Henn Tan and the Invention of the USB Thumb Drive in Singapore
canopic jug writes:
IEEE Spectrum has an article about the USB thumb drive and its inventor, Trek's CEO, Henn Tann in Singapore. The market for USB thumb drives has passed $7 billion as of last year and is expected to surpass $10 billion by 2028.
But Trek 2000 hardly became a household name. And the inventor of the thumb drive and Trek's CEO, Henn Tan, did not become as famous as other hardware pioneers like Robert Noyce, Douglas Engelbart, or Steve Jobs. Even in his home of Singapore, few people know of Tan or Trek.
Why aren't they more famous? After all, mainstream companies including IBM, TEAC, Toshiba, and, ultimately, Verbatim licensed Trek's technology for their own memory stick devices. And a host of other companies just copied Tan without permission or acknowledgment.
USB thumb drives do certainly seem to be everywhere still and have even been a reasonably reliable way to jump into or out of air gapped networks. Examples of that include Stuxnet and the Snowden files, the former destroying hidden equipment in an illegal nuclear weapons programme and the latter exposing a pervasive, illegal surveillance programme. At many small and medium sized businesses, USB thumb drive-based sneakernet stayed alive and well for many a year out of necessity since Netware was wiped out without ever getting viable alternative for in house hosting.
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