Bluetooth

Bluetooth is a short-range radio technology developed in early 1998 to eliminate the cables that connect electronic devices. Its inventors hoped to create a unified set of rules (in other words, a standardized protocol) of communication between devices, to resolve the problems faced by consumers inundated with incompatible mobile electronic devices. Ideally, smart pagers, cell phones, e-books, personal digital assistants (PDAs), and laptop computers would all be able to “talk” and exchange data, without the need for a separate suitcase just to carry the cables.

Bluetooth is designed to work through tiny short-range FM radio transceivers embedded into mobile devices. These can be installed either directly or through adapters, creating a kind of “virtual cable,” an invisible pipeline for electronic data exchanges that would wirelessly link devices within a range of up to 30 feet. Bluetooth's radio signals are robust enough to work through walls.

The technology was devised after Scandinavian telecom company Ericsson launched a 1994 initiative to study a low-power, low-cost radio connection between mobile phones and their accessories. Ericsson approached mobile-device makers about the concept in 1997, to discuss the cooperative development and promotion of the technology. The idea gained momentum, and in April 1998, an industry consortium including Ericsson, IBM, Intel, Nokia, and Toshiba formed the Bluetooth Special Interest Group (SIG) to begin work on uniform specifications. The SIG, which by 2001 included more than 2,000 companies, was still working on bringing Bluetooth-equipped products to market early that year. The companies are working on the technology in tandem, to ensure that Bluetooth works with any device, regardless of the manufacturer.

That concept of unity, in fact, gave the technology its name: The historical Bluetooth (whose real name was Harald Blåtand) was the blueberry-munching Viking leader who united the nations of Denmark and Norway in the tenth century.

The technology was announced publicly in May 1998. Hype intensified in 1999, when the first official technical standard, Bluetooth 1.0, was unveiled. Bluetooth, critics raved, would be a step toward bringing to life some of the wilder fantasies of Nicholas Negroponte's 1995 book Being Digital, such as toasters capable of communicating with other appliances.

Bluetooth could not do such things, at least not initially; it was designed only to operate at data speeds of just under one megabyte per second (Mbps), and at a range of just 10 yards. But it could allow a PDA-carrying office worker to use a handheld PC to wire-lessly select, order, and pay for a can of soda from a pop machine, debiting the money from the user's wireless online bank account. It could allow a laptop computer to use a cell phone to retrieve email, or make it possible for a notebook PC to send a document wire-lessly to a fax machine. It might equip a car radio to play back voicemail messages. In the end, proponents hope that it will connect all cell phones, laptops, etc., with just about any other chip-embedded computing gadget. It could even make possible the much-discussed activity of “sofa-surfing,” wirelessly linking a laptop PC to an Internet-connected interactive TV.

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