Who Really Invented the Thumb Drive?

In 2000, at a commerce truthful in Germany, an obscure Singapore firm referred to as Trek 2000 unveiled a solid-state reminiscence chip encased in plastic and hooked up to a Universal Serial Bus (USB) connector. The gadget, roughly the scale of a pack of chewing gum, held 8 megabytes of knowledge and required no exterior energy supply, drawing energy immediately from a pc when related. It was referred to as the ThumbDrive.

That gadget, now identified by quite a lot of names—together with reminiscence stick, USB stick, flash drive, in addition to thumb drive—modified the best way laptop recordsdata are saved and transferred. Today it’s acquainted worldwide.

The thumb drive was an on the spot hit, garnering lots of of orders for samples inside hours. Later that 12 months, Trek went public on the Singapore inventory trade, and in 4 months—from April via July 2000—it manufactured and bought greater than 100,000 ThumbDrives underneath its personal label.

Good-bye, floppy disk

Before the invention of the thumb drive, laptop customers saved and transported their recordsdata utilizing floppy disks. Developed by IBM within the Sixties, first 8-inch and later 5 ¼-inch and three ½-inch floppy disks changed cassette tapes as probably the most sensible moveable storage media. Floppy disks have been restricted by their comparatively small storage capability—even double-sided, double-density disks may retailer only one.44 MB of knowledge.

During the Nineties, as the scale of recordsdata and software program elevated, laptop firms looked for alternate options. Personal computer systems within the late Eighties started incorporating CD-ROM drives, however initially these may learn solely from prerecorded disks and couldn’t retailer user-generated knowledge. The Iomega Zip Drive, referred to as a “superfloppy” drive and launched in 1994, may retailer as much as 750 MB of knowledge and was writable, however it by no means gained widespread reputation, partly resulting from competitors from cheaper and higher-capacity arduous drives.

Computer customers badly wanted an affordable, high-capacity, dependable, moveable storage gadget. The thumb drive was all that—and extra. It was sufficiently small to slide in a entrance pocket or cling from a keychain, and sturdy sufficient to be rattled round in a drawer or tote with out harm. With all these benefits, it successfully ended the period of the floppy disk.

But Trek 2000 hardly grew to become a family title. And the inventor of the thumb drive and Trek’s CEO, Henn Tan, didn’t grow to be as well-known as different {hardware} pioneers like Robert Noyce, Douglas Engelbart, or Steve Jobs. Even in his house of Singapore, few individuals know of Tan or Trek.

Why aren’t they extra well-known? After all, mainstream firms together with IBM, TEAC, Toshiba, and, finally, Verbatim licensed Trek’s expertise for their very own reminiscence stick units. And a bunch of different firms simply copied Tan with out permission or acknowledgment.

Competing claims in regards to the reminiscence stick’s origin

Maurizio Di Iorio

The story of the thumb drive reveals a lot about innovation within the silicon age. Seldom can we attribute innovations in digital expertise to 1 particular person or firm. They stem as an alternative from tightly knit networks of people and corporations working cooperatively or in competitors, with advances made incrementally. And this incremental nature of innovation signifies that controlling the unfold, manufacturing, and additional growth of latest concepts is sort of unimaginable.

So it’s not stunning that overlapping and competing claims encompass the origin of the thumb drive.

In April 1999, the Israeli firm M-Systems filed a patent software titled “Architecture for a Universal Serial Bus-based PC flash disk.” This was granted to Amir Ban, Dov Moran, and Oron Ogdan in November 2000. In 2000, IBM started promoting M-Systems’ 8-MB storage units within the United States underneath the less-than-memorable title DiskOnKey. IBM has its personal declare to the invention of a side of the gadget, primarily based on a year-2000 confidential inside report written by one in every of its workers, Shimon Shmueli. Somewhat much less credibly, inventors in Malaysia and China have additionally claimed to be the primary to provide you with the thumb drive.

The needed parts have been actually ripe for selecting within the late Nineties. Flash reminiscence grew to become low-cost and strong sufficient for shopper use by 1995. The circulation of knowledge through the World Wide Web, together with software program and music, was exploding, growing a requirement for moveable knowledge storage.

