Jewish Invention Myths: The USB Flash Drive

One of the seemingly more solid jewish invention claims that have been made over is that of the USB flash drive.

As ‘MNews’ relates:

‘Dov Moran – USB flash drive

Israeli entrepreneur Dov Moran invented the USB flash drive, known to all of us as the "memory stick".’ (1)

The problem is this is hardly contested since Dov Moran along with Amir Ban and Oron Ogdon filed for a patent in 1999 of what looks like a modern USB flash drive, (2) but Shimon Shmueli of IBM also filed a patent for a similar device in 1999. (3)

While Singaporean company called ‘Trek 2000 International Ltd’ and a Chinese company called ‘Netac’ have both independently claimed to have been original inventors of the USB flash drive and have had some success in courts (notably in East Asia) in asserting this claim with Moran, Ban, Ogdon and Shmueli very much on the back foot on the issue rather than – as you’d expect if their claim was as genuine as they assert – on the front foot proudly asserting their priority. (4)

Rather interesting it was a Malaysian engineer named Pua Khein Seng who appears to have invented and sold the first USB flash drive in 2001, (5) but none of these individuals or companies actually invented the USB flash drive.

The priority for that invention is actually uncontested despite all the noise around who first patented the first commercial product that we can call a UBS flash drive (which is what the above debate is really about) and lies with Fujio Masuoka of Japan. Who created the concept, theory and a prototype of the flash drive in 1980, revealed it to the world in 1984 and created an improved version of it by 1987 while working at Toshiba. (6)

So, no Dov Moran didn’t invent the USB Flash Drive: Fujio Masuoka did.

References

(1) https://mnews.world/en/news/the-great-jews-and-their-inventions

(2) https://web.archive.org/web/20210421031225/https://www.newyorker.com/tech/annals-of-technology/object-of-interest-the-flash-drive; https://kodakdigitizing.com/blogs/news/who-invented-the-thumb-drive

(3) https://web.archive.org/web/20210421031225/https://www.newyorker.com/tech/annals-of-technology/object-of-interest-the-flash-drive;

(4) https://www.premiumusb.com/blog/who-invented-the-usb-flash-drive

(5) https://web.archive.org/web/20211111052701/https://www.thestar.com.my/news/nation/2012/07/17/father-of-pen-drive-now-a-datuk

(6) https://web.archive.org/web/20191129233409/http://www.iue.tuwien.ac.at/phd/windbacher/node14.html also https://www.premiumusb.com/blog/who-invented-the-usb-flash-drive