- [Narrator] If you come up
with a million-dollar idea, you might assume it to be yours forever, to cash in as you see fit. Unfortunately, that's
not quite how it works. As many have found throughout history, successfully crafting an
idea is only a fraction of the battle. The following inventors were
pioneers for their time, developing inventions that
are still in use today. Luck, however, wasn't on their side. Either through their own
unawareness and inaction or the ill-will of outside parties, these unlucky inventors missed
out on cashing-in big time. (soft music) - Amazing. - [Narrator] Number 10, Shane Chen. Shane Chen's story is one of immorality and, as he describes it,
a broken patent system. The Beijing native
developed the two-wheeled self-balancing scooter
known as the "hoverboard," for which his patent was approved in 2014. Originally, the $1,000 selling price was a deterrent for general consumers, but Chen wasn't willing
to use cheaper materials at the risk of making
the hoverboard unsafe. That, however, didn't stop others from taking the steps Chen avoided. The original inventor of the hoverboard may have only produced several thousand, but there's now a market
of more than a million thanks to over 11,000
independent factories in China. Despite patents filed by Chen, Chinese companies started
churning out cheap knockoffs. Just as Chen suspected,
the cheaper models, which can retail as low as
$100 to $150, were a hazard. Weaker batteries and improper connections caused fires in early models,
resulting in, well, this. According to Chen, it's impossible to sell a safe hoverboard
for less than $300. Unfortunately, this matters about as much as Chen's patent does
to Chinese manufacturers, who continue to produce the
cheap knock-offs regardless. The industry is estimated to
reach $1.8 billion by 2021, and yet the unfortunate
inventor has been excluded from pocketing most of
the fruits of his labor. Number nine, John Walker. Chances are your household has at least a few of them floating about, but do you know the history
of the friction match? Let's take a trip back to 1826 to the English town of Stockton-on-Tees, where we'll find pharmacist
and inventor John Walker. While experimenting with
a flammable mixture, a match doused in the concoction sparked against Walker's
hearth and caught fire. Immediately, Walker started
producing "Friction Lights," or sticks coated with sulfur and topped with sulfide of antimony, gum and chlorate of potash. Clearly, he was onto something, as British scientist Michael Faraday, known for his work on
electromagnetism and electrochemistry, advised Walker to patent the design. Walker, however, refused, under the belief that it should be free
for anyone to produce. That didn't stop Samuel Jones, the inventor of a copycat
match known as "Lucifers", and Charles Sauria, inventor
of the phosphorus-based match, from profiting from Walker's concept. Walker may have initially sold
around 250 friction matches out of his pharmacy, but once reproductions hit the market, he saw no further profits. Assuming, on average,
each person on the planet gets through a $1 matchbox
of 42 matches annually, that would mean that
over 300 billion matches are used each year. The industry Walker and his
descendants missed out on, by these figures, would rake
in more than $7 billion a year. Number eight, Alexey Pajitnov. Alexey Pajitnov is
known for being the mind behind the phenomenally-popular
video game, Tetris. But recognition doesn't change the fact that he missed out on a huge sum of money at the peak of Tetris-mania. It all started in 1984, as
part of Pajitnov's research into artificial intelligence at the Soviet Academy of
Sciences at the Computer Center in Moscow, Soviet Russia. Pajitnov came up with an entertaining way to test new hardware capabilities using an adapted version of
the math game "pentominoes", which involves fitting
together shapes constructed of five squares. Reducing the number of
squares in each shape from five to four to prevent too much complication, and hence changing the
shapes from pentominoes to tetrominoes. Pajitnov created a simple
yet addictive game. Pajitnov displayed his
new game to colleagues and found it to be a surprising hit. With the help of Vladimir Pokhilko, he created a finished product, combined the words
"tetromino" and "tennis" to form Tetris, and
released it into the world. Unfortunately, seeing as Tetris came about on state-owned equipment, the Soviet regime kept him from patenting and mass-publishing the
game under his own name for 10 years. Pajitnov watched as his
