Jan Sloot

Romke Jan Bernhard Sloot (* 1945 in Groningen, † July 11, 1999 in Nieuwegein ) was a Dutch television technician.

Work

Sloot worked briefly in the 1970s in Eindhoven for Philips and made later with his company Sloot Services in Groningen independently. He repaired and sold electrical appliances such as televisions and stereos, but was forced to declare bankruptcy after five years. Since 1984 he has lived in Nieuwegein and began there reinforced with computer technology ( Phillips P2000, Commodore 64, IBM PC, XT and AT) and to employ the programming. In addition to his work as a television technician in his electronics business ERS ( Electronica Reparatie Service ) developed Sloot, the idea of a nationwide repair service network with the name RepaBase with a computerized database of repair information that should document every study ever conducted repairs. The concept motivated him to develop an alternative method for storing data, which should require significantly less space than conventional methods.

He claimed in 1995, a loss-free, highly efficient coding technique, which have SDCS ( Sloot Digital Coding System ) discovered. With this method it should be possible to store an entire film ( or a complete DVD) on the amount of data from a KB ( kilobyte ) reduce and can save with a storage capacity of 64 KB on chip cards. This would correspond to a compression factor of about two million. This procedure would exceed the efficiency today known methods by far.

Although this technology according to experts is already theoretically impossible, there were investors who saw potential in the project. In 1998, the company Sloot Davoc, which was restructured in 1999 under the name Dipro with new financial backers and partners such as Marcel Boekhoorn and the Ex -World Online Executive Rene Bickel. In March 1999, we presented the technology the Philips CTO Roel Pieper. Pieper, the invention on behalf of Philips back, leaving, however, a little later the Group is increasing at a Dipro as CEO and renames the company into The Fifth Force Inc. With the help of his contacts to win more investors and potential partners such as Computer Associates, Sun Microsystems, ABN AMRO and finanzkäftige venture capitalists such as Kleiner, Perkins, Caufield & Byers and Mayfield Fund.

However Sloot died one day before the conclusion of a successful and lucrative business in the garden of his house in Nieuwegein a heart attack. The source code for his invention, which should be stored in a locker of ABN AMRO was not found.