How Britain had iPhone technology before Apple, but Quango handed our advantage to the competition Engineer Andrew Fentem was perfecting the touch-screen process in 1999 It was years before Apple took on Fingerworks - the system they now use But his invention was stifled by the National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts (Nesta) Quango was set up by New Labour in 1998 to help innovation By Nicholas Booth Missed opportunity: The systems used for the iPhone screens could have come from Britain A British engineer says he was developing touchscreen technology used in the iPhone in the nineties - but his invention was stifled by a New Labour quango. Andrew Fentem says the National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts (Nesta) prevented his technology from being produced in this country. Touchscreen devices are today capable of manipulating images and driving virtual instruments â€" work the British engineer was perfecting in 1999. If Apple had acquired Mr Fentem's potentially superior British technology, the company could have brought their revolutionary products to market faster. But thanks to the bungling British quango, Apple never even saw his work and instead went with Fingerworks technology. Mr Fentem, who developed software to arrange and display data in new and visually interesting ways, told science and technology magazine, The Register: 'It was like a fancy Pinterest system. It was easy to build attractive applications, but I found the lack of tangibility and tactility uninspiring, so in my spare time I decided to do something about it. Beginning in 2001, Mr Fentem designed and built a physical user-interface gadget that went beyond the traditional mouse and keyboard: a flat matrix of hairs, rollers, vibrators, electromagnets and other actuators that could move around objects. 'I needed a way of tracking these multiple objects, and that's where my interest in multitouch systems started,' says Mr Fentem. I eventually started working on these technologies full-time, and progressed to developing high-speed multitouch touchscreen systems for games like virtual air-hockey, interactive carpeting, and for multitouch virtual synthesiser controllers. Innovator: Andrew Fentem was said to have had one of the original designs for the technology that was used for the iPad and iPhone touch screens When the New Labour administration came in to power, they wanted to extend the brief to support innovation and entrepreneurs. Following a revision to the Lottery Act in 1998, Nesta was created. In its first five years handling a Â£250m endowment Nesta, saw a return of just Â£228 in royalties. Mr Fentem submitted a funding application to Nesta in January 2003, while he continued to work on new prototypes. Investment: Nesta (National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts) was set up by New Labour under Tony Blair in 1998 'When I first approached Nesta I was told that I would receive a funding decision within six weeks,' he says. However, it took Nesta a year to just write the contract. To put that in perspective, it took Apple only two years to conceive, develop and commercialise the entire iPhone. No one at Nesta has a science or engineering background. It would be many months before the organisation's bureaucracy finished processing his paperwork. Mr Fentem said he had been troubled to learn, that spring, from a manager at the quango that that 'no one at Nesta has a science or engineering background', in the managerâ€™s own words. 'When he saw the look of horror and disbelief on my face he quickly said, "But we're trying to remedy that,"' Mr Fentem recalled. That August, Nesta introduced him to a potential manufacturing partner, but there were more delays â€" in all, it would be almost a year before a funding deal was signed. On 5 November, Mr Fentem signed a contract with Mark White - Nesta's Invention and Innovation Director. The deal assigned Mr Fentem a mentor, earmarked a manufacturer, and released Â£20,000 in funding. Another Â£30,000 could be unlocked later on once further progress was made, as well as Â£50,000 to develop an initial product. But, according to Mr Fentem, the deal turned out to be pretty one-sided. Mr Fentem explains: 'The manufacturing deal "milestone" created something of a chicken and egg impasse; Nesta wouldn't release the funding until the technology was ready for a manufacturing deal. In other words, I was expected to complete development of all of the multi-touch technology with my own savings plus their Â£20,000 investment, shouldering most of the project risk. This came despite investments being given to other projects. For example, 2003 the press reported that Angela de Castro, a Brazilian-born clown, had won Â£39,200 for a study to 'evolve her clowning expertise and look deeply into what clowning has to offer contemporary society', according to Nesta. That cash also covered travel expenses so the performer could learn from 'master clowns' around the world. Later it would emerge that Nesta spent over Â£1m on 'dream time fellowships', which encouraged artists to take a year off to 'explore'. According to a 2005 Sunday Times report, one received Â£27,500 to monitor her moods and compare them to phases of the Moon. A magician received Â£36,890 grant to travel to Las Vegas to see another magician perform at the Sahara hotel and casino. The quango would later admit that it didnâ€™t recruit 'intellectual property practitioners' as a matter of policy - but instead would 'obtain advice to inform our processes ... by engaging relevant experts as the need arises'. In April 2004, Mr Fentem wrote