When expertise pushes and customers pull, an invention can appear, on reflection, virtually inevitable. And the entire purported inventors may actually have provide you with the identical important gadget independently. But not one of the many unbiased tales of invention paint fairly as clear an origin story—or had as a lot affect on the unfold of the thumb drive—as the story of Tan in Singapore.

Henn Tan: From truant to entrepreneur

Henn Tan, proven right here in 2017, fought a collection of largely shedding battles towards those that pirated Trek 2000’s ThumbDrive design and towards rival patent claims. Yen Meng Jiin/Singapore Press/AP

Tan, the third of six brothers, was born and raised in a kampung (village) within the neighborhood of Geylang, Singapore. His dad and mom, working arduous to make ends meet, often left Tan and his brothers alone to roam the streets.

The first in his household to attend highschool, Tan rapidly fell in with a rebellious crowd, skipping college to hang around at roadside “sarabat” (drink) stalls, wearing “shaggy embroidered jeans, imbibing coffee and cigarettes, and tossing his long mane as he polemicized about rock music and human rights,” in line with a 2001 article within the Straits Times. After a caning for truancy in his third 12 months of highschool that served as a wake-up name, Tan settled right down to his research and accomplished his O-level exams. He entered the National Service in 1973 as a navy police teacher, and after serving the required two years, he took a job as a machinist at a German multinational agency.

This wasn’t a uncommon job on the time. In the late Sixties Singapore had launched into a crash program of industrialization, providing incentives to multinational firms, particularly in such high-tech fields as electronics and semiconductors, to arrange factories on the island. By the early Seventies, Singapore was house to manufacturing vegetation for Fairchild Semiconductor, General Electric, Hewlett Packard, and Texas Instruments, amongst others, joined by Matsushita (now Panasonic) in 1973 and Nippon Electric Company (now NEC) in 1977.

Tan diligently saved cash to pay for driving classes. As quickly as he had his license, NEC’s semiconductors division employed him as a gross sales govt. Three years later, in 1980, he moved to Sanyo as a regional gross sales supervisor. Over the following 15 years, he rose to the rank of gross sales director, accumulating a wealth of expertise within the electronics business, together with connections to a variety of suppliers and clients.

The Asian electronics business takes off

In 1995, Tan resigned from Sanyo and bought Trek, a small, family-run electronics element buying and selling agency in his previous neighborhood of Geylang, for simply shy of US $1 million. He deliberate to develop merchandise to license or promote to a number of of the various massive multinationals in Singapore.

Meanwhile, worldwide gross sales of laptop gear had began to growth. Although private computer systems and numerous moveable computer systems had been round for the reason that late Seventies, each Apple and IBM launched flagship laptops in 1991 and 1992, respectively. Along with the recognition of laptops got here a rising demand for peripherals corresponding to shows, modems, printers, keyboards, mice, graphics adapters, arduous drives, CD-ROM drives, and floppy drives. The dot-com growth of 1995 to 2000 additional elevated demand for private computing gear.

“Clones, in a sense, are marvelous….it meant you must have a good idea and you should make the most of it, as quickly as possible.”—Henn Tan, as instructed to the Straits Times

Many of those electronics merchandise, together with the chips in them, have been produced in Asia, together with Hong Kong, Indonesia, Malaysia, South Korea, Taiwan, Thailand—and Singapore—underneath the OEM system. These “original equipment manufacturers” made computer systems for Apple, Dell, and different firms who outsourced the manufacturing of their designs.

By the mid-Nineties, Singapore had grow to be an necessary hub for electronics manufacturing, together with arduous drives and semiconductor wafers, and the island had a big and rising electronics ecosystem with design and manufacturing experience.

Toshiba offers Tan his massive break

All this exercise, nonetheless, didn’t create a straightforward path for Tan. Many of his previous contacts from Sanyo wouldn’t do enterprise with a no-name like Trek. And few proficient engineers needed to work for an organization that appeared to supply little assure of long-term employment. But Tan persevered, and after two years, in 1998, he bought his massive break: Toshiba Electronics in Singapore appointed Trek as an official design home, an settlement via which Trek would design and manufacture merchandise to be bought underneath the Toshiba label.

