Pile of old locks, free to a bad home.

I've been cleaning up the front room, and I've got a pile of old locks that I've replaced with new locks. I could just throw them out, but if there are any people out there who are or have kids who want to learn to pick locks, or generally mess around and figure out how mechanical things work, I figured I'd offer them out. They're breakable and disposable, and therefore a good subject for any budding mechanical engineers out there.

Cool random things I learn.

So, sometimes, I just get randomly curious about things. And sometimes, when I find out the answer, it's totally freakin' cool.

I got curious about why Bluetooth is called Bluetooth. I mean, it's kinda a weird name for a communications protocol, isn't it? Blue tooth. Who has blue teeth?

So Lis and I looked it up. Well, Lis looked it up, because I was driving, and she had her phone out. Living in the future is really neat.

Turns out that "Bluetooth" is a literal translation of the Scandinavian "Blåtann". Harald "Bluetooth" Gormsson, or "Haraldr blátǫnn Gormsson" in Old Norse, and "Harald Blåtand Gormsen" in Danish, was the king of Denmark from 958 to 985. The developers of the Bluetooth protocol were such fans of King Harald I that they decided to name their protocol after him.

And that Bluetooth symbol? This thing:


It's the long-branch Younger Futhark version of the rune "haglaz" -- ᚼ if your browser can display that, or here's an image of it:

laid over the rune "berkanan" -- ᛒ,

Because "Haglaz" for "Harald" and "Berkanan" for "Blåtand". My phone talks to various other devices using something named after a 10th century Danish king.

See, now that's the sort of thing where the answer is just way, way cooler than I ever expected it to be.