11 ms·
Ask HN: Famous anonymous inventions other than Bitcoin?
Do you know famous inventions whose authors have always remained completely anonymous and never reveled their identities ? Other than Bitcoin.
PS: In any field, not only technology, and any time in history.
- ninjavis 8y agoThe now-famous Anonymous group? The illuminati? The inventor of coffee?
- jcslzr 8y agothe bible
- nurettin 8y agoWhat about the bible?
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- nerdponx 8y agoQuite a few sections of both the Hebrew bible and the New Testament have scholarly consensus on authorship.
- _underflow_ 8y ago"Scholarly consensus" != authorship. Everyone had a scribe actually do the writing in that day anyway is my understanding. Is there a symbol for the squiggly equals sign?
- hcs 8y ago≈ U+2248 ≠ U+2260
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- dddw 8y agonever heard of it
- andrewprock 8y agoWriting, and in particular the Arabic numerals.
- Jeremy1026 8y agoThe wheel is an uncredited invention that almost all of humanity uses multiple times a day.
- empath75 8y agoIt might be more interesting to limit answers to historical times.
- bartread 8y agoWhy? The original question makes no mention of this, not to mention that it might be cool to think about a bunch of inventions that have been with us for so long that we entirely take them for granted.
- davidw 8y agoBecause the spirit of the question about an inventor choosing to remain anonymous, rather than being 'anonymous' because it was 5000 years ago.
- amineazariz 8y agoExactly, this how I meant it to be understood. Sorry if my original question wasn't precise enough.
- mtnGoat 8y agostairs also fall into this category.
- bartread 8y agoAlso, lots of simple tools and weapons: knives (and blades in general), hammers, bows, hand drills. Candles are almost unbelievably useful when you have no electricity, which leads nicely onto the various methods and tools for firestarting.
- Andre607 8y agoTrueCrypt.
- based2 8y ago-> VeraCrypt
- Andre607 8y agoThe maintainers of the VeraCrypt fork are not anonymous [1]; whereas most of the team behind TrueCrypt is. [1] https://www.idrix.fr/Root/mos/Contact_Us/task,view/contact_id,1/Itemid,30/ https://www.idrix.fr/Root/mos/Contact_Us/task,view/contact_i...
- beaker52 8y agohttps://magazine.atavist.com/the-mastermind https://magazine.atavist.com/the-mastermind This series was one of the most fascinating reads I've ever enjoyed!
- Andre607 8y agoFrom that series of articles, during Le Roux's court hearing: > Le Roux admitted that he had created the encryption software E4M but denied that he had developed TrueCrypt, its famous progeny. Also: > Hafner and his SecurStar colleagues suspected that Le Roux was part of the TrueCrypt collective but couldn’t prove it. Indeed, even today the question of who launched the software remains unanswered. “The origin of TrueCrypt has always been very mysterious,” says Matthew Green, a computer-science professor at the Johns Hopkins Information Security Institute and an expert on TrueCrypt who led a security audit of the software in 2014. “It was written by anonymous folks; it could have been Paul Le Roux writing under an assumed name, or it could have been someone completely different.” The developers of E4M and of VeraCrypt are known; the developers of TrueCrypt are not fully known.
- xfalcox 8y agoThe DotA "creator" / last maintainer, IceFrog keeps his identity hidden. It did leak because of a Blizzard lawsuit, but people respect it and don't talk about it.
- Areading314 8y agoPeople other than xfalcox apparently...
- dx87 8y agoThe actual name, not the fact that it was leaked. It's trivial to find, you just have to look for it.
- arachnids 8y agoI think a big reason he's able to stay that way is that his real identity is not a public figure. The only thing ordinary people in the community know about him is his name, so there's nothing to talk about.
- nurgasemetey 8y agoIt is speculated that icefrog is Bruno.
- praneshp 8y ago> " but people respect it and don't talk about it."
- mburst 8y agoAs cool as that would be, it's definitely not Bruno. The creator has been named in law suits between Valve and Blizzard. So while the person's name is easy to find there's not much info on him other that that out there which is indeed pretty cool
- xiphias2 8y agoInside the Bitcoin ecosystem Mimblewimble is another important invention with a funny history.
- jron 8y agoThe lead developer of Grin (Rust Mimblewimble implementation) is anonymous. The origin of OWAS and the CryptoNote protocol is also interesting :) https://moneromonitor.com/episodes/2017-12-05-Episode-016.html https://moneromonitor.com/episodes/2017-12-05-Episode-016.ht...
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- timomax 8y agoNot sure about famous, but some designer drugs might fit this category. E.g. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/APINACA https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/APINACA
- o_nate 8y agoI would imagine that lots of computer viruses and worms fit this description.