creation crossed the Atlantic and became a hit in the United States. When Nintendo purchased licensing rights for around $40 million,
Pajitnov didn't see one penny. It wasn't until 1996, after the fall of the Soviet Union, that rights reverted to Pajitnov. But he would never
collect the profits made during those peak years. Number seven, Daisuke Inoue. In 1979, Daisuke Inoue and the six-member band
he played drums for started attracting attention with simple music that was
easy to sing along with. Eventually, Inoue was
requested to play drums for the president of a small steel company during a business trip. Though the young drummer couldn't attend, he gave the businessman a
tape of accompaniment music for him and his colleagues
to enjoy singing along to. From there, Inoue saw the
potential for a machine that could play instrumental
versions of popular songs for people of all
abilities to sing along to. In 1971, he and several friends connected eight-track
tape players to amplifiers and leased several of
the machines to bars. It was from these machines
that the basic idea of karaoke, meaning "empty
orchestra", emerged. It was a popular idea that
Inoue failed to patent, allowing Filipino Robert
del Rosario to sneak in with this own patent in 1975
for the Sing-Along System. Inoue made no profits
off of his original idea but, in 2004, was awarded
the Ig Nobel Peace Prize. A parody of the Nobel Prize awarded for unusual achievements in
science for being the pioneer that brought the karaoke machine to life. Whenever you find yourself butchering "Grease
Lightning" on Karaoke Night, be sure to dedicate it to Daisuke Inoue. Without him, the $435
million karaoke bar industry simply wouldn't exist! Number six, Walter Hunt. Sometimes having a conscience
can cost you millions. Just ask Walter Hunt, the original inventor
of the sewing machine. In 1833, Hunt designed
the first sewing machine that didn't mimic a hand stitch and provided a more durable
and faster method of sewing. Fearing that it would put
seamstresses out of work, Hunt didn't patent his idea. That changed when Elias Howe, Jr. submitted his own patent for improvements made on Hunt's machine. The 1846 patent came under question when attorneys dug up evidence
of Hunt's earlier model. In 1853, the original inventor
submitted an application to patent the 1833 design. Though the Patent Office
recognized Hunt's design as the original, Howe's
patent remained in effect for being filed first. While Hunt and Howe were dealing with their
machines and patents, Isaac Merritt Singer
snuck in with a machine that incorporated elements
from both designs. Despite a patent infringement suit filed and won by Howe against Singer in 1854, Singer became and remains a
dominant name in the industry. The sewing machine industry
recently passed $5 billion in value. Neither Walter Hunt, nor the seamstresses he was concerned about, ever got to experience
any of that crazy wealth. Number five, Elisha Gray. Alexander Graham Bell is commonly attributed as the
inventor of the telephone; but what about Ohio inventor Elisha Gray? A terrible stroke of luck is the reason that Gray isn't the household name that Graham Bell turned out to be. Gray, a co-founder of
Western Electric Company, had been secretly working on an invention that could transmit voices
through a liquid medium. On February 11, 1876, he
requested his patent lawyer, William Baldwin, to file a
provisional patent application, or caveat. Three days later, Baldwin
submitted the caveat to the U.S. Patent Office. Unfortunately, another patent application for the same concept was filed mere hours before Gray's caveat. The owner of that caveat? You guessed it - Alexander Graham Bell. Gray claimed that his
lawyers reached the office before Bell's, but Bell
ultimately retained the patent. Amidst Bell and Gray's squabble, there was also a lesser-known
third party in the background. Antonio Santi Giuseppe
Meucci, an Italian inventor, was said to have wanted to file a caveat for a talking telegraph in 1871
but was unable to afford it. Poor guy. At least he didn't live long enough to see that the phone industry is predicted to be worth $355 billion by 2020. Number four, Douglas Engelbart. Engineer Douglas Engelbart
is far from unlucky when it comes to his many successes. He's one of the pioneers of the hyperlink, and developed the early stages
of graphical user interfaces, but there's one invention
that he was never able to cash in on. In 1963, While at a conference for computer graphics in Reno, Nevada, Engelbart conceptualized a device that moved along X-Y
