Mar 31, 2008 10:33 AM
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The most famous story to come out of Sweden in 2007—besides the death of celebrated cinema pioneer Ingmar Bergman, who I thought was already dead—was the 40-gigabit internet connection of the septuagenarian Sigbritt Löthberg. Giz reader speculation that she was going to "host her knitting circle as an HD interactive webconference" was close: in fact she used the hot-as-hell connection to dry her laundry.
Sigbritt's son is internet-hardware wizard Peter Löthberg, who installed the system in his mom's house to prove a modulation technique that allows data to flow between routers that are up to 2,000km apart without any data loss—or intermediary signal boosting or routing.
Sigbritt—whose weeks-long pr0n-n-WoW marathons are now long past—put it to other uses. Hafsteinn Jonsson, head of the fiber connections for the local network Karlstad Stadsnät, says:
She mostly used it to dry her laundry...It was a big bit of gear and it got pretty warm.Sure, the guy can get his mother the world's fastest internet connection, but will he ever use some of those millions of Swedish-moneys to buy her a damn dryer? Is that so much to ask for the woman who pushed him out of her womb? The article doesn't say whether or not she used her laser mouse to iron the linens.
Alas, the gear is gone now, leaving Sigbritt with a relatively sluggish 10 gigabits to play with. Peter has taken the equipment even farther out, to further test his distance theory. Later this summer Sigbritt might get a 100-gigabit system, though, one that, according to Jonsson, can be used for the "neighbors' laundry too." [The Local]
Send an email to Wilson Rothman, the author of this post, at wilson@gizmodo.com.
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