Speaker 1: Welcome to tech Stuff, a production from iHeartRadio. He there,
Speaker 1: and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host, Jonathan Strickland.
Speaker 1: I'm an executive producer with iHeart Podcasts. And how the
Speaker 1: tech are you? All right? I got a story for y'all.
Speaker 1: In the mid tenth century, Harold, son of Gorm the Old,
Speaker 1: took up the mission that his father had followed his
Speaker 1: entire life, which was to unite his home country of
Speaker 1: Denmark and then after that further conquer the neighboring regions.
Speaker 1: He converted to Christianity, and then he made the rest
Speaker 1: of the Danes do it too, And he actually went
Speaker 1: so far as to give his father's tomb a Christian
Speaker 1: glow up. Because daddy was a pagan and Mama was
Speaker 1: a go go girl. His own son would eventually rise
Speaker 1: up against him. But what does all this have to
Speaker 1: do with tech, Well, it kind of has a little
Speaker 1: bit to do with oral hygiene. See, back in the
Speaker 1: dark age, is not everybody was fastidious about brushing their
Speaker 1: teeth after every meal, and don't get me started un flossing,
Speaker 1: either dental floss or the outdated meme dance. And Old
Speaker 1: Harry got himself a gammy tooth, So it was a
Speaker 1: dead tooth, you see, and it sort of had this grayish,
Speaker 1: bluish hue. This gave rise to folks referring to him
Speaker 1: as Bluetooth. And this is where the word bluetooth comes from.
Speaker 1: The word we use to name a wireless communications technology
Speaker 1: comes from a medieval Danish king with a gross dead tooth.
Speaker 1: This is not a joke, this is real. So why
Speaker 1: why is Bluetooth named after this? Well, it helps when
Speaker 1: you know that the Swedish telecommunications company Ericsson developed the
Speaker 1: Bluetooth standard. So Sweden has its own history of kings obviously,
Speaker 1: and Sweden is nestled between Denmark and Norway, to countries
Speaker 1: that old Harry stank Tooth ruled over, but Sweden was
Speaker 1: more of a region of different provinces around this time.
Speaker 1: It actually coalesced into a kingdom around nine seventy Common era,
Speaker 1: which was late into Harry Stinkytooth's rain. So maybe none
Speaker 1: of the Swedish kings had suitable nicknames that would work
Speaker 1: as well for a technology. But the engineer leading the
Speaker 1: development of Bluetooth was doctor Yop Hartsen, whose name I
Speaker 1: know I have butchered and I apologize, but he was
Speaker 1: born in the Netherlands. That's actually of no help whatsoever.
Speaker 1: The Netherlands is on the other side of Germany from Denmark.
Speaker 1: Plus the Netherlands didn't become a country of its own
Speaker 1: until fifteen seventy nine, ages after Bluetooth was doing all
Speaker 1: of his unifying and converting over in Denmark and Norway.
Speaker 1: So the name actually came not from a Dane or
Speaker 1: a Swede or a Dutch person. Instead, it came from
Speaker 1: an American, specifically an electrical engineer named Jim Kardak, who
Speaker 1: was working as part of a consortium on this technology. Now,
Speaker 1: the story goes that Jim had been reading a great
Speaker 1: deal about the Vikings and that he had come across
Speaker 1: the story of King Harold Gormson and his Blue Tooth,
Speaker 1: and he thought that Harold, who worked to unite Norway
Speaker 1: and Denmark, was doing something similar to what this consortium
Speaker 1: was trying to do, but on a tech level, which
Speaker 1: was to unite PC and cellular devices through a short
Speaker 1: range wireless communications protocol. Now, the story goes that Bluetooth
Speaker 1: was just a code name. It was not supposed to
Speaker 1: be the permanent name of the technology. But here we are,
Speaker 1: and we'll talk more about that in a second, but
Speaker 1: we got the fun name story out of the way.
