Nélio José Nicolai (c. 1940 – 11 October 2017) was a Brazilian electrotechnician who is believed to have invented

caller ID Caller identification (Caller ID) is a telephone service, available in analog and digital telephone systems, including voice over IP (VoIP), that transmits a caller's telephone number to the called party's telephone equipment when the call i ...

. Nicolai was born in Belo Horizonte and studied at the Escola Técnica de Minas Gerais (current

Federal Center for Technological Education of Minas Gerais The Federal Center for Technological Education of Minas Gerais ( pt, Centro Federal de Educação Tecnológica de Minas Gerais, CEFET-MG) is an education center located in the Brazilian state of Minas Gerais. It is a technological institution that ...

). Nicolai moved to

Brasília Brasília (; ) is the federal capital of Brazil and seat of government of the Federal District. The city is located at the top of the Brazilian highlands in the country's Central-West region. It was founded by President Juscelino Kubitsche ...

in the 1970 decade, working for Telebrasília. There, in 1977 he developed a system for identifying phone calls as a way to curb prank callers. The system was called Bina (acronym for "B Identifica Número A"; ''B identifies number A)'' Nicolai filed a patent for the first version of Bina in 1980, recognised eight years later. After losing his job in 1984, the inventor developed a second version of Bina, patented in 1992. Nicolai fought with telecommunications companies for the right to receive royalties for an adaptation of the caller ID used by telephone exchanges and filed lawsuits against phone operators Claro and Vivo. In 2012 Claro settled with Nicolai to pay 0,25 percent of his request.

References

Brazilian inventors People from Belo Horizonte Date of birth missing Place of death missing 1940s births 2017 deaths {{telecom-stub