Susie Armstrong connected a cell phone to the Internet for the first time, registered 22 patents and rejected an offer from Steve Jobs. But instead of talking about her successes, she prefers to talk about technology.
On stage she says there is “a bit of creativity” and “a bit of entrepreneurship” in her: Susie Armstrong at the Swiss Innovation Forum, November 30, 2023.
Sandra Blaser
Hardly any other invention has changed our lives as profoundly as the smartphone. A comparable example would be the light bulb; every school child learns that their inventor is called Thomas Edison. But the smartphone, who invented it?
Basel, a Thursday in November 2023, just before sunset. Susie Armstrong stands at the back of the conference room. At first glance it seems as if she is listening to the speaker. But her eye movements reveal that she is actually looking at the mass of people in front of whom she is about to appear: young entrepreneurs, many not so young anymore, a few women, around a thousand people who have come for the Swiss Innovation Forum. They all hope to achieve what Armstrong achieved: resounding success with their inventions.
Then it’s her turn, wiring the microphone, someone puts powder on her face, she comes on stage. But instead of telling how she invented the smartphone, Armstrong goes on and on about her employer, Qualcomm, about the American patent system, computer chips, artificial intelligence, a little about everything, a little about nothing.
The audience is getting restless, the day has already been long, some are typing on their smartphones. When Armstrong finally gets personal, she says things like: There was “a little bit of creativity” and “a little bit of entrepreneurship” in her. A gross understatement for a woman with 22 patents who actually had a lot of exciting things to say.
Smartphones came before the first search engine
San Diego, late 1990s: Armstrong is frustrated. The computer scientist had developed into a specialist in computer communication in recent years. She is now employed by the technology company Qualcomm – and is supposed to digitize a fax machine. «A fax machine? “It was already old back then,” says Armstrong in a conversation off stage.
She complains to colleagues about her job. But when Franklin Antonio came to her desk one day in the fall of 1996, Armstrong’s career changed forever. Antonio was Qualcomm’s technology chief at the time. He asks Armstrong to program an algorithm to transmit Internet data over cellular communications.
If you want to understand how revolutionary, even crazy, the idea was from the perspective of the time, you have to remember the IT landscape of the late 1990s: mobile communications have just outgrown the bone, i.e. devices the size of a forearm. The Internet is still a collection of confusing text pages, there are no search engines yet, but anyone who still wants to access the Internet mans the telephone line.
But Armstrong devotes herself to her new assignment with enthusiasm. She can finally use her previous knowledge of computers; after all, she is a specialist in transmission technologies and therefore the right person to bring the Internet to the telephone.
Cell phone “hacked”
At the center of their work is a technology called Packet Data. The term describes a method by which information, for example text on a website, is broken down into small data packets, which are sent one after the other to the receiving device. There the data packets are put together again to form a whole. It’s like taking apart a puzzle and sending it to someone piece by piece.
The transmission method already worked between computers back then, but only via cable. There are no wireless devices; cell phones only transmit speech, i.e. sound waves that arise when speaking. To change that, Armstrong has to change the basic programming in mobile communications so that not only sound waves but also data packets flow through the connection.
She succeeds on a Friday in February 1997, using a program that is used both in the cell phone and in the base station on the ground. “Basically I hacked the cell phone,” Armstrong says.
She presents the program to the Qualcomm management team on the overhead projector. The bosses are thrilled and shortly afterwards register a patent for the invention. Armstrong is currently implementing her program code in a first test device, a foldable cell phone from Qualcomm’s own brand. Then she has a browser developed for mobile phones. Qualcomm doesn’t even have its own website at this time.
The first cell phone that could connect to the Internet: Susie Armstrong’s invention in 1997.
Qualcomm / Armstrong
What could an internet-enabled phone be used for?
In 1997, no one knew whether Armstrong’s code would ever be used in practice. Major American media refrained from reporting when she presented the invention at the quarterly conference for investors and the media. Armstrong herself also has “no idea” what a “revolutionary device” she has in her hands.
But the mobile phone equipment manufacturer Ericsson believes in the potential of the invention and immediately incorporates Armstrong’s code into its products. As early as 1998, the year after the invention, Armstrong’s program was running in countless cell phone stations around the world.
This, in turn, triggers an unprecedented surge in innovation. Before the invention, mobile networks were over 20,000 times slower than they are today – this is sufficient for the transmission of telephone conversations. But in order to send data via mobile communications, increasingly faster connections are needed. Soon 3G will be invented, then 4G, now 5G – and every year new smartphones that can do more and more.
Armstrong’s career is as steep as that of mobile communications: in the years following her first invention, she registered 21 more patents, all in the field of mobile Internet, and was promoted to increasingly higher positions until she finally became head of the development of the entire technology behind smartphones and thus heads a division with 15,000 employees.
Some have the ego, others have the work
Despite this, Armstrong remains largely unknown. No major newspaper ever dedicated an article to her. When asked whether she felt overlooked, Armstrong evaded: “There are already so many big egos in the tech industry.” But behind every ego were thousands of engineers doing the actual work.
Even today, she prefers to talk about technology and her employer than about the fact that her invention is still used every time someone with a smartphone reads a newspaper article, sends a photo, opens an app or otherwise uses the Internet.
As an inventor and successful woman in the technology industry, Susie Armstrong has an inspiring story. But she doesn’t tell them. Unless you sit with her for a long time, so long that it feels indecent
But then it bubbles out of her. How she grew up in the small Californian town of Truckee with a mother who could fix everything: the ceiling fan, plumbing, kitchen appliances. This inspired Armstrong to choose an engineering career.
How she enrolled to study computer science at a time when there was no internet. How she suffered in the first lecture because the subject seemed so abstract and difficult to understand, but how she developed joy in problem solving and then couldn’t get enough of codes.
How she was so shy as a teenager that she said she would rather put nails in her eyes than give a lecture. How she first learned to approach people openly when she waited tables in a restaurant to finance her studies.
How after graduating she had eight job offers and decided to work at the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center, one of the most innovative companies of the time, where she learned how to use packet data.
How Steve Jobs once wanted to win her over as an employee and called her after she had rejected the job offer from his former company, Next, in writing: Would she like to think about it again and come over for lunch together? Armstrong didn’t like it. She had already decided on another job.
It was just the last step
In fact, it’s hard to imagine Jobs and Armstrong on the same team. Jobs wasn’t afraid to be portrayed as the inventor of the smartphone, even though he actually revolutionized its design and marketing.
Armstrong, however, says no single person can claim to have invented the smartphone. She also only applied the technology from one area to another area. In addition, their work is based on that of many other engineers who invented the packet data system and mobile communications.
In doing so, Armstrong downplays her success – and therefore stands in her own way. In her current role as Senior Vice President at Qualcomm, she tries, among other things, to motivate girls and members of minorities to study science subjects. They lack role models – partly because successful women like Armstrong don’t push themselves forward.
An article from “NZZ am Sonntag”
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