Speaker 1: It's kind of like the too long, didn't read version
Speaker 1: of this episode. But let's talk talk about the technology itself. Well,
Speaker 1: take another step back and we'll talk about what prompted
Speaker 1: this idea in the first place, and what role bluetooth
Speaker 1: plays in technology today and how it has evolved over
Speaker 1: the last several years. So back in around nineteen ninety four,
Speaker 1: doctor Hartson over at Ericson was working on developing technologies
Speaker 1: and standards for short range radio communications, and the idea
Speaker 1: was just to cut chords out of the equation, specifically
Speaker 1: the RS two thirty two wired standard. You had all
Speaker 1: these chords and cables that you needed when you had
Speaker 1: a computer connecting to all these different devices. That's kind
Speaker 1: of a hassle. Wouldn't it be nice if you could
Speaker 1: eliminate all that tangled mess and have a wireless means
Speaker 1: of having devices connect and synchronize with one another. That
Speaker 1: would be great. I remember my very first MP three player.
Speaker 1: That one actually required a wired connection to my PC
Speaker 1: if I wanted to add more music to the device.
Speaker 1: The same thing was true for personal Digital Assistance or PDAs.
Speaker 1: You would create your schedule and your contacts list and
Speaker 1: all that kind of stuff on your work computer. Then
Speaker 1: you would connect your PDA to that work computer via
Speaker 1: a cable and transfer the data over so that you
Speaker 1: could have access to that information while you were on
Speaker 1: the go. One potential alternative to wires was using infrared
Speaker 1: transmitters and receivers, similar to how most TV remotes work,
Speaker 1: although we've got Wi Fi TV remotes and Bluetooth ones too,
Speaker 1: but you know, back in the day, it was all infrared,
Speaker 1: and in fact, there are devices that used these kinds
Speaker 1: of methods to transmit data between them. You would connect
Speaker 1: a transmitter slash receiver a transceiver if you will, to
Speaker 1: your computer and you would use, you know, whatever device
Speaker 1: you had that also was outfitted with a transceiver to
Speaker 1: transfer data back and forth. But this meant you needed
Speaker 1: to have line of sight with the transceiver connected to
Speaker 1: the PC in order to do this. So if you've
Speaker 1: ever used an infrared based remote control, you know that
Speaker 1: if you get too out of line with a television
Speaker 1: or a cable bucks or whatever it is you're connected to,
Speaker 1: the remote doesn't work anymore. Same thing if you're doing
Speaker 1: that in the middle of the data transfer, you're not
Speaker 1: gonna get a successful transfer of information. There was a
Speaker 1: problem to be solved here how to manage data transfers
Speaker 1: over short distances without the use of wires or line
Speaker 1: of sight. You didn't need the communications to go very far,
Speaker 1: which would in theory mean you could find solutions that
Speaker 1: didn't require a great deal of power to operate. That
Speaker 1: was important too. Now, batteries have a limited amount of
Speaker 1: power storage, after all, and small batteries in particular have
Speaker 1: very limited power storage. So if you want something that's
Speaker 1: going to fit into like a mobile device form factor,
Speaker 1: it can't require a lot of power or it's not
Speaker 1: going to be useful. Rapid charging was not really a
Speaker 1: thing yet, and you didn't want to drain all your
Speaker 1: devices every time. You just needed to share data between them.
Speaker 1: And so doctor Hartson got to work stone and experimenting
Speaker 1: with short range wireless transmissions. His work led to him
Speaker 1: experimenting in the two point four gigahertz band of radio
Speaker 1: wave frequencies. So, just as a quick reminder, we typically
Speaker 1: measure radio waves in wavelength and in frequency, and these
Speaker 1: have an inverse relationship in that the smaller the wavelength,
Speaker 1: the higher the frequency. A two point four gigahertz frequency
Speaker 1: means that two point four billion wavelengths will pass a
Speaker 1: given point of space in a second. A two point
Speaker 1: four gigahertz signal is less capable than longer wavelength signals
Speaker 1: to penetrate hard reflective surfaces like concrete or metal, so
Speaker 1: they tend to bounce off of these surfaces. But doctor
Speaker 1: Hartson was concerned with short range communications, so that wasn't
Speaker 1: a deal breaker, right, Like if the Bluetooth signals or
Speaker 1: what would become Bluetooth signals can't go through walls, not
Speaker 1: that big a deal. It wasn't intended to be a
Speaker 1: long range communications solution. He also wanted his solution to
Speaker 1: be very power efficient, so it wasn't like the transmitters
Speaker 1: were going to be blasting this out at high amplitudes.
