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“Hey, what’s the 802.11 password?” I’m guessing you’ve never heard anyone ask that. But someone asking you for the Wi-Fi password? Every family vacation you have taken in the last five or so years?
I was on a ski trip recently and was wondering how we ended up with phones that connect to my Audi via something called Bluetooth, an iPad that streams Netflix in the condo using Wi-Fi, and somewhere a router connected to the granddaddy of packet pushers, a thing called Ethernet. Three memorable but completely unrelated names. Where did they come from? As a marketer who loves branding and origin stories, I had to know.
Ethernet – Where It All Began
For those of you young enough to never have had to crawl around under dusty desks to route networking cables, a brief primer. It used to be a thing. Years before wireless data networks were available in workplaces and homes, we used to run cables from routers and plug them into PCs and printers. We used coaxial or twisted pair cables with logical, but clunky, distinctions like 10-Base-2 and 10-Base-T. These are all types of Ethernet cables. But what’s an Ethernet? It was simply the name invented by the godfather of modern networking, Robert Metcalf.
In 1972, while working at Xerox PARC – the lab that also brought us the mouse, the laser printer, and the GUI – Metcalf was looking for a name for the network they were using to connect Xerox Alto workstations. It was originally called the Alto Aloha Network, combining the name of the Xerox workstation with ALOHAnet, a pioneering internetworking system invented at the University of Hawaii (Yes, Hawaii. Funny how no one talks about our 50th state playing a role in the development of the modern internet. But I digress.). Wanting to make it clear that the local networking technology could be used by any workstation on any network – which is what we now call an open protocol – he changed the name to Ethernet. Ether is the medium that carries light through space. Metcalf thought it a fitting metaphor.
Figure 1: Metcalf’s first sketch of Ethernet
Wi-Fi – The Engineers Who Hired Interbrand
Fast forwarding a decade or so, a key moment in the development of Wi-Fi came in 1985 with an FCC ruling that allowed part of the radio spectrum to be used for free, by anyone, for communications. Technology firms began to experiment with data transfer over this newly-open spectrum, but there was no common networking protocol. Another decade or so later, in 1997, the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), approved a new wireless networking standard called 802.11.
Two years later, in 1999, a number of vendors formed the Wireless Ethernet Compatibility Alliance (WECA) to promote interoperability using the new standard. Realizing that the term IEEE 802.11b wasn’t going to stick with the average user, the group did something I would never expect a group of engineers to do. They hired the global branding heavyweight Interbrand to come up with something catchier.
Interbrand came up with a number of suggestions, including Wi-Fi, a nod to the 1950s-era “high fidelity,” or “hi-fi,” term used by marketers to sell stereo systems. Though the term was inspired by hi-fi, it does not stand for “wireless fidelity,” as some people think.
As reported by Boing Boing, the alliance engineers then did something I would expect engineers to do. Many in the group couldn’t stomach a name not at all grounded in the technical reality. Engineers are literal, and Wi-Fi was not. So, the group added the tagline, “The Standard for Wireless Fidelity,” even though a wireless “fidelity” standard was not what they designed.
Bluetooth – The Codename that Stuck
King Harald Gormsson is well known for two things: uniting Norway and Denmark, and for his dead tooth. It was that dead tooth that earned him the nickname “Bluetooth.” In 1996, engineers from Intel, Ericsson, and Nokia came together to standardize a short-range radio technology to support interconnectivity among various devices. No doubt taking some inspiration from his Nordic counterparts, Jim Kardach from Intel suggested Bluetooth, after the king who unified Scandinavia, as a fun codename for the project. They were, after all, about to embark on a mission to unify the world of devices, from Scandinavia and beyond.
When it came time to roll out the technology, the two proposed official names presented problems. Personal Area Networking (PAN) wasn’t unique enough and brought up thousands of unrelated search results. The other, RadioWire, was interesting, but the trademark search couldn’t be completed in time for launch. So, the team went with the codename, Bluetooth, and it stuck.
And the Bluetooth icon we see at the top of our screens? A nice engineering touch, it is a made-up rune that merges the the runes for Harald (ᚼ) and Bluetooth (ᛒ).
Figure 2: Combining the runes for Harald (ᚼ) and Bluetooth (ᛒ) to make the Bluetooth logo.
I’m thankful to these networking engineers who, however they got there, gave us memorable names for complicated technologies. Alas, so much of our tech is not as digestible. I wish the engineers behind the USB connector had been a bit more inspired. They would have saved me from several conversations like this:
Family Member: Do you have a charger on you?
Me: What size? USB A, Mini, or C?
Family Member: What?
Got thoughts on other tech standards that did a good job branding? Let me know in the comments.
Header Image Credit: Wikimedia Commons
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