In specific, Toshiba needed an MP3 participant, a compact and moveable solid-state gadget that might copy music recordsdata from a pc, to which it could be related through a USB plug, after which play the music again. Though this was earlier than Apple’s 2001 iPod made these units in style worldwide, various MP3 gamers of assorted high quality have been already in the marketplace within the late Nineties.

As the originator of flash reminiscence, Toshiba manufactured storage chips utilized in private computer systems, laptops, and digital cameras. Toshiba additionally made moveable radios and growth packing containers. It wasn’t odd that the corporate needed to leap into the MP3-player fray.

But Tan reasoned that “if the company just manufactured the player, it would not make a lot of money,” in line with a 2005 article within the Straits Times. Tan thought that by leaving out the flexibility to play music, the gadget would grow to be extra versatile, capable of deal with not simply MP3s but additionally textual content, spreadsheets, pictures—any form of laptop file. Many firms have been already promoting music gamers, however an affordable, USB-driven, versatile storage gadget may need a good larger market, Tan suspected, and he may very well be first to faucet it.

Tan did give Toshiba its music participant. But he additionally set his engineers to work on a product that was basically a music participant with out the participant. The outcome was the thumb drive.

From in style product to pirate battle

Trek’s patent software for the ThumbDrive included this drawing.

Getting to a working product was not trivial—the drive required not solely the suitable mixture of {hardware} but additionally specifically designed firmware that allowed the solid-state storage to work together with quite a lot of laptop working programs.

But the thumb drive, with its flash reminiscence and USB interface, was hardly a very novel invention. Tan didn’t invent flash reminiscence, which was the brainchild of Toshiba engineer Fujio Masuoka in 1980. Nor did he invent the USB port, which had been round since 1996. What was novel was the mixture of the USB with flash reminiscence plus a controller and acceptable firmware, all sealed right into a plastic case to make a marketable shopper product.

Local circumstances can solely partly clarify why the thumb drive got here to be invented the place and when it did: Tan’s expertise at NEC and Sanyo, Trek’s contract with Toshiba, and the connections Trek’s engineers had made throughout earlier internships at different firms in Singapore have been all necessary. Those similar components, nonetheless, additionally made the invention troublesome to regulate. Once the thought of the thumb drive was on the market, many electronics companies instantly set to creating their very own variations. Tan had filed a patent software for his invention a month earlier than the 2000 CeBIT tech truthful, however a pending patent did little to cease copycats.

In addition to claims by M-Systems and IBM, maybe probably the most difficult rivalry got here from the Chinese firm Netac Technology. It additionally claimed to have invented the flash reminiscence stick. Cheng Xiaohua and Deng Guoshun had beforehand labored for Trek and had seen some growth boards associated to flash reminiscence. They returned to Shenzhen, China, and based Netac in 1999.

Shenzhen on the time was a hotbed of electronics copycatting—DVD gamers, mobile telephones, MP3 gamers, and quite a few different shopper electronics have been produced as “shanzhai” items, exterior the bounds of mental property legal guidelines. Netac’s declare to (and manufacturing of) its thumb drive match this sample of appropriation.

Netac and Trek subsequently even entered into an settlement underneath which Trek would fund a few of Netac’s analysis and growth and Trek would achieve rights to fabricate and distribute the ensuing merchandise exterior of China. Despite this collaboration, Netac subsequently sought and was granted a patent on the thumb drive inside China.

Henn Tan thought that by leaving out the flexibility to play music, the gadget would grow to be extra versatile.

