Scan Magazine
| Culture
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Top Scandi Inventions
The blueprints of Google Maps as we know it were laid out by a pair of Danish brothers. Photo: Google
Leading the charge: Scandinavia’s greatest inventions Today, Scandinavia is fertile ground for innovation. Its cosmopolitan cities champion a favourable work-life balance and generous welfare state, allowing for bold entrepreneurship and experimentation. In recent years, Sweden has been pegged as a haven for start-ups, home to the second-most unicorn companies per capita in the world. The focus is largely on fin-tech, but bootstrap companies of all orders are flooding to the Nordics to chase a billion-dollar valuation. With that in mind, let’s take a jaunt through Scandinavia’s innovative history and greatest inventions. By Lena Hunter
Google Maps is about as indispensable an app as you’ll find. But when Danish brothers Jens and Lars Rasmussen co-founded a digital mapping app called Expedition, in 2003, they were breaking new ground – and their work quickly caught Google’s attention. The tech giant promptly gobbled up the start-up, tweaked the software and launched Google Maps in 2005. 108
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Issue 144
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July 2022
Another milestone in smart location technology was the STDMA data link. In brief, this 1980s breakthrough allowed the Global Positioning System (GPS) to send and receive location information every second – paving the way for accurate, real-time location reports. The inventor was Hakan Lans, a Swedish multi-engine plane pilot hobbyist, who immediately saw the STDMA data link’s potential in air-traffic management. Today, it has become integral to global flight-tracking systems. The first ever unicorn
Street art in Christiania, Copenhagen - thanks to a Norwegian invention. Photo: JRodSilva
While Lans’ invention is a behind-the-curtain hero, we’re all familiar with Niklas Zennström’s. The Swede co-developed Skype – just as faster internet connec-