coordinates on a computer; the first ever computer mouse. The original design used two wheels that moved at right angles to control the movement
of an on-screen cursor. Joined by Bill English at the Augmentation Research Center of Stanford Research Institute, Engelbart developed the
first mouse prototype out of wood, a circuit
board, and metal wheels. Engelbart filed for a patent
on the design in 1967, which came through three years later. Unfortunately, the patent
technically belonged to the institute, so he never
saw any money from the device, even after Stanford Research Institute licensed it to Apple Computers
for approximately $40,000. Today, the value of the
computer mouse industry is on its way to exceeding $1 billion. Number three, Heinrich Goebel. Thomas Edison receives plenty of criticism for stealing other inventor's ideas. In many cases, like
that of the light bulb, that criticism is well-founded. Edison may have profited
off the light bulb, but the development of the modern bulb can be traced back to
Heinrich Goebel in 1854. Using a carbonized bamboo
filament in a vacuum bottle, Goebel was able to patent his product, and approached Thomas Edison in 1882 hoping to sell the patent and design for several thousand dollars. But Edison declined, claiming he saw no merit in the invention. However, after Goebel passed away in 1893, Edison quickly purchased the
patent from Goebel's widow, for a lower price than
Goebel had asked for. With the patent secured,
Edison sparked an industry that now brings in more
than $1 billion a year. Edison's sly tactics helped secure his place as one of the most
famous inventors of all time. Number two, Charles Francis Jenkins. Thomas Edison would
likely want you to believe the concept of the projector was his idea, but, like the light bulb,
that simply isn't the case. The history of the movie projector can be traced by to
Charles Francis Jenkins who, with the financial
backing of Thomas Armat, developed the Phantoscope in the 1890s. While Thomas Edison's Kinetoscope, in development around the same time, produced blurry moving
images inside a container, Jenkins' early-model film projector was the first of its kind to allow smooth, clear
projection of moving images. Following the construction of a prototype of the Phantoscope, Jenkins and Armat became locked in a lengthy feud over the patent, for which Jenkins claimed
he was the sole inventor. The patent was eventually filed
with Armat's name included and Jenkins was awarded a
cash settlement of $2,500 for the rights to the Phantoscope. Armat, in turn, sold the rights to none other than Thomas Edison, who would re-brand the
invention as the Vitascope. Jenkins eventually received
the Elliott Cresson Gold Medal for scientific achievement
from the Franklin Institute and Science Museum; a
decent consolation prize, but it doesn't match the profits from what would become one of
the most lucrative industries in the world. Even in 1920, the cinema industry was already turning over
$500 million a year. That's five and a half billion today, adjusted for inflation. Needless to say, Thomas Edison
became a very wealthy man. Number one, Catherine Hettinger. Catherine Hettinger, an American engineer responsible for creating what is perceived to be the predecessor
of the fidget spinner, narrowly missed out on one of the most insanely-popular
trends in toy history. The original design, which
Hettinger developed in 1990, was a simple disk that
spins on one finger. Hettinger originally
designed it for her daughter but saw the potential when locals at arts and
crafts fairs ate it up. She was awarded her patent in 1997 but had a hard time selling the idea. Hasbro even turned her down,
not yet seeing the potential. For 18 years, Hettinger's
spinner remained on the sideline. When her patent expired in 2005, she was unable to pay
the $400 renewal fee. Fast forward to 2017, and fidget spinners were
dubbed a "national phenomenon" by USA Today. The new wave of fidget spinners
are a little more complex than Hettinger's original design, but the concept of a rotating hand toy is remarkably similar. Although she would never see any profits, many outlets label Hettinger
as the creator of the fad. Though Hettinger states
that she isn't bothered, it's difficult to overlook the fact that she narrowly missed out
on a $500 million industry. Have you had your idea stolen and turned into a colossal cash cow? Or are you sitting on an idea right now, waiting to share it with the world? Let me know in the comments section below. And as always, thanks for watching. (soft music)