Electronics pirates around the globe then went after the thumb drive. Tan fought them arduous and typically gained. Had Trek been a bigger firm with extra assets and extra patent expertise, the story may need had a unique ending. As it was, although, Trek’s patents stood on comparatively weak floor. Beginning in 2002, Tan introduced go well with in Singapore towards a handful of firms (together with Electec, FE Global Electronics, M-Systems, and Ritronics Components) for patent infringement. After a number of years of courtroom battles and lots of of hundreds of {dollars} in authorized charges, Trek gained that case, persuading the decide that his ThumbDrive was the primary gadget ever designed to be plugged immediately into a pc with out the necessity for a cable. An appeals courtroom within the United Kingdom, nonetheless, was not persuaded, and Trek misplaced its patent there in 2008. Tan additionally pursued, with little success, claims on the United States International Trade Commission towards different firms, together with Imation, IronKey, Patriot, and Verbatim. But even the choice in Singapore was little greater than an ethical victory. By the late 2000s, thousands and thousands of thumb drives had already been produced, by numerous firms, with out Trek’s license.

“Clones,” Tan instructed the Straits Times in 2005, “in a sense, are marvelous. In the business world, especially when you are in Asia, as long as anything makes a profit, you do it.” If somebody have been copying you, Tan reasoned, “it meant you must have a good idea and you should make the most of it, as quickly as possible.”

Ultimately, Tan and Trek turned their consideration to new merchandise, every enhancing barely on the final. By 2010, Trek had developed one other pioneering gadget—the Flu Drive or Flu Card. This modified thumb drive may additionally wirelessly transmit knowledge between units or to the cloud. Although Tan nonetheless tried to guard his invention with patents, he had additionally embraced a brand new path: success via steady novelty.

The Flu Card loved modest success. Although not extensively taken up as a stand-alone gadget, its Wi-Fi connectivity made it appropriate for shopper electronics units corresponding to cameras and toys. In 2014, Trek signed offers with Ricoh and Mattel China to license the Flu Card design.

Trek additionally tried to maneuver into new markets, with restricted success, together with the Internet of Things, cloud expertise, and medical and wearable units.

Trek’s struggles and Tan’s fall

Henn Tan holds up a ThumbDrive throughout an interview in Singapore in January 2006.Nicky Loh/Reuters/Alamy

Trek’s income from licensing the ThumbDrive and the Flu Card was not adequate to maintain it worthwhile. But as an alternative of admitting how badly the corporate was doing, in 2006, Tan and his chief monetary officer started falsifying Trek’s accounts, deceiving auditors and shareholders. After these misdeeds have been revealed by monetary auditors Ernst & Young in 2015, Tan stepped down as chairman and chief govt and in August 2022 pled responsible to falsifying accounts. As of this writing, Tan stays in jail in Singapore. His son, Wayne Tan, continues as Trek’s deputy chairman.

Meanwhile, the thumb drive lives on. Although most of us transmit our recordsdata over the Internet—both as e-mail attachments or via providers like Google Drive and Dropbox—thumb drives (now working to capacities measured in terabytes) stay a handy gadget for carrying knowledge in our pockets.

They are used as a fast option to switch a file from one laptop to a different, cross out press kits at conferences, lock and unlock computer systems, carry apps to run on a shared laptop, again up journey paperwork, and even, typically, retailer music. They are used for nefarious functions as nicely—stealing recordsdata or inserting malware into goal computer systems. And they’re particularly helpful for the safe switch of encrypted knowledge too delicate to ship over the Internet.

In 2021, world gross sales of the units from all producers surpassed $7 billion, a quantity that’s anticipated to rise to greater than $10 billion by 2028, in line with Vantage Market Research.

Hero or antihero?

Often, we consider inventors as heroes, boldly going the place nobody has gone earlier than. But Tan’s story isn’t that straightforward.

Tan does deserve a spot in shopper electronics historical past—he conceived the gadget with out seeing one first, made it work, manufactured it in portions, and unfold it broadly, each deliberately via licensing and unintentionally via copying. But full credit score for the thumb drive actually belongs extra to the atmosphere—the concepts circulating on the time and the networks of purchasers and suppliers—than any particular person.

Moreover, the conclusion of Tan’s story suggests he’s extra antihero than hero. We often admire inventors for his or her tenacity and grit. In Tan’s case, these qualities contributed to his downfall. Determined to take ethical and monetary credit score for the thumb drive, Tan went to extraordinary lengths—even breaking the regulation—to be able to make his firm and himself a hit. The thumb drive exhibits how difficult tales of invention typically are.