Speaker 1: One issue that he faced was that some Wi Fi
Speaker 1: protocols were already making use of signals in the two
Speaker 1: point four a gighertz band of frequencies, which meant any
Speaker 1: other protocol would need to account for potential interference with
Speaker 1: those signals, Like if you're all just broadcasting on the
Speaker 1: same signal, things are going to get messy. They'll just
Speaker 1: interfere with one another. So doctor Hartson implemented frequency hopping
Speaker 1: practices so that Bluetooth devices could operate in the same
Speaker 1: environment as Wi Fi without the signals actually getting crossed.
Speaker 1: And I should also mention the name Bluetooth still was
Speaker 1: not in use yet, that had not become a thing.
Speaker 1: So while doctor Hartson was working on these protocols that
Speaker 1: would become part of Bluetooth efforts, a few companies were
Speaker 1: forming this consortium to create a technology that had the
Speaker 1: same goals as what Hertson had over at Ericson, and
Speaker 1: these companies created what was called the Bluetooth Special Interest Group,
Speaker 1: or eventually it was called that it was a special
Speaker 1: interest group that didn't have a name for the technology.
Speaker 1: Initially this began with a collaboration between Ericsson and Nokia
Speaker 1: and Intel. Around nineteen ninety six to nineteen ninety eight
Speaker 1: is when this started to get moving. This was when
Speaker 1: Jim Kardak first proposed the code name Bluetooth for the technology.
Speaker 1: The Special Interest Group or SIG SIG would grow significantly,
Speaker 1: so today SIG boasts a community made up of more
Speaker 1: than forty thousand companies, Okay, the stage is set. We're
Speaker 1: going to take a quick break to thank our sponsors,
Speaker 1: and we'll be back to talk more about the origins
Speaker 1: of Bluetooth. We're back. So SIG, this special interest group
Speaker 1: surrounding this shortwave radio communications protocol, focuses on the task
Speaker 1: at hand. They build on Hartson's work, and they get
Speaker 1: closer to a point where they could launch a standard,
Speaker 1: but they remained stuck on the problem of what they're
Speaker 1: going to name it. So originally the thought was they
Speaker 1: were going to call it Personal Area Networking in alignment
Speaker 1: with Local Area Networking or LAN and Wide Area Networking
Speaker 1: or WAN, but the acronym would be PAN for Personal
Speaker 1: Area Networking, and has it turned out a whole lot
Speaker 1: of folks were using PAN in other ways already lots
Speaker 1: of other trademarks related to PAN out there, so establishing
Speaker 1: brand identity would be really challenging and probably litigious. So
Speaker 1: an alternative proposal was to call it radio wire, but
Speaker 1: the deadline to launch was rapidly approaching, and the team
Speaker 1: had not had the time to actually do a deep
Speaker 1: dive on a trademark search to make sure that radio
Speaker 1: wire wasn't going to conflict with any other existing trademarks,
Speaker 1: so really having no other port in the storm. As
Speaker 1: they were getting close to launch, they didn't have any
Speaker 1: other option but to stick with the code name Bluetooth.
Speaker 1: Harold's gross dental problem would become the official name for
Speaker 1: this technology. Interestingly, it would also provide inspiration for the logo.
