British inventor Kane Kramer developed the original iPod at the age of 23 in 1979, his prototype was capable of playing 3.5 minutes of music stored on a chip, a limitation he believed would change as storage capacity increased. Unable to raise enough funding, he let the patent expire in 1998. Even Apple admits to the iPod’s origin; Kramer helped defend them in a patent lawsuit filed by Burst and to this date was only compensated for his time in the court case. (via Apple’s iPod was invented in 1979 - Core77)
