DutchNews.nl, April 4, 2015
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| Jaap Haartsen |
Dutch scientist Jaap Haartsen, who invented
the wireless communication system Bluetooth, is being included in the National
Inventors Hall of Fame in the US.
Haartsen, who now works for US company
Plantronics in Emmen, is one of 12 people who will be inducted into the Hall of
Fame in May. Previous inductees include Thomas Edison, the Wright brothers and
Henry Ford.
Haartsen’s finding is used in over three billion gadgets worldwide
and he is being recognised by the US because of the enormous impact his
invention has had on society, the Volkskrant reported.
The Dutchman, who
studied at Delft University of Technology, invented the technology while
working for Ericsson in Sweden in 1994 and the patent is in his name.
He said
in an interview with the Volkskrant that he had been asked by his bosses at
Ericsson to develop something which allowed mobile phones to communicate with
other equipment.
Risk
Haartsen told the paper that while he might have come up
with the idea if he had been in the Netherlands at the time, he would not have
been able to realise it because of the lack of risk-takers.
‘In the
Netherlands, you have to put your house up as security if you want to take such
a risk with your company,’ he said.
‘The way in which much research is done
here is more like a beauty contest,’ he said. ‘The people with the
prettiest stories get the money.’
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