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The Real Inventor of Wireless Email?

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the i-invented-the-hippo dept.

theodp writes "The NY Times reports on Geoff Goodfellow, possibly the real inventor of wireless e-mail, who says NTP was concerned that his earlier work might undermine its patent claims and went to some lengths to ensure that it did not, including gagging Goodfellow during the RIM lawsuit. Not only did high-school dropout Goodfellow - who hung out as a teen in the lab of Doug Englebart - describe wireless e-Mail in 1982, he implemented it in the early 1990's."

6 of 106 comments (clear)

  1. Tesla did it by cyber_rigger · · Score: 3, Informative


    http://www.teslascience.org/

    His equipment was not very portable though.

  2. Goodnight? by bondsbw · · Score: 2, Informative
    Not only did high-school dropout Goodnight - who hung out as a teen in the lab of Doug Englebart

    Am I missing something? Maybe theodp needs some sleep?

    --
    All my liberal friends think I'm a conservative, all my conservative friends think I'm a liberal.
  3. Re:Very few things are done for the first time by Russ+Nelson · · Score: 2, Informative

    this guy is a publicity whore

    Only to the extent that anybody who has a product that they're selling is a publicity whore. Yes, Geoff did an implementation of wireless email many years ago, and was arguably the first inventor of it. At some trade show I went to, he had hired women to walk around like cigarette girls with a laptop and attached radio to invite people to send wireless email.

    --
    Don't piss off The Angry Economist
  4. What about amateur radio? by hardwarehacker · · Score: 2, Informative

    The one thing that concerns me about this whole "wireless e-mail" patent business is that this basic functionality has been available in the amateur radio community for DECADES. Packet radio was pioneering in 1978 by hams in Montreal, Canada. Hams established "wireless" BBS systems through the 1980's, which provided an e-mail like feature via the message board. Further with the rise of the Internet hams have provided e-mail over the amateur radio bands; i.e. wireless e-mail. Perhap's I'm missing something, but this appears to be a pretty compelling prior art arguement. http://www.tapr.org/history.html http://www.winlink.org/History.htm

  5. text of telecom digest 2:33 by trb · · Score: 4, Informative

    You can find Geoff Goodfellow's note at the Telecom Digest archives. Note that the Telecom Digest has been running continuously since 1981, on the Internet and its predecessor (the ARPAnet), and is in some sense, the original ancestor of services like Slashdot.

  6. I did packet radio email in the 1980's by hqm · · Score: 2, Informative

    Around 1987 I was doing email SMTP over packet radio, using Phil Karn's network TCP/IP package for DOS.

    There ought to be a death penalty for frivolous or fraudulent packet claims.