Extract from the New Statesman

From parliamentary democracy to Worcestershire sauce, the Brits have always been world leaders in innovation and design. But, in recent years, British inventors have been struggling to hold their own in the cut-throat research and development industry and an increasing number are now finding themselves on the block.

James E. Lovelock, the unrecognised brain behind the microwave oven, knows only too well that there are no points for second place. In the 1940s, whilst experimenting on how to resuscitate cryogenically frozen hamsters, Lovelock realised that the microwaves used to thaw the animals could also be used to heat his dinner.

“I was the first person to have a microwave meal – a baked potato,” said Lovelock.

“I didn’t think to patent the idea because the magnetron (which produced the microwaves) was a massive device which cost the equivalent of £1m in today’s money.”

… Perhaps the best known battle between the UK and the US was over penicillin, a British discovery left unexploited until an organised American development programme modified the production process sufficiently to mass-produce the drug…

… The British engineer Alec Reeves suffered from a similar fate. His invention, Pulse Code Modulation (PCM), is nowadays at the heart of all digital electronic equipment…

Henry VI granted the earliest known English patent for invention to Flemish-born John of Utynam in 1449 for making stained glass windows, over 300 years before the first US patent, but in the 21st century Britain has been left far behind.

“Standing on the shoulders of giants”; the words of Britain’s most celebrated scientist are embossed on the side of the two pound coin. If Sir Isaac Newton were alive today, he might lament that our inventors have too often provided the shoulders on which others are now standing.

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http://www.newstatesman.com/pdf/manufacturingsupp.htm