6 ms·

Kane Kramer is credited with inventing the digital audio player in 1979

68 points by terhechte 14y ago

anonymouz 14y ago
> However, in 1988 a boardroom dispute within Kramer's company and the subsequent failure to raise the £60,000 required to renew the patent resulted in the patent lapsing and the designs entered the public domain. So he couldn't get a product to market within 9 years (many more actually, since just because he lost the patent does not mean he wouldn't be able to produce a player). Seems like the patent system sort of worked here in the end. It would be much worse if he would still be holding the patent and could collect revenues/damages from everyone producing MP3 players today.
- tobiasu 14y ago
  The patent systems idealistic idea is to protect the inventor from the big guys that copy his idea, because he himself does not have the necessary capital to manufacture the product. The patent system certainly didn't work here, even if the outcome is better than if it did.
  - anonymouz 14y ago
    No, the point is to foster innovation by providing a limited time monopoly to the original inventor (whether that actually works is of course a different question...), so that he can start manufacturing his product and have a decent shot at getting a profit from it. He got a chance, but failed to make anything out of his idea, and years later other guys came along with the same idea. They most likely didn't really "copy" him, they came up with the idea independently --- a digital audio player is quite a natural evolution of, say, a Walkman. This time, some companies managed to bring a product to the market. There's no reason why they should pay him. The patent system worked.
    - stan_rogers 14y ago
      The time-limited monopoly is part of the deal, yes, but the ultimate goal is to prevent invention from being kept secret. The monopoly is granted specifically in return for the (eventual) public availability of the invention. The reason behind the restrictions (obviousness, the existence of prior art, etc.) is that no public good can be obtained in exchange for the monopoly award. Somewhere along the line, the idea that patents are meant to serve the public good seems to have gotten lost...
terhechte 14y ago
What I find the most interesting (or rather sad) here, is that this kind of feels like a legitimate case for a technological patent because this guy invented the electronics, and foresaw a distribution mechanism just like iTunes, even some kind of DRM. And just here the patent system fails, because he wasn't able to pay the 60.000 pounds to extend the worldwide patents. Wasn't the patent system originally devised for protecting businesses like his? Small companies trying to be innovative and trying to compete with the big guys. This guy seems like a role model of what the patent system was designed for, and just (or even) there it fails. Also, 8mb in 1984 sounds like a lot of memory. I wonder what storage mechanism / technology he used.
- eternalban 14y ago
  I filed a provisional patent app in '96 for a "presence protocol" based decentralized personal networking governed by a social model. I ran into the same precise issue and must sheepishly admit permitted it to get the better of me and abandoned it. Watching the likes of FB, G+ et al these past few years has been a somewhat bitter experience. :) I guess the silver lining is that I am in possession of government stamped receipt confirming prior art in this domain.
  - monochromatic 14y ago
    ... unpublished prior art.
    - eternalban 14y ago
      USPTO doesn't count? I've been wondering about that. What do you suggest? Scan it and publish it?
      - monochromatic 14y ago
        See 35 U.S.C. 102.
        14y ago
rheide 14y ago
I found the link to Bubble memory (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bubble_memory https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bubble_memory) in that article fascinating. I never thought that memory could work like that. The tutorial is also useful: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/How_bubble_memory_works https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/How_bubble_memory_works
BrianPetro 14y ago
> Kramer also says he has plans that would end copyright infringement altogether, however no details on this project have been released. This statement is what caught my eye. Kind of ironic though.
- monochromatic 14y ago
  That statement in particular makes him sound kind of like a crank.
  - hnriot 14y ago
    And looking at his website agrees, he's stuck in the past and doesn't even have a photo if his device. Wikipedia claims he made prototypes that worked, so I would have thought that he would show off an actual working unit instead of a sketch. I suspect he just never got it to work. And as others have said a digital music player was very likely conceived and invented by many people. The whole world was going digital in the 80's/90's everything from clocks to cameras to toasters to tv, so the little Walkman was an obvious stepping stone to a digital music player. Apple didn't even invent the digital music player, they just put a click wheel on their design which was better than the competitions interface and the rest is history... As an anecdotal aside, i went to see the new nano in the sf apple store and noticed that its in the back and I was the only person looking, on a very busy Saturday afternoon. I think the digital music player has finally reached its newspaper moment. The abundance of smartphones has made p&s cameras, watches and portable muaic players unnecessary. To to mention GPS navigation systems, atlases, encyclopedia...
    - jedberg 14y ago
      Nano sales should pick up around Xmas time, because those seem to be what parents give to kids instead of smart phones (source: my wife is a 4th grade teacher and a bunch of kids seem to have them).
tokenadult 14y ago
I am a Wikipedian. Wikipedia articles like this are frequently used to argue legal claims outside the court system. The sources of this article are exceptionally poor (a tabloid newspaper notorious in Britain for sensational articles) and not adequate to the task of demonstrating the claim in the submission here (which is NOT the original article title, contrary to the HN site guidelines). http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html I'm flagging this submission in the interest of keeping better quality articles on the HN front page. If there is really some factual basis for the claim in the submission title, there should be much better sources to submit.
- terhechte 14y ago
  I originally read about this guy in a better researched article in a well known German newspaper magazine (well, in their online version). But since the original article was German, I couldn't really post it here, still found the whole story interesting though. I also thought that fellow hackers might be interested in this tale. So I searched a bit, and the best thing I could find was the Wikipedia site. You're right though, it lacks sources. For what it's worth, here's the link to the original German article. http://einestages.spiegel.de/s/tb/25583/kane-kramer-erfinder-des-ipod-urahnen.html http://einestages.spiegel.de/s/tb/25583/kane-kramer-erfinder...
- pronoiac 14y ago
  Here's a related Wired article from 2008: http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2008/09/briton-invented/ http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2008/09/briton-invented/ Edit: At the time, it looked fishy. I did some digging, & it looked plausible enough: http://www.metafilter.com/74747/The-Birth-of-the-Ipod#2251516 http://www.metafilter.com/74747/The-Birth-of-the-Ipod#225151...
aristidb 14y ago
I would not surprised if _hundreds_ of people have "invented" a fully digital media-free audio player years or decades before Apple perfected it into a consumer device. This is a world of billions of people. Billions. The romantic idea of one man/woman inventing something - without another man/woman inventing the same unknowingly - is just not realistic for most things.
- lurkinggrue 14y ago
  I had a conversation about the idea in 1987. Hell! In 1993 me and a group at a company were spitballing ideas for the video technology we had and came up with a home DVR. Hard drives were not quite up for the task for that so the idea got shelved. To quote Heinlein: “When railroading time comes you can railroad—but not before.”

