Image copyright Getty Images 
 
 Doug Engelbart, who has died aged 88, never really made any money from inventing the mouse. Here are 10 others who didn't get to be billionaires. 
 
 1. LEDs 
 
 When Nick Holonyak Jr invented the first practically useful LED in 1962 he predicted it would one day replace Edison's lightbulb. Holonyak's colleagues have said he should be given the Nobel Prize but he humbly says: "It's ridiculous to think that somebody owes you something. We're lucky to be alive, when it comes down to it." 
 
 2. Post-It Notes 
 
 3M sell billions of Post-It Notes each year but its inventors describe themselves as "comfortably off" not wealthy. They were the co-creation of Dr Spencer Silver, who in 1968 developed an adhesive that had a "removability characteristic", and his colleague Art Fry hit on the idea of a bookmark that would stay in place in his hymnbook. 
 
 3. AK-47 
 
 The Kalashnikov rifle, or AK-47, was invented by Soviet Army soldier Mikhail Kalashnikov while recovering in hospital from injuries sustained in World War II. Kalashnikov claimed his creation was for the benefit of his country. 
 
 Image copyright Getty Images 
 
 4. Sapphire stylus 
 
 Marie Killick invented a sapphire stylus for a record player but could not license it and despite years of litigation never made any money. In 1958 she won a lawsuit against Pye but went bankrupt the following year. 
 
 5. Hovercraft 
 
 Sir Christopher Cockerell used a vacuum cleaner and tin cans to test his theories as he developed the hovercraft, which first crossed between Calais and Dover in 1959. Cockerell was knighted but fought for years to get a lump sum from the National Research Development Corporation. 
 
 Image copyright PA 
 
 6. Tetris 
 
 Russian computer programmer Alexey Pajitnov's game Tetris was developed alongside colleagues at a Russian government-funded research centre in 1985. He only started getting royalties 10 years later when he formed The Tetris Company. 
 
 7. The Wind-Up Radio 
 
 Inventor Trevor Baylis recently said he can no longer afford to live in his home in Twickenham, London, because despite millions of sales around the globe, the company he went into business with were able to tweak his design and he lost control over the product and profits. 
 
 "Most of us don't do it for the money but for the buzz," says Baylis. "I know that at least I've left my mark with the radio, the wind-up torch and other things I've invented." 
 
 Image copyright Getty Images 
 
 8. Karaoke machines 
 
 Japanese businessman Daisuke Inoue made money from playing drums in a backing band which let bar goers take the mic and have a go at singing. One time when he couldn't make a gig he put the backing music on tape instead and later made 11 Karaoke (empty orchestra) machines which he leased out. He didn't patent his invention and barely made a yen. 
 
 9. MP3 
 
 The MP3 quickly became the standard for transferring music over the internet. German PhD student Karlheinz Brandenburg started work on the project in the 1980s but because there was no money to distribute the software it was marketed as shareware. 
 
 Image copyright Getty Images Image caption Sir Tim Berners-Lee earned billions, but only in kudos 
 
 10. World Wide Web 
 
 And finally, no-one would have stumbled across this list save for Sir Tim Berners-Lee, who created the web to help scientists working at the European research lab at Cern. He says the secret of the rapid success of his invention was the fact he made it freely available. 
 
 Not all inventors are driven to make money but some want to make a contribution to the "common good", says Dr Tilly Blyth, Keeper of Engineering and Technology at the Science Museum. 
 
 "We tend to focus on the commercial development but in fact its often public and government research that has got it to that stage," Dr Blyth says. "If you look at the iPhone you think it's a great invention from Steve Jobs and Apple but look at the vital components like the screen, the chip and the processor and their origins were all in government-funded research." 
 
 "A lot of the real cutting-edge research comes from the pure and blue sky thinking done in public research facilities for the good of humanity rather than to make money." ||||| THE story most often told about Christopher Cockerell is that he invented the hovercraft by experimenting with a device made from two empty cans and a vacuum cleaner. Some accounts say one of the cans had contained cat food and the other coffee. Some maintain that both were coffee cans. In other versions a pair of kitchen scales is mentioned. Sir Christopher (as he later became) seems not to have clarified these technical points. He was content for this homely story to become part of inventors' folklore, unencumbered by too much detail. 
 
 Everything was stacked against becoming an inventor, he once said. People did not really want new ideas, even when they offered a better way of doing something. He had first learnt this as a child, when his mother declined to have her sewing machine powered by Christopher's steam engine. But “some silly chaps seem to be driven” to inventing. Britain, he believed, needed more silly chaps like George Stephenson, James Watt and Richard Arkwright, who had given the world its first industrial revolution. What could be more encouraging to their successors than the knowledge that a great invention could be given birth with a couple of cans salvaged from the dustbin? 
 