Speaker 1: If you look at the logo of Bluetooth, it's actually
Speaker 1: the merger of two different runs. So one of those runes,
Speaker 1: if you were to look at it, kind of looks
Speaker 1: like an asterisk if you had stretched it a little vertically,
Speaker 1: and the other looks like an uppercase B. But the
Speaker 1: bee has sharp bits instead of curves, and they actually
Speaker 1: represent the initials of Hadrald Bluetooth. So it's a Viking
Speaker 1: H and a B combined with one another to make
Speaker 1: the logo, which I think is pretty cute. SIG released
Speaker 1: the first Bluetooth standard, also known as Bluetooth one point zero,
Speaker 1: in nineteen ninety nine. The standard at that time could
Speaker 1: support a theoretical transmission throughput of around seven hundred and
Speaker 1: twenty one kilobits per second, and it had a broadcast
Speaker 1: range of just ten meters or right under thirty three
Speaker 1: feet or so these limitations meant that Bluetooth one point
Speaker 1: zero was not suitable for stuff like streaming audio. You
Speaker 1: could send small packets of data between devices, but it
Speaker 1: just really wasn't up to snuff for things like persistent
Speaker 1: streaming connections between like a phone and some wireless earbuds. Also,
Speaker 1: when I say seven hundred and twenty one kilobits per second,
Speaker 1: that was just the theoretical throughput. In real world situations
Speaker 1: you would typically get much smaller or lower throughputs. And
Speaker 1: that's the case with any data transfer technology. You'll often
Speaker 1: hear one figure advertised and then in practice you'll find
Speaker 1: that you get something very different. And it's just because ideally,
Speaker 1: if everything works exactly as it can at the best
Speaker 1: of its ability, you'll get that theoretical top end. It's
Speaker 1: just the real world rarely is ideal. Now, the first
Speaker 1: device is to actually feature Bluetooth chips, and them came
Speaker 1: out around two thousand. The very first phone to include it,
Speaker 1: at least as as far as manufacturing is concerned, was
Speaker 1: the Sony Ericson T thirty six mobile phone. Makes sense,
Speaker 1: Ericson was behind this effort from the very beginning, but
Speaker 1: that was not the first phone to actually hit store shelves.
Speaker 1: That one would be the T thirty nine, and it
Speaker 1: came out in early two thousand and one. The aim
Speaker 1: of Bluetooth one point zero was just to serve as
Speaker 1: a wireless alternative to that RS two thirty two standard.
Speaker 1: Lots of computer devices relied on that standard, from printers
Speaker 1: to computer mice, to external hard drives to modems, and
Speaker 1: again that adds up to a whole bunch of cables.
Speaker 1: So Bluetooth one point zero provided a chance to free
Speaker 1: users from the tangled web. The technology wasn't an overnight
Speaker 1: smash success though. For one thing, it was competing against
Speaker 1: Wi Fi protocols. Wi Fi, however, was much more expensive. Bluetooth,
Speaker 1: being a cheaper alternative could help manufacturers keep the cost
Speaker 1: of production lower on their devices. The other big reason
Speaker 1: it took a while for Bluetooth to really take off
Speaker 1: is that it's rare that someone actually updates all of
Speaker 1: their equipment and devices at the same time, and it
Speaker 1: doesn't do you much good if only one half of
Speaker 1: the devices you need to pair together supports Bluetooth, so
Speaker 1: adoption took a little time. With the introduction of Bluetooth
Speaker 1: one point one in two thousand and one, you could
Speaker 1: hold a voice call over Bluetooth, but the fidelity requirement
Speaker 1: for a voice call is lower than what you would
Speaker 1: want for music, at least for most folks anyway, so
Speaker 1: you still weren't really using Bluetooth to listen to music
Speaker 1: off a device. The features introduced in this update included
Speaker 1: Bluetooth Headset Profile and the hands Free Profile. In two
Speaker 1: thousand and three, Bluetooth one point two would introduce the
Speaker 1: Advanced Audio Distribution Profile aka A two DP, which sounds
Speaker 1: like it's a Star Wars droid. This was the upgrade
Speaker 1: that would allow for actual streaming music and other high
Speaker 1: end audio to wireless speakers and headsets. So really it
Speaker 1: was with one point two, which again launched in two
Speaker 1: thousand and three, where we started to really kind of
Speaker 1: see the true potential for Bluetooth as far as consumer
Speaker 1: devices go. SIG continued to evolve the standard. They improved
Speaker 1: it in two thousand and four with the release of
Speaker 1: Bluetooth two point zero. The big advance here was improved
Speaker 1: range of operation and data bandwidth. This version included support
Speaker 1: for remote control devices for audio and visual technologies. An
Speaker 1: update in two thousand and seven called Bluetooth two point
Speaker 1: one included a much needed security update. So originally Bluetooth
Speaker 1: would broadcast out a device's address just willy nilly, it
Speaker 1: just it had to. That was part of the the standard,
Speaker 1: and one early concern around Bluetooth implementations was that it
Speaker 1: could be possible for an unauthorized individual to connect to
Speaker 1: a Bluetooth transceiver that was in pairing mode, and that's
Speaker 1: clearly not a great thing if you want really good
Speaker 1: security and privacy. In two thousand and nine we got
Speaker 1: Bluetooth three point zero. This allowed for high speed data
Speaker 1: transfers between devices connected via Bluetooth, and by high speed,
Speaker 1: I mean like twenty three megabits per second, which still
Speaker 1: is not it's not super fast compared to Wi Fi,
Speaker 1: but it was a huge step over earlier versions of Bluetooth.
