS was the first motor company to launch a Bluetooth enabled scooter in India in Feb 2018
4. In April 2018, a young 13 year old amateur archaeologist discovered an ancient treasure trove which allegedly belonged to King Harald

Keep reading and don't forget to smile :)

- Prakhar