- api 8y agoSome of the first polymorphic viruses had very advanced code translation engines, basically JITs before they were common. I wonder if any JIT concepts were invented there? One example is the DAME which stands for Dark Avenger Mutation Engine. It could recompile DOS viruses into equivalent but different machine code on the fly, including the mutation engine itself.
- ddingus 8y agoLink? That is super interesting to me.
- WaxProlix 8y agoGoogle yields this http://virus.wikidot.com/dark-avenger-mutation-engine http://virus.wikidot.com/dark-avenger-mutation-engine But it sounds a bit more prosaic than OP made it out to be (maybe it's incomplete?)
- hacdaddy 8y agoAlso check out season 1 of https://malicious.life/ https://malicious.life/. S1E02 specifically covers The Dark Avenger, but the whole of S1 was awesome (and he rest too. But S1 especially).
- api 8y agoMaybe I'm confusing DAME with later mutation engines that had more elaborate ways of transforming the decryptor and payload code. I know there were some pretty sophisticated JIT-type things in the latter part of the DOS virus era.
- Cyph0n 8y agoThe same thing can be said about game/software cracking scene groups. I believe they were (still are?) at the forefront of practical reverse engineering techniques. An extension of that is the emulation scene, but that tends to be done in public for the most part.
- notahacker 8y agoI suspect there are many where the person that had the idea and did the research is completely anonymous because the person that managed and/or funded the lab made sure they were the ones with the name on the patent and marketing material.
- manu-chroma 8y agoWork published under the name "Shakespeare", if you consider literary work as some sort of creation, (if not invention).
- api 8y agoThere was also a ton of medieval and renaissance philosophy and occult/alchemical stuff published under pseudonyms. Well known ones include Hermes Trismegistus and Christian Rosencreuntz (sp?). Some of that stuff was proto-scientific natural philosophy and proto-modernism. The scientific, industrial, and modernist revolutions have their roots partly in medieval occultism.
- reaperducer 8y agoIs that the ghost of Robert Greene typing? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Greene_(dramatist) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Greene_(dramatist)
- theredbox 8y agoPaX the cutting edge of kernel security. The anonymous hungarian programmer can be credited with invention of ASLR and many other lowlevel security mechanisms.
- starbeast 8y agoMathematics has the recent case of having to reference an anonymous 4chan user for a paper 'A lower bound on the length of the shortest superpattern' - https://oeis.org/A180632/a180632.pdf https://oeis.org/A180632/a180632.pdf
- shiado 8y agoRead up on Bourbaki, the original Satoshi. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicolas_Bourbaki https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicolas_Bourbaki
- pinecoin 8y agoWe're still working on the famous part. And may eventually reveal our identities. https://pinecoin.me https://pinecoin.me
- tofflos 8y agoDo we also get to include inventions where the inventor is no longer known - such as the wheel?
- buboard 8y agoi reinvent the wheel every day
- isoskeles 8y agoBitcoin
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- Kagerjay 8y agoanonymous 4chan user solving a 25 year old math problem https://www.theverge.com/2018/10/24/18019464/4chan-anon-anime-haruhi-math-mystery https://www.theverge.com/2018/10/24/18019464/4chan-anon-anim...
- cosmic_ape 8y agoDescribing this as 25 year old math problem is a bit misleading. There might have been two or three otherwise not noted mathematicians that have looked at the problem a couple of times after dinner during the last 25 years -- is a better description.
- anonlurking 8y agoCan you explain how you know that?
- AlexCoventry 8y agoTaste for mathematical fashion.
- cosmic_ape 8y agoI read the article. I see how much published work on the problem is mentioned, and where is it published. In this case, not much. If a mathematical problem is really hard, and really important, of the type to reasonably qualify as a "25 year old problem", you will see a lot of partial results, many different approaches, connections to other ares of mathematics, a lot of work by many people. Nothing like that happened here.
- anonlurking 8y agoIt's an educated guess, which is fair, but it came off as a matter of fact in the way you articulated your claim
- cosmic_ape 8y ago
- ThePhysicist 8y agoMany women published research under pseudonyms in the past, for example Sophie Germain: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sophie_Germain https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sophie_Germain So I'd argue that many past inventions that are credited to men might actually have been achieved by women scientists publishing under their husbands / colleagues / friends name as a pseudonym. In Paris I once saw an original print of Marie Curie's book on radioactivity, where her name is given as "Mme Pierre Curie". This probably shows how difficult it was even then to get something published under your own name as a woman (Cover and autor info here: https://www.amazon.fr/Radioactivit%C3%A9-1-Madame-Pierre-Curie/dp/B001SUW80G https://www.amazon.fr/Radioactivit%C3%A9-1-Madame-Pierre-Cur...).