 This was an antidote to the gloomy notion that would-be inventors these days needed to work in the sort of scientific palaces where Nobel prize-winners seek drugs that will enable people to live for ever. Simple-tech was still with us. As a piece of engineering, the Cockerell hovercraft, travelling on a cushion of air and released from the friction of water, was in the elegant tradition of Stephenson's steam locomotive. There would always be a market, too, for what might be called primitive-tech. In someone's mind there was surely an idea waiting to be born as brilliant as the paper clip and the safety pin. Sir Christopher never found that golden fleece, but he never gave up the search and in the course of a long life patented more than 70 inventions. 
 
 
 
 
 
 The rewards 
 
 With all these inventions to his credit, Sir Christopher felt that he should have been rich. The hovercraft, versatile, fast, able to operate independently of harbours, was in demand throughout the world after the prototype first crossed the English Channel successfully in 1959. This conveyance, described in its patent as “neither an aeroplane, nor a boat, nor a wheeled land-vehicle”, was, it was claimed, the all-purpose craft of the future. To a large extent this claim has been realised. It is reckoned that in the past 40 years some 600m people have travelled by hovercraft. But not all of them have travelled in a hovercraft more than once. The vehicle's movement, especially over choppy seas, can encourage nausea. Hovercraft still ply the English Channel, where the craft first flew, but many people prefer the steamers or the tunnel. Its future may be more as a transport for uncomplaining soldiers. American marines are enthusiastic about the hovercraft and it is widely used in the Russian army. In Finland coastguards have found that it goes well over ice. Car-size hovercrafts have become a toy for the rich. In America there are hovercraft races. 
 
 One way or another the hovercraft has been quite a success. The name has gone into the language. “Hovercraft will always be around,” Sir Christopher predicted. Had he been an entrepreneur as well as an inventor he might indeed have made a fortune. But creativity and salesmanship do not always go together. In 1955 he had shown an early model of the craft, about two feet long, to the British government. A bad move to involve the bureaucrats, perhaps, but he was a patriot and thought the hovercraft might have a military use. The government agreed, and classified it as a state secret. Later the government took the hovercraft off the secret list and put up some money to develop it commercially; and later still helped to set up a corporation to market the vehicle. Sir Christopher surrendered his patents to the corporation. In 1969 he received £150,000 ($1.6m in today's money) in settlement of his claims, a knighthood from a grateful government and the admiration of his colleagues. “Numerous medals”, he notes in a biographical entry in a reference book. 
 
 “I've enjoyed life,” Sir Christopher remarked, “but it would have been nice to treat my wife to dinner once in a while.” He may have felt bitter, but he was never poor. He had a comfortable childhood in Cambridge, where his father was director of the Fitzwilliam Museum. He gained an engineering degree and worked for Marconi. During the second world war at Marconi he was part of the team that invented a radio direction-finder which was fitted to British bombers. 
 
 He liked messing around in boats, and after the war bought a boatyard in Norfolk. As a business it was a failure, but it was here that he first experimented with his tins; and mulled over the possibilities of generating electricity from the movement of sea waves, an idea that once seemed silly but now seems less so. But for the silly chaps, said Christopher Cockerell, we would still be living in the stone age. ||||| Suzanne Vega: “The Mother of the MP3”? 
 
 Suzanne has been referred to as the “Mother of the MP3” as it was her voice that was used as the model for Karlheinz Brandenburg’s [pictured at right] compression algorithm. From Business 2.0 Magazine: 
 
 “To create MP3, Brandenburg had to appreciate how the human ear perceives sound. A key assist in this effort came from folk singer Suzanne Vega. I was ready to fine-tune my compression algorithm, Brandenburg recalls. Somewhere down the corridor a radio was playing [Vega s song] Tom s Diner. I was electrified. I knew it would be nearly impossible to compress this warm a capella voice. 
 
 Because the song depends on very subtle nuances of Vega s inflection, the algorithm would have to be very, very good to select the most important parts of the sound file and discard the rest. So Brandenburg tested each refinement of his system with Tom s Diner. He wound up listening to the song thousands of times, and the result was a code that was heard around the world. When an MP3 player compresses music by anyone from Courtney Love to Kenny G, it is replicating the way that Brandenburg heard Suzanne Vega.” 
 
 Pat DiNizio: “You’re Fired!” 
 
 Suzanne hired Pat DiNizio, the frontman from The Smithereens, as an assistant when they both worked in an office, before both their careers took off. Dennis Diken’s liner notes from the CD version of “Especially for You”: ” Suzanne Vega had been Pat’s boss at an office job in NYC and once had the honor of *firing* his butt.” No hard feelings, as Suzanne appeared on Pat’s song “In A Lonely Place” on The Smithereen’s 1986 record “Especially For You.” 
 
 Hanging with Ani 
 
 When Suzanne was in her early twenties before she had a record deal, she used to go to Buffalo and play at a bar called Nietzches. She didn’t have enough money for a hotel so the promoter arranged for her to stay with a family whenever she played there, which was quite a bit between 1982 and 1984, or thereabouts. 
 
 This family included a young girl of about 12 or 13 who was studying dance at that time. Her name? Ani DiFranco. 
 
