The inventor of the iPod
Kane Kramer may not be quite as famous as Jonathan Ive or Steve Jobs for that matter. Yet you will know his invention. He patented a device in 1979 which showed a credit-card-sized player with a rectangular screen and a central menu button to scroll through a selection of music tracks. Sound familiar? Even Apple thought so, and asked Mr Kramer to give evidence in a court case to help defend their iPod design.
Kane Kramer took out a worldwide patent but was unable to raise £60,000 to renew these patents and the technology became public property.
To be honest, I was just so pleased that finally something that I had done which has been a huge success and changed the music industry was being acknowledged. I was really quite emotional about it all.
He is now negotiating with Apple to gain some compensation from the copyright that he owns on the drawings.
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