68 points by terhechte 14y ago

> However, in 1988 a boardroom dispute within Kramer's company and the subsequent failure to raise the £60,000 required to renew the patent resulted in the patent lapsing and the designs entered the public domain. So he couldn't get a product to market within 9 years (many more actually, since just because he lost the patent does not mean he wouldn't be able to produce a player). Seems like the patent system sort of worked here in the end. It would be much worse if he would still be holding the patent and could collect revenues/damages from everyone producing MP3 players today.

tobiasu 14y ago
The patent systems idealistic idea is to protect the inventor from the big guys that copy his idea, because he himself does not have the necessary capital to manufacture the product. The patent system certainly didn't work here, even if the outcome is better than if it did.
- anonymouz 14y ago
  No, the point is to foster innovation by providing a limited time monopoly to the original inventor (whether that actually works is of course a different question...), so that he can start manufacturing his product and have a decent shot at getting a profit from it. He got a chance, but failed to make anything out of his idea, and years later other guys came along with the same idea. They most likely didn't really "copy" him, they came up with the idea independently --- a digital audio player is quite a natural evolution of, say, a Walkman. This time, some companies managed to bring a product to the market. There's no reason why they should pay him. The patent system worked.
  - stan_rogers 14y ago
    The time-limited monopoly is part of the deal, yes, but the ultimate goal is to prevent invention from being kept secret. The monopoly is granted specifically in return for the (eventual) public availability of the invention. The reason behind the restrictions (obviousness, the existence of prior art, etc.) is that no public good can be obtained in exchange for the monopoly award. Somewhere along the line, the idea that patents are meant to serve the public good seems to have gotten lost...

terhechte 14y ago

What I find the most interesting (or rather sad) here, is that this kind of feels like a legitimate case for a technological patent because this guy invented the electronics, and foresaw a distribution mechanism just like iTunes, even some kind of DRM. And just here the patent system fails, because he wasn't able to pay the 60.000 pounds to extend the worldwide patents. Wasn't the patent system originally devised for protecting businesses like his? Small companies trying to be innovative and trying to compete with the big guys. This guy seems like a role model of what the patent system was designed for, and just (or even) there it fails. Also, 8mb in 1984 sounds like a lot of memory. I wonder what storage mechanism / technology he used.

