“The man who nearly invented the iPod two decades ago let it slip through his fingers along with a fortune worth millions. British inventor Kane Kramer came up with the world’s first MP3 player in 1979, a device remarkably similar in appearance to the now ubiquitous music players,” Eleanor Mayne reports for Mail on Sunday. “A staggering 42 million iPods have been sold since it was launched in 2001, bringing its maker, Apple Computer, an estimated US$9.2 billion (Pounds 5.2 billion). Every minute another 100 are snapped up worldwide. There is no doubt that had Kramer hung on to his invention, he would now be a millionaire several times over. Instead, he runs a furniture shop in Hertfordshire, England.”
“Now Kramer is consulting lawyers to see whether he has any claim to the design and technology behind the MP3 player. ‘I don’t just get reminded once or twice that I didn’t get any benefit out of my creative thinking,’ he said. ‘Every time I walk down the street I see people with the headphones, or adverts for iPods,'” Mayne reports. “‘The iPod is the world’s fastest selling electrical equipment ever,’ said Kramer, ‘and I suppose, in a way, I am the world’s biggest failure.'”
Full story of how Kramer inventer the portable digital music player and then let his patents lapse here.
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Well thats just too bad.
Where were you ten years ago when they hit the mainstream?
pretty freaking hilarious that he got distracted enough to screw up like that… talk about regrets
*seven years
Boo frickin’ hoo.
Boohoo. Get over it!
i read this, quite interesting really, could store 1 song lol, you gotta feel bad from him really but hey – its the way of the world.
trolls.
Hey, look, Rickles and his people are on me all de time, but he knows I invented insult comedy . . . for dogs. And of course, de fact that I POOP on overblown celebrities and their inflated egos, well, that’s all mine. Like this news — I POOP on it, too!
Of course, if you want de truth, well, I have to say that my hat’s really off to both Microsoft and Paris Hilton. Yeh-heh-hehessssssss, you heard correctly: Microsoft and Paris Hilton. I hear they are suing each other in Federal court in L.A.
Apparently they both claim to be de originator of de concept of sucking in public.
Hey, isn’t that Kramer, from my TV show, Seinfeld?
Boo frickety hoo. Anyone who is creative for a living knows that when coming up with an idea there are probably 100 people on Earth with the same idea. It’s the one who actually does something with the idea and develops it that gets the spoils.
seven years? guess someone broke a mirror.
WAR Intel Macs
I bet every person who says boohoo, too bad would be talking to a lawyer today if it were them.
F*ck these stories.
Seriously.
The Jetsons had some great ideas too – do they get to cash in on all the new LCD TVs and space travel.
Keep waxing your furniture, LIMEY.
SB
moron
After reading the story it kind of sucks. This guy actually put 7 years of work into his product. It sucks that the board shut down the company and he was financially in capable of keeping it going.