Sloot Digital Coding System facts for kids

The Sloot Digital Coding System was a special way of storing computer information. Its inventor claimed it could save a whole movie file using only 8 kilobytes of data. This was a tiny amount, much smaller than what scientists thought was possible for storing information.

This amazing system was created in 1995 by Romke Jan Bernhard Sloot, an electronics engineer from the Netherlands. In 1999, just before he was about to sign a big deal to sell his invention, Sloot sadly died suddenly from a heart attack. The special computer code for his invention was never found. Because of this, no one has ever been able to recreate or prove his amazing claim.

Who Was Romke Sloot?

Romke Sloot was born in Groningen, a city in the Netherlands, in 1945. He was the youngest of three children. Sloot went to a technical school but left early to work at a radio station.

After serving in the military, Sloot moved to Utrecht with his wife. He worked for a short time at a big electronics company called Philips Electronics. In 1978, he left Philips and started working at an audio and video store in Groningen. A few years later, he moved to Nieuwegein and opened his own business. He fixed televisions and stereos there.

Sloot's Computer Ideas

In 1984, Sloot became very interested in computer technology. He worked with early computers like the Commodore 64 and IBM PC XT. He had an idea for a country-wide repair service network. It would be called RepaBase. This system would have a database with details about all repairs done. This idea made him think about new ways to store data. He wanted to find methods that would use much less space than normal.

The Sloot Encoding System Explained

In 1995, Sloot announced he had created a data encoding system. He said it could store an entire movie in just 8 kilobytes. To give you an idea, a very low-quality video file usually needs millions of bytes. A high-quality movie (like a 1080p film) needs about 3 gigabytes for every hour! The text of a Wikipedia page about a movie like Casablanca is about 29,000 bytes. So, 8 kilobytes (which is 8,192 bytes) for a whole movie seemed impossible.

Roel Pieper, who used to be a top executive at Philips, said this about Sloot's invention:

It is not about compression. Everyone is mistaken about that. The principle can be compared with a concept as Adobe-postscript, where sender and receiver know what kind of data recipes can be transferred, without the data itself actually being sent."

This means Pieper thought it wasn't about making files smaller. Instead, he thought it was more like a system where both the sender and receiver already knew how to create the movie. They would only send a small "recipe" or instruction, not the whole movie data.

However, another expert, Pieter Spronck, disagreed with this idea. He pointed out that Sloot claimed his invention could encode any video. It wasn't just videos made from a specific set of "recipes."

In the [Sloot Digital Coding System], it is claimed that no movies are stored, only basic building blocks of movies, such as colours and sounds. So, when a number is presented to the SDCS, it uses the number to fetch colours and sounds, and constructs a movie out of them. Any movie. No two different movies can have the same number, otherwise they would be the same movie. Every possible movie gets its own unique number. Therefore, I should be able to generate any possible movie by loading some unique number in the SDCS.

Think of it: by placing the right number in the SDCS, I can not only get Orson Welles' Citizen Kane — I can get Citizen Kane in colour! Or Citizen Kane backwards! Or Citizen Kane where the credits misspell the name of Everett Sloane[!...] Or Citizen Kane where Charles Foster Kane is replaced by Jar Jar Binks!

How many movies are possible that are variations on Citizen Kane? More than fit in a number of one kilobyte, I can tell you.

Spronck's point was that if the system could create any movie from a small number, that would mean an incredibly huge number of possible movies could be made from just a few bytes. This seemed to go against the basic rules of how data works.

Investors and Demonstrations

Even though the system seemed impossible, some investors saw potential. In 1996, Sloot received money from a colleague named Jos van Rossum. That same year, Sloot and van Rossum received a Dutch patent for the Sloot Encoding System. Sloot was named the inventor, and van Rossum was the patent owner.

In early 1999, a Dutch investor named Marcel Boekhoorn joined the group. In March 1999, Sloot showed his system to Roel Pieper. Pieper was so impressed that he left his job at Philips in May 1999. He then joined Sloot's company as its CEO. The company was renamed The Fifth Force, Inc.

There was a famous demonstration where Sloot reportedly recorded and played back a 20-minute cooking show on a single smartcard. This story is mentioned in a book by Tom Perkins, a famous venture capitalist.

The Sad End

On July 11, 1999, Romke Sloot was found dead in his garden at home. It appeared he had a heart attack. This happened just one day before he was supposed to sign the big deal with Roel Pieper. Sloot's family agreed to an autopsy, but one was never performed.

Tom Perkins, who was ready to invest in Sloot's technology, wanted to continue with the project even after Sloot's death. However, a very important part of the technology, a special computer program called a "compiler," was stored on a floppy disk. This disk disappeared and was never found, even after months of searching. Because of this, Sloot's amazing invention could not be continued or understood by others.

See also

• Lost inventions