eternalban 14y ago
I filed a provisional patent app in '96 for a "presence protocol" based decentralized personal networking governed by a social model. I ran into the same precise issue and must sheepishly admit permitted it to get the better of me and abandoned it. Watching the likes of FB, G+ et al these past few years has been a somewhat bitter experience. :) I guess the silver lining is that I am in possession of government stamped receipt confirming prior art in this domain.
- monochromatic 14y ago
  ... unpublished prior art.
  - eternalban 14y ago
    USPTO doesn't count? I've been wondering about that. What do you suggest? Scan it and publish it?
    - monochromatic 14y ago
      See 35 U.S.C. 102.
      - 14y ago

rheide 14y ago

I found the link to Bubble memory (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bubble_memory https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bubble_memory) in that article fascinating. I never thought that memory could work like that. The tutorial is also useful: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/How_bubble_memory_works https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/How_bubble_memory_works

BrianPetro 14y ago

> Kramer also says he has plans that would end copyright infringement altogether, however no details on this project have been released. This statement is what caught my eye. Kind of ironic though.

monochromatic 14y ago
That statement in particular makes him sound kind of like a crank.
- hnriot 14y ago
  And looking at his website agrees, he's stuck in the past and doesn't even have a photo if his device. Wikipedia claims he made prototypes that worked, so I would have thought that he would show off an actual working unit instead of a sketch. I suspect he just never got it to work. And as others have said a digital music player was very likely conceived and invented by many people. The whole world was going digital in the 80's/90's everything from clocks to cameras to toasters to tv, so the little Walkman was an obvious stepping stone to a digital music player. Apple didn't even invent the digital music player, they just put a click wheel on their design which was better than the competitions interface and the rest is history... As an anecdotal aside, i went to see the new nano in the sf apple store and noticed that its in the back and I was the only person looking, on a very busy Saturday afternoon. I think the digital music player has finally reached its newspaper moment. The abundance of smartphones has made p&s cameras, watches and portable muaic players unnecessary. To to mention GPS navigation systems, atlases, encyclopedia...
  - jedberg 14y ago
    Nano sales should pick up around Xmas time, because those seem to be what parents give to kids instead of smart phones (source: my wife is a 4th grade teacher and a bunch of kids seem to have them).

tokenadult 14y ago

I am a Wikipedian. Wikipedia articles like this are frequently used to argue legal claims outside the court system. The sources of this article are exceptionally poor (a tabloid newspaper notorious in Britain for sensational articles) and not adequate to the task of demonstrating the claim in the submission here (which is NOT the original article title, contrary to the HN site guidelines). http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html I'm flagging this submission in the interest of keeping better quality articles on the HN front page. If there is really some factual basis for the claim in the submission title, there should be much better sources to submit.

terhechte 14y ago
I originally read about this guy in a better researched article in a well known German newspaper magazine (well, in their online version). But since the original article was German, I couldn't really post it here, still found the whole story interesting though. I also thought that fellow hackers might be interested in this tale. So I searched a bit, and the best thing I could find was the Wikipedia site. You're right though, it lacks sources. For what it's worth, here's the link to the original German article. http://einestages.spiegel.de/s/tb/25583/kane-kramer-erfinder-des-ipod-urahnen.html http://einestages.spiegel.de/s/tb/25583/kane-kramer-erfinder...
pronoiac 14y ago
Here's a related Wired article from 2008: http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2008/09/briton-invented/ http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2008/09/briton-invented/ Edit: At the time, it looked fishy. I did some digging, & it looked plausible enough: http://www.metafilter.com/74747/The-Birth-of-the-Ipod#2251516 http://www.metafilter.com/74747/The-Birth-of-the-Ipod#225151...

aristidb 14y ago

I would not surprised if _hundreds_ of people have "invented" a fully digital media-free audio player years or decades before Apple perfected it into a consumer device. This is a world of billions of people. Billions. The romantic idea of one man/woman inventing something - without another man/woman inventing the same unknowingly - is just not realistic for most things.

lurkinggrue 14y ago
I had a conversation about the idea in 1987. Hell! In 1993 me and a group at a company were spitballing ideas for the video technology we had and came up with a home DVR. Hard drives were not quite up for the task for that so the idea got shelved. To quote Heinlein: “When railroading time comes you can railroad—but not before.”