they could have been billionaires
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They Could Have Been Billionaires
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Getty Images No Patent, No Pay DayIt's a tough world out there for inventors and creative types. Sometimes just having a brilliant idea isn't enough toguarantee the financial windfall that should follow.
For instance, let's say you're the guy who dreamed up the notion of karaoke, and followed through by creatingthe necessary machine. If you were too busy crooning in nightclubs, not thinking about the moneymakingpotential of your creation, you might miss the chance to cash in on a global sensation worth an estimated $110million in royalties alone.
From the inventor of the karaoke machine to the pioneers behind Botox,Minyanvillelooks at the personal storiesof eight inventors who should have made bil lions -- but didn't.
First Up:No Riches for Karaoke King
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Yoshikazu Tsuno, AFP | Getty Images Daisuke Inoue: KaraokeDaisuke Inoue is famous for two things: inventing the first karaoke machine and losing out on roughly $110million in royalties by not patenting it.
In 1971, Inoue built a little wooden box he called �8-Juke.� It combined an eight-track cassette player (the car-
stereo format of the era), a guitar amplifier, and a coin box. Privately, Inoue called it karaoke (Japanese for
�empty orchestra�), music industry jargon for backing tapes touring singers would employ instead of a live
band.
Inoue began leasing 8-Juke to local bars. A tune cost 100 yen, or about a dollar -- more expensive than theaverage jukebox.
By the late '90s, Japanese karaoke had become a massive industry, dominated by three giant companies, butnone of that success benefited Inoue.
�The Reason He Didn't Patent His Invention
Next:Botox Pioneers Have Reason to Frown
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Courtesy of the Carruthers Jean and Alastair Carruthers: BotoxWth its reported 2.9 billion treatments last year alone, cosmetic Botox is arguably the biggest thing in anti-agingsince cold cream, a contribution made by the Greeks back in the second century.
The use of Botox as a skin enhancer, however, can be traced to more modern times, to a day in 1987, to beexact. That was when an opthamalogist in Vancouver, Canada, named Jean Carruthers was injecting botulinumtoxin near the brow of a patient who suffered from uncontrollable blinking, or blepharospasm, when her client
requested another shot of the poison and pointed at a spot on her forehead. But you�re not having problems
there, the doctor responded. True, said the client, a woman in her late 30s, but when you inject me there, mywrinkles go away.
The next day, Carruthers convinced her receptionist, Cathy Bickerton, to try what would become the first Botoxtreatment for frown lines. Soon after Carruthers' dermatologist husband, Alastair, had patients lining up for thetreatment.
But the Carruthers never got to cash in on their discovery. Sure, they became consultants and investigators forAllergan, and they bought stock in the company, which already owned the formula for medical treatment, but thepioneering doctors never patented their own discovery.
�Lawyer's Advice That Steered Them Wrong
Next:He Invented the World Wide Web
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Catrina Genoves, Getty Images Tim Berners-Lee:The World Wide WebThe creation of the Internet was due to the collective work of several people over many decades. The WorldWide Web, on the other hand, was the brainchild of one British software engineer named Tim Berners-Lee over just a couple years time.
What's the difference between the Internet and the World Wide Web? Here's how the techsperts break it down."All of the websites in the world, taken together, make up the World Wide Web. The Internet is the worldwidenetwork of interconnected computers, including both Web servers and computers ... that run Web browsersoftware. The Internet also carries other kinds of network traffic unrelated to the Web."
By the time Berners-Lee wrote his proposal in 1989 for what would eventually become the Web, the ideas aboutan Internet-like system had been kicking around for more than 40 years. The pieces were in place. All Berners-Lee claims to have done was put them together.
�Why He Intentionally Chose Not to Patent It
Next:Satellite Industry Passed Him By
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Mamyiomarash Arthur C. Clarke:Satellite BroadcastingFor envisioning the concept of satellite broadcasting, prolific novelist Arthur C. Clarke made next to nothing.
Clarke hastily published his idea for satellite communications in the October 1945 issue of Wireless World. In hisarticle "Extra-Terrestrial Relays -- Can Rocket Stations Give Worldwide Radio Coverage?", Clarke reduced topractical application a system that used geostationary orbit to relay radio signals -- without ever getting a patent.
Just over a decade after publishing that article, Sputnik I was launched, and on April 6, 1965, Hughes AircraftCompany -- now Boeing -- placed Early Bird, the world's first commercial communications satellite, into orbit. Bythe time Clarke died in 2008, global revenues for the satellite industry totaled $144.4 billion. Of this amount,
Clarke made exactly�12 -- in the form of the magazine article fee.
