Tony Fadell Birthday

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Tony Fadell was born on 22 March, 1969

American inventor, designer and entrepreneur, regarded as the “Father of the iPod“. Fadell came up with the idea of the iPod – a hard disk based portable music player – while being employed at electronics giant Philips. He soon quit and started his own company called Fuse. Unfortunately, Fuse soon closed down because it failed to secure the second round of funding.

Fadell then took the idea of the hard-disk based music player to his former employer Philips and later to RealNetworks. Both companies rebuffed him. Far from being dejected, he pitched the idea to Apple who, unbeknownst to him, had recently acquired SoundJam.

Steve Jobs showed immense interest in the idea and instructed Jon Rubinstein, Apple’s chief hardware engineer, to assemble a team. Fadell joined Apple and, a year later, the iPod was announced.

Tony Fadell later founded Nest Labs which released Nest Learning Thermostat, a programmable and self-learning thermostat that conserved energy by optimising the temperature at homes. The company was bought over by Google in 2014 for $3.2 billion.

Check out these 10 iPod facts.