to Nesta, impressing upon them the need to unlock sufficient funding for the project. Probe: PriceWaterhouseCoopers launched an investigation into the interactions between Nesta and Mr Fentem Then Mr Fentem, after continually urging Nesta to speed up the application process, proposed approaching Apple and Sony with his technology that very month. Mr Fentem was now in a bind: In his view, Nesta had alerted competitors to his innovative multitouch work, but its foot-dragging had led him down a costly dead end. The quango refused to release any more money until he found a new 'development partner'. Bear I mind I had been given just Â£20,000. I had done an extraordinary amount for so little money. Assistance: Fentem then began to pursue the new Labour establishment and found help in the form of his constituency MP, Emily Thornberry, who is now the Shadow Attorney General In an internal review conducted in December 2004 which The Register says it has has seen, Nesta itself conceded that 'milestone requirements [were] not set out sufficiently clearly in the contract to provide certainty on when they have been met.' It continued: 'Milestone renegotiation issues can only be resolved through discussion between awardee and programme staff...to identify a way forward.' But Nesta and Mr Fentem could not reach an agreement. Fentem said: 'They wouldn't acknowledge that they'd wasted such an enormous amount of my time.' To add insult to injury, Nesta continued to claim publicly it had invested Â£100,000 in his multi-touch screen tech. Mr Fentem demanded an explanation, and eventually this triggered a formal investigation by PriceWaterhouseCoopers. The probe found 'a potential conflict of loyalties' which occurred when it transpired that Fentem's mentor had been separately acting as an advisor to another company while he was working on behalf of the inventor, 'there [was] no evidence this caused any detriment to the complainant's project'. It did however, note that the potential conflict of interest should have been registered at the time and added that there was not 'sufficient guidance on conflicts ... for Nesta's Project mentors'. Nesta did not contest the finding. 'I am very sorry that in your case, we fell short of the high standards you should expect from Nesta,' wrote the quango's CEO Janet Morrison in March 2005, after the PWC probe partly upheld Mr Fentem's complaint. Morrison confirmed that for Mr Fentem to receive the remaining Â£80,000 to continue his work, he would have to agree that Nesta take control of his efforts again â€" trusting the same organisation that, from the inventor's point of view, had delayed the project for nearly two years. Nesta maintained that Mr Fentem needed to find a new development partner before the funds could be released. The initial internal review by Nesta had partly upheld Mr Fentem's complaints that the '10 months it took [Nesta] to process [his] full application exceeded Nesta's published service standards which state that applications will be processed in 10 to 14 weeks'. Gadget: The technology was also used in the iPad, which has made the software giant billions of dollars Later, the PwC review added that a decision not to pursue collaboration with Novation could have been taken in March rather than June and may have resulted to avoid a consequent three-month delay to the project. Mr Fentem then began to pursue the new Labour establishment â€" and found help in the form of his constituency MP, Emily Thornberry, now the Shadow Attorney General. As they pressed to find someone to take responsibility, they struggled to get the actual government to exercise any oversight over its quango. By 2006, Nesta had become too embarrassing even for the Department for Culture Media and Sport. The old I&I department was effectively disbanded. But soon it was back. 'This has been a year of good progress for NESTA,' wrote Chairman Chris Powell in the foreword to the 2007 Annual Report. Powell trumpeted a new 'Intellectual Property Accelerator that helps creative entrepreneurs make the most of their intellectual property.' The report goes on to detail that NESTA had developed 'a new strategic direction' entailing a 'realignment of programme streams'. But the relentless technology market didnâ€™t cease. In early 2005, a few months after Mr Fentem proposed approaching the company, Apple instead acquired Fingerworks - a company founded by an electrical engineering student â€" just like Andrew Fentem â€" called Wayne Westerman. Westermanâ€™s PhD dissertation was titled 'Hand Tracking Finger Identification and Chordic Manipulation on a Multi Touch Surface' and heâ€™d managed to produce commercial products within three years. Spanning as it did science and the arts, Fentemâ€™s work was arguably much more flexible and sophisticated than Westermanâ€™s keyboards and much more closely aligned with Appleâ€™s vision. In fact, in a bizarre twist, Nesta actually contacted Fentem asking for royalties statements, gross receipts and updates on his trading status the following year in a letter The Register says it has seen. 'A few years ago,' Fentem recalls, 'I was interviewed about my work by the British Council - the article was for a magazine distributed by their 'creative embassies' around the world. After the usual questions about my influences etc, they asked me what my message would be to young people thinking about coming to work or study in the UK. 'I said, "Don't." 'Don't what?' asked the woman from the British Council..."Don't come. Don't come to the UK....that would be my message."' In 2012, Nesta changed from being an executive body to a charity.