- kristopolous 8y agoThe 1911 Solvay Conference photo illustrates just how exceptional a woman scientist was then: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solvay_Conference https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solvay_Conference she's there at the table with Henri Poincaré.
- jacquesm 8y agoThe amount of brainpower in that room is incredible. Now think about it this way: probably half of what was available at the time got lost somehow. Makes you wonder where we'd be technologically if we had not systematically repressed one half of the possible scientists. On the positive side: probably a lot of that research got done anyway, with some guy taking credit for it.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- kristopolous 8y agoIt's way more than half. All those people are still white.
- bonzini 8y ago
- FatDrunknStupid 8y agoBBQ and Booze.
- blihp 8y agoHistorically, most 'for hire' inventions (i.e. invented by employees of a corporation) have been relatively anonymous. This also often extends to suppliers to major corporations. Every now and then you'll hear the story about how person X working at corporation Y invented something you'd recognize. (usually after they've retired or otherwise left the company... funny how that works) But generally the inventors don't receive much, if any, public credit or monetary reward. Granted, Bitcoin is rather unique in that the author has worked to stay anonymous but is effectively only slightly more so than most other inventors working for someone else. edit: sure, you'll often (but not always) see the actual inventor's name listed in patent applications... along with their manager(s), one or more executives, the lunch cook etc.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- joubert 8y agoInteresting prompt. Researching, I discovered “The Invention Secrecy Act” — you can read more about it here https://slate.com/technology/2018/05/the-thousands-of-secret-patents-that-the-u-s-government-refuses-to-make-public.html https://slate.com/technology/2018/05/the-thousands-of-secret... “Invention secrecy in the U.S. dates back to at least the 1930s, but it really took off in the ’40s, when the development of nuclear weapons was shrouded in classification. It became official policy in 1952 with the Invention Secrecy Act, which allows USPTO to keep patents deemed “detrimental to the national security” on lockdown. Under the act, USPTO’s commissioner of patents became empowered to flag patent applications—even those developed by private citizens—for review by government defense agencies, which could request that certain inventions be kept secret.”
- sammycdubs 8y agoThe wheel
- jwbensley 8y agoI assume there are a lot of famous technologies accredited to a company, I'd love to know the names of some of the engineers and researchers behind some of the great inventions that we simply credit to XYZ Inc.
- herodotus 8y agoThe invention that impresses me is the differential gear. The National Museum of Scotland, when I lived there, had a cut-away exhibit taken from a car. I played with it, and for the first time, understood how it worked. Two days later, I could not reconstruct it in my mind! Unclear who invented it. Here is a link to the Wikipedia entry: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Differential_(mechanical_device) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Differential_(mechanical_devic... Mind you, this may not be a good answer to the question, because there are a couple of claims for the invention.
- petepete 8y agoWasn't it invented by the ancient Greeks? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antikythera_mechanism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antikythera_mechanism
- evanb 8y agoThere's a great old-timey video explaining the differential in a car works: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yYAw79386WI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yYAw79386WI
- Frimel 8y agoDeepfake (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deepfake https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deepfake). It has been released in the conveniently same timeframe, when a video was supposed to be „leaked“, allegedly depicting Hillary Clinton in a satanic-ritual abuse video („frazzled rip“). just like the term „fake news“ was coined for the first time in 2016 at the exact same time, the Pizzagate story evolved.
- owstr 8y agoMaybe Mike Pall? Author of the LuaJIT.
- naniwaduni 8y agoIndeed, Mike Pall has indicated at various points that the name is a pseudonym: > Heck, I've done the opposite. There's quite a bit of code out there which I haven't published under my real name (for various reasons). Not any Lua stuff, though. Good luck hunting it down. ;-) http://lua-users.org/lists/lua-l/2009-11/msg00106.html http://lua-users.org/lists/lua-l/2009-11/msg00106.html > I’ve only published AFLG (auto-fast-loader-generator) under my real name in the German “RUN” magazine. https://www.pagetable.com/?p=656 https://www.pagetable.com/?p=656 Of course, like many of the other examples here, unmasking him isn't of much interest to the tabloids since he's not much of a "public figure".
- ibelitetutor 8y agothere are so many inventions. like a scientist has created artificial liver tissue
- tedunangst 8y agoWe know who invented RC4, but we don't know who told us what it is.
- chromaton 8y agoThe Stuxnet worm.