 Plumb Names Herself After Suzanne’s “My Favorite Plum” 
 
 Singer songwriter Plumb, whose first two albums each sold over 100,000 copies, took her name from Suzanne’s song, “My Favorite Plum” 
 
 Plumb writes, “It’s an honor to have named myself artistically Plumb after one of Suzanne Vega’s greatest works, “My Favorite Plum” off of her 1996 Nine Objects of Desire album. Suzanne has been and continues to be highly influential to my songwriting. She possesses the ability to be vulnerable, honest and poetic while still being metaphorical enough so that her songs can take on their own meaning to the listener. That’s the kind of songwriter I aspire to be, and Suzanne Vega has paved that path for me to follow.” 
 
 Sounds like Tom’s Diner? 
 
 There have been quite a few recordings which have interpolated “Tom’s Diner.” From Will Smith to REM to Easy-E, Tupac, Jars of Clay and Destiny’s Child: 
 
 Eazy-E – “Switchez” 3/26/02 
 
 3/26/02 Ludacris – “Playpen To the State Pen” 8/2/02 
 
 8/2/02 J Davis Trio – “Squinted-Eyed Justice” 8/2/02 
 
 8/2/02 Jene – “If He Knew” 5/30/02 
 
 5/30/02 Sarah Connor – “French Kissing” 11/5/01 
 
 11/5/01 Sev7en – “Friday NIght” 7/13/00 
 
 7/13/00 Lil’ Kim – “Brreak for Love” 5/22/00 
 
 5/22/00 T. One – “Tom’s Diner (Rap Verstion)” 2/11/00 
 
 2/11/00 Terror Squad – “Droaq” 6/3/99 
 
 6/3/99 Disco Elements – “Disco Lessons Part 1” 6/1/98 
 
 6/1/98 Destiny’s Child – “Know That” 1/26/98 
 
 1/26/98 Dave Hollister – “Come In The Door Pimpin” 8/21/98 
 
 8/21/98 Jars of Clay – “Good Coffee, Strong Coffee” 7/28/97 
 
 7/28/97 Chazz – “If You” 9/22/97 
 
 9/22/97 D-Devils – “Paranoid In Hell” 1/12/01 
 
 1/12/01 Will Smith – “Lean” 10/1/97 
 
 10/1/97 2Pac – “Dopefiend’s Diner” 10/13/97 
 
 10/13/97 Bingo Hand Job (REM) – “Tom’s ?” 1991 
 
 1991 After One – “Tom’s Diner Rap” 1991 
 
 1991 Marilyn Whitelaw & Mark Davies – “Jeannie’s Diner” 1991 
 
 1991 n.d.a. Project – “Tom’s Diner” 1991 
 
 1991 MIchigan & Smiley – “Tom’s Diner” 1991 
 
 1991 Beth Watson – “Waiting At The Border” 1991 
 
 1991 Nikki D. – “Daddy’s Little Girl” 1991 
 
 1991 Peter Behrens – “Dep De Do Dep” 1991 
 
 More Music-related Fun Facts: 
 
 Suzanne was the first artist on stage at the very first Lilith Fair 
 
 Suzanne’s first gig was at Carnegie Hall with Pete Seeger at age 12 
 
 Performed with Grateful Dead in ’88 
 
 Christine Lavin’s song, “Mysterious Woman” was written as a tribute and a good-natured parody of Suzanne. 
 
 Performed at Glastonbury in 1989 in a bulletproof vest. 
 
 The band “Bingo Hand Job” which recorded a track on “Toms Album” is actually REM. 
 
 The second woman to win the MTV prize for “Best Female” for”Luka” beating Cher. 
 
 Soul Coughing’s record, “Ruby Vroom” named after Suzanne’s daughter, Ruby. 
 
 Amy Ray of the Indigo Girls was quoted in a July 2000 AP interview as saying that the group’s initial goal was “to get big enough to open for Suzanne Vega.” 
 
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– Despite what you may think, a smash-hit of an invention doesn't necessarily set an inventor up for life. (Witness Doug Englebart, who invented the computer mouse but didn't see a dime from it.) As the BBC points out, there are plenty of others who failed to make billions (or even thousands) from their famous creations. On the list: Post-It Notes: Spencer Silver (who came up with the unique adhesive) and Art Fry (who had the "bookmark" idea) say they aren't rich, just "comfortably off." Karaoke machine: Daisuke Inoue failed to patent his creation, which spun out of a gig he had playing backing drums at a bar whose patrons provided the vocals; one day he couldn't make it, and put his music on a tape. MP3: Karlheinz Brandenburg started working on the MP3 in the 1980s, using the song "Tom's Diner" by Suzanne Vega. As the BBC explains, "because there was no money to distribute the software it was marketed as shareware." Hovercraft: Sir Christopher Cockerell made the mistake of getting the British government involved with his invention, which he thought would have a military function; he surrendered his patents to the corporation the government set up around the vehicle. He was eventually awarded a lump sum worth $1.6 million in today's money, a fraction of what he likely would have made in the private market. Click to see the complete list.