Jan Sloot
Encyclopedia
Romke Jan Bernhard Sloot (27 August 1945, Groningen—11 July 1999, Nieuwegein
) was a Dutch
electronics
technician
, who claimed to have developed a revolutionary data compression
technique, the Sloot Digital Coding System, which could compress a complete movie down to 8 kilobyte
s of data— this is orders of magnitude greater compression than the best currently available technology.
Despite the ostensible impossibility of such a technique, there were investors that saw potential. However, Sloot died of a heart attack
one day before an attractive deal was signed with Roel Pieper
, former CTO and board member of Philips
. The story - including an account of a believable demonstration of the technology - is told in modest detail in Tom Perkins
' 2007 book, Valley Boy. Perkins, co-founder of the Silicon Valley venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins, had agreed to invest in the technology when Sloot died; Perkins and Pieper would have proceeded after Sloot's death, but a key piece of the technology, a compiler stored on a floppy disk, had disappeared and despite months of searching was never recovered.
Nieuwegein
Nieuwegein is a municipality and city in the Dutch province of Utrecht. It is bordered on the north by the city of Utrecht, the provincial capital...
) was a Dutch
Netherlands
The Netherlands is a constituent country of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, located mainly in North-West Europe and with several islands in the Caribbean. Mainland Netherlands borders the North Sea to the north and west, Belgium to the south, and Germany to the east, and shares maritime borders...
electronics
Electronics
Electronics is the branch of science, engineering and technology that deals with electrical circuits involving active electrical components such as vacuum tubes, transistors, diodes and integrated circuits, and associated passive interconnection technologies...
technician
Technician
A technician is a worker in a field of technology who is proficient in the relevant skills and techniques, with a relatively practical understanding of the theoretical principles. Experienced technicians in a specific tool domain typically have intermediate understanding of theory and expert...
, who claimed to have developed a revolutionary data compression
Data compression
In computer science and information theory, data compression, source coding or bit-rate reduction is the process of encoding information using fewer bits than the original representation would use....
technique, the Sloot Digital Coding System, which could compress a complete movie down to 8 kilobyte
Kilobyte
The kilobyte is a multiple of the unit byte for digital information. Although the prefix kilo- means 1000, the term kilobyte and symbol KB have historically been used to refer to either 1024 bytes or 1000 bytes, dependent upon context, in the fields of computer science and information...
s of data— this is orders of magnitude greater compression than the best currently available technology.
Despite the ostensible impossibility of such a technique, there were investors that saw potential. However, Sloot died of a heart attack
Myocardial infarction
Myocardial infarction or acute myocardial infarction , commonly known as a heart attack, results from the interruption of blood supply to a part of the heart, causing heart cells to die...
one day before an attractive deal was signed with Roel Pieper
Roel Pieper
-Early life and education:Pieper was born in Vlaardingen, son of an engineer at a car manufacturer. His father died when Pieper was 20, and on his 18th birthday he suffered a motoring accident which destroyed his sporting career as a player of the Juventus Schiedam basketball team. According to...
, former CTO and board member of Philips
Philips
Koninklijke Philips Electronics N.V. , more commonly known as Philips, is a multinational Dutch electronics company....
. The story - including an account of a believable demonstration of the technology - is told in modest detail in Tom Perkins
Tom Perkins
Thomas James Perkins is an American businessman, capitalist, and was one of the founders of leading venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers.-Biography:...
' 2007 book, Valley Boy. Perkins, co-founder of the Silicon Valley venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins, had agreed to invest in the technology when Sloot died; Perkins and Pieper would have proceeded after Sloot's death, but a key piece of the technology, a compiler stored on a floppy disk, had disappeared and despite months of searching was never recovered.
External links
- Broadband applications on limited bandwidth networks (PDFPortable Document FormatPortable Document Format is an open standard for document exchange. This file format, created by Adobe Systems in 1993, is used for representing documents in a manner independent of application software, hardware, and operating systems....
) - see section 3.1.5, "Beyond the limits?" - "The Stick of Jan Sloot," article on Sloot's claims by Pieter Spronck from Tilburg University
- Dutch Website describing the story of Jan Sloot