
Ask HN: Famous anonymous inventions other than Bitcoin? - amineazariz
Do you know famous inventions whose authors have always remained completely anonymous and never reveled their identities ? Other than Bitcoin.<p>PS: In any field, not only technology, and any time in history.
======
ThePhysicist
Many 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-
Cur...](https://www.amazon.fr/Radioactivit%C3%A9-1-Madame-Pierre-
Curie/dp/B001SUW80G)).

~~~
piaste
> 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

Nothing to do with publishing difficulties at all. It was simply the way a
married French woman would be addressed at the time - as "Madame [husband's
full name]", eg Michelle Obama would be "Mme Barack Obama". (It's still in use
in more formal / old-fashioned contexts.) The reader would understand that the
author of the book was Pierre Curie's wife, rather than him.

~~~
reaperducer
_It was simply the way a married French woman would be addressed at the time_

Not just in France, and not just in centuries past. I've met women in the
United States, England, and Austria who refer to themselves as Mrs.
_husbands_first_name husbands_last_name_.

It's formal. It's not insulting. You can see it commonly in 19th- and early
20th-century literature.

Several of the Christmas cards my wife received this year were addressed that
way, plus "and family."

~~~
viraptor
> It's formal. It's not insulting.

It can be both. Many do consider it insulting.

~~~
reaperducer
_It can be both. Many do consider it insulting._

Personally insulting, or are these people who feel insulted for other people?

The reason I ask is that the women I know who use this convention are not
shrinking violets. This is not being imposed upon them by some male-dominated
relationship. They are all strong-willed individuals. One is a C-level at a
global company.

~~~
viraptor
I know more than one person who would take it very, very personally.

~~~
reaperducer
I’m not sure I understand. What kind of a person is offended by how someone
else chooses to write their name?

~~~
ASpring
That's the whole point. Their name is /not/ "Mrs. [husband's first and last
name]"

There are definitely people I know that would be okay with being addressed
this way. There are many I also know who have expressed that this makes them
feel less like an individual human and more like an accessory to their
husband.

------
xfalcox
The 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
People other than xfalcox apparently...

~~~
dx87
The actual name, not the fact that it was leaked. It's trivial to find, you
just have to look for it.

------
neic
The 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)

------
hendzen
William 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.

------
theredbox
PaX the cutting edge of kernel security. The anonymous hungarian programmer
can be credited with invention of ASLR and many other lowlevel security
mechanisms.

------
shiado
Read up on Bourbaki, the original Satoshi.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicolas_Bourbaki](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicolas_Bourbaki)

~~~
Andre607
The names of the members of Bourbaki are now known, as per the Wikipedia link,
so they are not an example of persistent anonymity.

~~~
setr
The question is probably more interesting if you interpret it as “anonmpys
during their time of relevance”.

------
notahacker
I 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.

------
joubert
Interesting 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...](https://slate.com/technology/2018/05/the-thousands-of-
secret-patents-that-the-u-s-government-refuses-to-make-public.html)

“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.”

------
Kagerjay
anonymous 4chan user solving a 25 year old math problem

[https://www.theverge.com/2018/10/24/18019464/4chan-anon-
anim...](https://www.theverge.com/2018/10/24/18019464/4chan-anon-anime-haruhi-
math-mystery)

~~~
cosmic_ape
Describing 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
Can you explain how you know that?

~~~
cosmic_ape
I 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
It'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
What I said is that "very few people cared" is a better description than a "25
year old problem". It is better because it better aligns with the facts
presented in the Wired article above and other similar sources, due to reasons
above. Nothing here is a guess.

------
blihp
Historically, 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.

------
timomax
Not 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
I would imagine that lots of computer viruses and worms fit this description.

~~~
api
Some 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
Link? That is super interesting to me.

~~~
WaxProlix
Google 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
Also 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).

------
philwelch
Fire.

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
That's true of any prehistoric invention. Same goes for the wheel, the flint
axe, the spear, and the bow + arrow.

~~~
philwelch
All 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
The 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.

------
herodotus
The 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_devic...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Differential_\(mechanical_device\))

Mind you, this may not be a good answer to the question, because there are a
couple of claims for the invention.

~~~
evanb
There'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)

------
Andre607
TrueCrypt.

~~~
beaker52
[https://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
From 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.

------
mvanveen
The founding fathers published the federalist papers pseudo-anonymously.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Federalist_Papers](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Federalist_Papers)

------
xiphias2
Inside the Bitcoin ecosystem Mimblewimble is another important invention with
a funny history.

~~~
jron
The 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.ht...](https://moneromonitor.com/episodes/2017-12-05-Episode-016.html)

------
Frimel
Deepfake
([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.

------
tofflos
Do we also get to include inventions where the inventor is no longer known -
such as the wheel?

~~~
buboard
i reinvent the wheel every day

------
tedunangst
We know who invented RC4, but we don't know who told us what it is.

------
aaron695
Banksy, TISM are both creators of work and use/used anonymity.

------
Jeremy1026
The wheel is an uncredited invention that almost all of humanity uses multiple
times a day.

~~~
darkmighty
I find the bearing more significant than the wheel: without a good bearing its
utility is limited. They have a rich history it seems:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bearing_(mechanical)#History](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bearing_\(mechanical\)#History)

~~~
raverbashing
True, but to invent the bearing you need to invent the wheel first

~~~
starbeast
No you don't. Rolling logs as a linear bearing for launching boats, with
people carrying the logs to the front from the back as the boat passes over,
almost certainly preceded the wheel.

------
jwbensley
I 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.

------
phonon
why the lucky stiff (okay, his identity came out later)

------
vbrandl
Many 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.

------
chromaton
The Stuxnet worm.

~~~
ibrault
Does 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
[https://malicious.life/](https://malicious.life/) Did a great 3 parter on
Stuxnet, Flame, Duqu. His who series is fantastic really (esp season 1).

------
jspook16
Komodoplatform creator. Known and respected as jl777. He's made some really
great advancements in block chain tech.

------
starbeast
Mathematics 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)

------
chaostheory
There 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
NwAvguy of ODAC and O2 amp fame...

TLDR: [https://spectrum.ieee.org/tech-history/silicon-
revolution/nw...](https://spectrum.ieee.org/tech-history/silicon-
revolution/nwavguy-the-audio-genius-who-vanished)

~~~
ZoomZoomZoom
Came 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.

------
owstr
Maybe Mike Pall? Author of the LuaJIT.

~~~
naniwaduni
Indeed, 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
there are so many inventions. like a scientist has created artificial liver
tissue

------
ninjavis
The now-famous Anonymous group? The illuminati? The inventor of coffee?

------
andrewprock
Writing, and in particular the Arabic numerals.

~~~
gruez
Unknown (as in, probably known in the past but was lost to history) !=
anonymous. Otherwise this thread will be filled with ancient/prehistoric
inventions.

------
sammycdubs
The wheel

------
conanthe
Capitalism.

------
jcslzr
the bible

~~~
nerdponx
Quite a few sections of both the Hebrew bible and the New Testament have
scholarly consensus on authorship.

~~~
_underflow_
"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
≈ U+2248

≠ U+2260

------
manu-chroma
Work published under the name "Shakespeare", if you consider literary work as
some sort of creation, (if not invention).

~~~
api
There 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.

------
isoskeles
Bitcoin

