British did it, sure...
I am sure that there are some terribly gifted British coders (actually quite a few, especially for games and media) who can claim multi-tasking was there invention. It might even be true (don't tell the guys who wrote Multics, or ITS at MIT).
But even if they did, they had the usual British tech marketing plan...flatten 50 fag packets*, write the name of the product and their telephone number on the back, and pass them out at a single trade show, whilst demoing their product on a single machine set up on a card table, with the company name hand-lettered on reversed green-bar printer paper (used natch). When the world didn't beat a path to their door, they all got bored and became estate agents so as to pay the rent...
Hmm, is that an official MasPar flattened fag packet you have there...?
* - fag packets are cigarette boxes, for our North American friends, not cling-film wrapped homosexuals...not that there is anything WRONG with that, mind you.