On power sockets...
The original inventor of the common USA power outlet went on to invent the standard Australian power outlet too. Originally patented as "an Improvement in Separable Attachment-Plugs" for the US market, the new safer design never caught on in America; the older version was already too established there, and the new version with rotated blades to prevent backward-insertion wasn't compatible with the plugs and sockets people already had. (Even though the power outlets of the day were still something many people would retro-fit by screwing an adapter into a ceiling light!) Two decades later the State Electricity Commission of Victoria (Australia) adopted the design as an official standard.
Wikipedia says original inventor Harvey Hubbell still managed to cash in by supplying his sockets to the Australian market but their citation[1] seems to contradict this: it became the standard because it was cheap to manufacture locally and because the patent had expired so there were no royalties to pay.