�Other Scientific Inventions He Prophesied
Next:ATM Creator Doesn't Cash In
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John Sheppard-Barron: The ATMJohn Shepherd-Barron, former currency and banking security director for De La Rue, was said to have devisedthe Automated Teller Machine (ATM) concept while sitting in the tub. Arriving at his bank just after the doors hadbeen closed, Shepherd-Barron envisioned a device to dispense cash from a person's account during off-hours.
Shepherd-Barron approached the chief general manager of Barclays to pitch his idea. The manager took animmediate liking to the concept and commissioned him to design six ATMs for a June 1967 debut.
But Shepherd-Barron, creator of the one of the best and most widely used inventions of the modern era, refusedto patent the idea and spent the remainder of his life an average Joe.
�The Noble Reason He Didn't Patent It
Next:No Profit for Potato Chips Maker
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OriginalSaratogaChips.com George Crum: Potato ChipsAccording to the history books, the potato chip was invented on August 24, 1853, at the Moon Lake Lodge inSaratoga Springs, New York. It all began when one of the patrons of the restaurant sent back his food becausehis french fries were cut too thick. The restaurant's chef, George Crum, sliced the fries for the patron even morethinly, but became irritated when the diner once again sent back his dish. In a fit of frustration, Crum sliced thepotatoes into slivers and fried them. The chef hoped to rile the diner by giving him chips that were too thin andcrispy to eat with a fork. It was a shock to the chef when the patron decided he loved these crispy little snacks.
Crum's potato chips became a featured item on the Moon Lake Lodge menu and in 1860 the chef opened hisown restaurant using the profit he had made from the chips.
However, the man who made the first batch of potato chips didn't have the political power to profit even morefrom his creation. George Crum, who was both African-American and Native American, lived from 1822 to 1914.
�In those days, people of color were not allowed to take out patents on their inventions,� says Gant-Britton,
author of the textbook Holt African American History.
�Familiar Name That Popularized His Chips
Next:Oil Driller Inventor Dies Poor
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Ohio Dept. for Natural Resources Edwin Drake:Land-Based Oil DrillWhen you think about how many trillions of dollars have been made on oil, how many lives have been lost overaccess to the fossil fuel, and how much the commodity has contributed to the advancement of developed nations,
it�s almost impossible to believe this: The man responsible for the first oil drill died poor, and so did the investor
who originally backed him.
In Titusville, Pa., Edwin Drake and a capable train conductor managed to figure out how to get a cast-iron pipe
deep into the earth�s surface and, on the morning of August 28, 1859, the men arrived at the drilling site to find
they�d struck oil 69 feet down. They began bringing the oil up with a hand pump, poured it in bathtubs, and
transferred it to whiskey barrels. Oil was officially in business.
So what happened to Drake and his determined backer, James Townsend, president of Seneca Oil? It seemsneither man had the business acumen to patent the drill. Almost immediately, other entrepreneurs began usinghis method to extract oil in the surrounding areas of Titusville, and an oil boom began. Townsend left Seneca Oiland eventually lost all of his money on Wall Street.
�Why Townspeople Called Him Crazy Drake
Next:Better Bubbles for His Troubles
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Courtesy of Concord Confections, LTD. Walter Diemer: Bubble GumModern chewing gum first hit shelves in 1869, after New York inventor Thomas Adams failed to manufacture aviable form of rubber, but managed to come up with a chicle-based compound more suitable for chewing.
Bubble gum, however, didn�t appear until 1928, when 23-year-old Walter Diemer, an accountant with the New
Jersey-based Fleer Company (who had no background in chemistry but a passion for tinkering) had a eureka
moment.
Fleer had tried its hand at bubble gum 22 years earlier. The company�s founder, Frank Fleer, made an early
form of bubble gum in 1906 called BlibberBlubber. However, it was too sticky and its bubbles broke too easily, soproduction was scrapped.
It was at Fleer that Diemer decided to conquer what had been previously thought to be an impossible formula --bubble gum.
After a year of tinkering when he wasn�t poring over Fleer�s numbers, Diemer got the formula just right.
Diemer�s creation was named Dubble Bubble, and went on to become the most successful one-cent treat on
the candy market.
Diemer may have gotten bubble gum right, but he neglected one very important part of the process: a patent forhis invention.
�The Reason He Made Bubble Gum Pink
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