Most of us would know that Britain has a connection with the Apple series of "i" products iMac, iPod, iPad, iPhone, iDunnowotsnxt, etc via their designer Sir Jony Ive.
I have had a professional involvement with digital audio techniques beginning circa 1985 (with involvement with an eprom based radio promo system) and lasting until my retirement in 2007 and I thought I was pretty well up on it's history.
So to say this came as a bit of a shock to me is an understatement:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article ... money.html
Yes, the technology of the day meant that the device had a considerable amount of development ahead of it before it was a practical product *but* the fact that someone had actually conceived of the concept in 1979 is, to me, astounding.
Note: There is a contemporaneous paper describing the system as a whole (in the same manner as iPod+iTunes is a system), including DRM considerations, that is eerily prescient of the Apple product.
Getting innovative technology out of "proof of concept" phase and into production seems to have been a recurring problem for the UK in the 20th Century with one notable example circa 1926 .
Note: This post is made in response to Steve's worry that posts aren't getting though, and a test thereof, since the last purge of spammers - none-the-less I deem it to be of at least some passing interest.