Speaker 1: And besides, Bluetooth's purpose was to fill a specific niche
Speaker 1: in wireless communications. It wasn't to replace Wi Fi, it
Speaker 1: was to augment what WiFi is already doing. In twenty thirteen,
Speaker 1: we got a split with Bluetooth, so one branch of
Speaker 1: the fork went with the longer range, higher bandwidth version
Speaker 1: of Bluetooth that we've been talking about so this version
Speaker 1: requires a little bit more power than the other branch
Speaker 1: of the fork. This would become low energy or l
Speaker 1: E Bluetooth. This alternative version was ideal for wearables devices
Speaker 1: that had much smaller batteries. The LE Bluetooth protocol is
Speaker 1: more energy efficient and thus doesn't put too much of
Speaker 1: a strain on devices that have these small batteries. Both
Speaker 1: branches would get an update in twenty seventeen with the
Speaker 1: release of Bluetooth five, which added in more improvements both
Speaker 1: in data transfer bandwidth and in range. Bluetooth, particularly l
Speaker 1: E Bluetooth, is also used in a lot of Internet
Speaker 1: of Things implementations. IoT devices communicate in small data transfers
Speaker 1: and require frequent or persistent connections, so an energy efficient
Speaker 1: protocol designed for small data transfers is ideal. Recently, in
Speaker 1: twenty twenty two, SIG released new LEE Audio specifications allowing
Speaker 1: for low energy Bluetooth implementations with quality improvements for audio,
Speaker 1: and in twenty twenty three, Bluetooth five point four introduced
Speaker 1: synchronized communication between devices in a particular area using periodic
Speaker 1: broadcast control. Now this is ideal for IoT implementations. You
Speaker 1: might have like a central control hub and hundreds or
Speaker 1: even potentially thousands of low powered IoT sensors all forming
Speaker 1: part of the network, and they might use this particular
Speaker 1: version of Bluetooth to transfer information between them because it
Speaker 1: has that very power efficient design to it, and throughout
Speaker 1: the evolution, engineers made sure to keep Bluetooth backwards compatible,
Speaker 1: so if one device supports Bluetooth five but the other
Speaker 1: one is limited to Bluetooth three, these two devices can
Speaker 1: still talk to each other, which is a gosh darn
Speaker 1: good decision to make. So that's the skinny on Bluetooth,
Speaker 1: a very high level look at it, and I really
Speaker 1: think it's interesting to note that this thing was never
Speaker 1: meant to be called Bluetooth permanently. That was just kind
Speaker 1: of a code name, a funny little quirky thing to choose,
Speaker 1: inspired by a medieval Danish king with a nasty tooth,
Speaker 1: and that ends up becoming a formative wireless technology that
Speaker 1: we use today. I love stories like that. I hope
Speaker 1: you are all well, and I'll talk to you again
Speaker 1: really soon. Tech Stuff is an iHeartRadio production. For more
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