The Mystery of the Lost Source Code...

I have heard of an extraordinary story about a Dutch man, Jan Sloot, who invented a new source code in 1995 that could compress data to such an extent that it would revolutionise the technology industry and could possibly destroy existing companies.

He went with his invention to Philips on March 4th 1999 and gave an impressive demonstation. He had a box the size of 5 packs of cigarets and in it he put a card with a 64K chip. On it were 64 full size movies. The Philips CEO at the time, Roel Pieper, left Philips shortly after this demonstration and, so goes the rumour, joined him on a venture to bring this invention to heart of silicon valley. The inventor Jan Sloot died 2 months later of a heart attack taking the secret with him. Roel Pieper never explained why he left Philips and downplays the invention now. It, according to him, was technically not feasible.

Well this is the description of the invention...
The Sloot Digital Coding System (SDCS) would shake the world. A new alfabet for digital information storage and transport that no longer uses the binary system of ones and zeros but instead uses a much more efficient method. The principle is amazingly simple. Just as a piece of text comprises of a limited number of characters, a movie comprises of a finite number of colours and sounds. These basics are stored in five algorythms in five different memories. For each of the memories the algorythms would comprise of a maximum of 74 Mb per memory.

This was the engine of the invention. The only thing needed to start a movie was a key. Sloot calculated for each frame of a movie a unique code of which another unique code was made. This last code was called the key. It took only 1 (one) KB of memory, regardless of the length of the movie. One simple chipcard could store tens of keys to tens of movies. In this way you could get a key that, with the basic algorythms (in total 370MB)stored on an algorythm player, could "re-make" the movie. This could spell the end for DVD, CD and fibre optics highspeed networks. Copper could be again sufficient and all the billions invested in fiber optics could sink data communication industry.

When I read this story I got chills. Could it be true? Technical experts are divided on the subject. It is not surprising. It sounds pretty unbelievable but there must have been something to it if the CEO of Philips was swayed and quit his job to helm this doomed venture called the Fifth Force.

There is one person who claims that he has the invention with patent in a vault but he will not divulge.

I love mysteries.. I wonder if it will ever be (re) discovered.