- ibrault 8y agoDoes this one really count? It's common knowledge that this was developed by NSA's TAO along with Israel. EDIT: although I do agree, I remember first reading about Stuxnet when it was first discovered, before evidence of its origin was known, and being absolutely fascinated
- hacdaddy 8y agohttps://malicious.life/ https://malicious.life/ Did a great 3 parter on Stuxnet, Flame, Duqu. His who series is fantastic really (esp season 1).
- hendzen 8y agoWilliam Sealy Gosset, who developed the t-distribution, published under the name 'Student' since his employer (the Guinness Brewery) wouldn't let him publish under his real name.
- philwelch 8y agoFire. Think about it, nobody knows who invented the ability to control fire, and yet it is still, by far, the most important technology in our lives. The largest economic sector is oil and gas, in other words, finding things to set on fire. All of our technology is powered by electricity, which is still predominantly generated by setting things on fire. Rockets are powered by fire. Guns are powered by fire. Cars are mostly powered by fire. Even if we switch to renewable, GHG-neutral sources of energy, that is only possible because of millennia of fire. Hell, we only evolved big brains in the first place because we unlocked tons of extra nutrients by cooking with fire.
- jonny_eh 8y agoThat's true of any prehistoric invention. Same goes for the wheel, the flint axe, the spear, and the bow + arrow.
- philwelch 8y agoAll of these were probably also invented independently by multiple people, because whenever one human culture has made first contact with another human culture, they typically have many of these things already. For example, the inhabitants of North Sentinel Island, one of the last uncontacted peoples in the world, have bows and arrows. Also, they tend to use those bows to shoot arrows at everyone who attempts to approach North Sentinel Island, which is why they remain one of the last uncontacted peoples in the world. Other examples include American Indians, some of whom, like the Comanche, were able to use bows effectively enough to consistently defeat Westerners well into the 19th century. It's also interesting that not all of these inventions are universal--for example, the Inca civilization did not have wheels, because the Andes are too rugged for wheeled transportation to make sense. But they had lots of other things and fairly advanced mathematics, which was important because they had a relatively advanced mercantile culture where goods were traded by means of pack animal.
- glun 8y agoThe invention of the bow predates mans immigration from Africa so isolated tribates having access to it doesnt mean that they invented it independently. And fire is even older.
- phonon 8y agowhy the lucky stiff (okay, his identity came out later)
- jspook16 8y agoKomodoplatform creator. Known and respected as jl777. He's made some really great advancements in block chain tech.
- vbrandl 8y agoMany techniques to make binary analysis harder came from anonymous malware authors. In the early days, writing viruses was more of an educational game than infecting people to cause harm. I'm thinking about poly- or metamorphic code that is able to change it's own representation without changing the actual logic. Also many phrack articles are released under pseudonyms.
- chaostheory 8y agoThere are a lot of ancient inventions like the wheel, the compass, gun powder, swords, and so on. Even more modern stuff like the pound sign is from an anonymous creator.
- jtl999 8y agoNwAvguy of ODAC and O2 amp fame... TLDR: https://spectrum.ieee.org/tech-history/silicon-revolution/nwavguy-the-audio-genius-who-vanished https://spectrum.ieee.org/tech-history/silicon-revolution/nw...
- ZoomZoomZoom 8y agoCame here to post this. Objective 2 is a headphone amplifier revered in the DIY community. Although, you probably won't name a piece of great engineering an invention, but what puts it aside is that it was maid freely available under Creative Commons license. Although it was BY-ND type, which lead to some interesting results, mentioned in a link posted by parent. In my opinion some type of copyleft license would suit better, but CCBYND fixes and underlines NwAvGuy's contribution for years to come.
- aaron695 8y agoBanksy, TISM are both creators of work and use/used anonymity.
- mvanveen 8y agoThe founding fathers published the federalist papers pseudo-anonymously. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Federalist_Papers https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Federalist_Papers
- neic 8y agoThe Euro Sign was designed in secrecy From Wikipedia[0]: > There were originally 32 proposals; these were reduced to ten candidates. These ten were put to a public survey. After the survey had narrowed the original ten proposals down to two, it was up to the European Commission to choose the final design. The other designs that were considered are not available for the public to view, nor is any information regarding the designers available for public query. The European Commission considers the process of designing to have been internal and keeps these records secret. The eventual winner was a design created by a team of four experts whose identities have not been revealed. It is assumed that the Belgian graphic designer Alain Billiet was the winner and thus the designer of the euro sign. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Euro_sign https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Euro_sign
- arisAlexis 8y agohey isn't Bitcoin tulips according to the majority of HN?
- conanthe 8y agoCapitalism.