The Personal Audio History Gallery

Kane Kramer's IXI (1979)

Brit inventor Kane Kramer claims to have invented the digital audio player (DAP) in 1979. The above a doodling born of his very hand in 1982 of his IXI system machine. The machine would be able to store 3.5 minutes of music on a flash memory system. Unfortunately for Kane, the relevant Patents expired in 1988 - some years before DAPs as we know them today began to flourish. No wonder he's the top two Google search results for "world's biggest failure".