here's who really invented wireless e-mail

here's who really invented wireless e-mail

"GEOFF GOODFELLOW is a Silicon Valley entrepreneur who came up with an idea that resulted in a $612.5 million payday. But he will never see a penny of it. He remains little known even in Silicon Valley and, perhaps most surprising, he doesn't really mind.

And herein lies one of the stranger tales about innovation and money in the world of technology.

A high-school dropout, Mr. Goodfellow had his light-bulb moment in 1982, when he came up with the idea of sending electronic mail messages wirelessly to a portable device — like a BlackBerry. Only back then, there was no BlackBerry; his vision centered on pagers. He eventually did get financial backing to start a wireless e-mail service in the early 1990's, but it failed."

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/16/t...0580ca72a&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss

And in the same vein we should mention that Al Gore invented the Internet.:huh2:


Ten (10) years before this guy had his lightbulb go on to send messages to a pager, there were people using wireless e-mail. Maybe that's why he never got a patent?
I don't know who really invented it or where it was first demonstrated, but I do know that in the early 1970s the mobile data terminals in cop cars (e.g., in Palm Beach, FL) had an e-mail capability - you put in addresses, typed your message and hit transmit (send); replies worked about the same as today. Although the terminals were big and required a radio and battery, the concept is the same. Messages could be sent to any other similarly equipped vehicle (or fixed locations) in the country. Guess the other big difference is that they were called "admin" messages, rather than e-mail. (The article mentions Motorola -- other players included IBM and Kustom Electronics (guilty of producing Kustom traffic radars ).
Perhaps the most valuable use of "admin" messages was to chat up the cute, young dispatchers without the world being able to monitor. (It's great to be in on the ground floor of new technology before there are rules and laws constraining use:naughty: )

Just hate to see BS propagated:thumbsdow

H_Alpha said:

Perhaps the most valuable use of "admin" messages was to chat up the cute, young dispatchers without the world being able to monitor.

Click to expand...

Cute?, Young? dispatchers? Not in my world.

We did have one with about the sexiest voice in the universe. One night a cop from two counties over got on our net, got the info he wanted and when she asked if he needed anything else he said "Yea,.....what's your name?" in a tone that implied he was in love and would not be able to get out of the squad car for a while without his nightstick showing.

She was a great lady and a good friend but cute was not the word you would apply.

The first time I recall using e-mail with pagers was in the early 1980s. We had UUCP based e-mail and we monitored the telephone company switching systems. All we could send was numbers, since that's all the pagers supported. We used the mini-computer's dial-out modem to dial a pager, wait X seconds and then send the trouble code. This process was triggered by an event that programs on the mini-computer detected.

There have been many programs to interface with text pagers. The freeware ixocico program was Copyright (c) 1992, Tom Limoncelli. That's one that I used for years to send e-mail to my pager. I don't remember what I used before that, and I don't know when the IXO protocol was made public.

Sigh. good old days.

Daniel

Mike Painter said:

Cute?, Young? dispatchers? Not in my world.

Click to expand...

Probably selective memory on my part but that was also in the days before non-female flight attendants, so maybe the old days were better?

Anyway, young or not so young, all the dispatchers I knew got dead serious when an officer got in a tense situation -- their first loyalty was to the guys on the street. Great group of people -- hope it's still that way.

pretty coool that yet more prior art is coming out!!

patent laws need to be changed to prevent this type of abuse. some possible ethics issues may aply to attorneys in this litigation.