Apple has admitted that a British man played a part in developing the iconic and extremely profitable iPod, although he has so far received no money for his invention. In 1979 Kane Kramer from Hertfordshire filed a patent for a digital music player that stored just three and a half minutes of music to a solid state chip.

Glenn Martin, a former research biochemist, has devoted almost 30 years to inventing a jetpack that flies for up to 30 minutes, 100 times longer than its predecessor, the Bell Rocket Belt.