Trevor Baylis

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Trevor Baylis at the DIY and Garden Show in Earls Court, London, January 2006

Trevor G. Baylis OBE (born May 13, 1937 in Kilburn, London) is an English inventor. He is best known for inventing a wind-up radio. Rather than using batteries or external electrical source, the radio is powered by the user winding a crank for several seconds. This stores energy in a spring which then drives an electrical generator to operate the radio receiver. He invented it in response to the need to communicate information about AIDS to the people of Africa.

In October 1997 he was awarded the Order of the British Empire by the Princess Royal at Buckingham Palace. He was also awarded an honourary doctorate by Leeds Metropolitan University in June 2005. He now runs Trevor Baylis Brands plc, a company dedicated to helping inventors to develop and protect their ideas and to find a route to market.

Baylis has lived in Eel Pie Island for many years.

1 Early life
2 Invention
3 Quotes
4 Bibliography
5 References
6 External links

[edit] Early life

Trevor Baylis grew up in Southall, Middlesex. His first job was in a Soil Mechanics Laboratory in Southall where a day-release arrangement enabled him to study mechanical and structural engineering at a local technical college.

A keen swimmer, he swam for Great Britain at the age of 15. When he was 20 he started his National Service as a physical training instructor and swam for the Army and Imperial Services during this time. When he left the army he took a job with Purley Pools, the company which made the first free-standing swimming pools. Initially he worked in a sales role but later in research and development. His swimming skills enabled him to demonstrate the pools and drew the crowds at shows, and this led to forming his own aquatic display company as professional swimmer, stunt performer and entertainer, performing high dives into a glass-sided tank. With money earned from performing as an underwater escape artiste in the Berlin Circus he set up Shotline Steel Swimming Pools, a company which supplies modular swimming pools to schools in the UK.

[edit] Invention

Baylis's work as a stunt man made him feel kinship with disabled people through friends whose injuries had ended their performing careers. In 1985 this involvement led him to invent and develop a range of products for the disabled called Orange Aids.

In 1989 he saw a TV programme about the spread of AIDS in Africa and how a way to halt the spread of the disease would be by education and information using radio broadcasts. Before the programme had finished he had adjourned to his workshop and assembled the first prototype of his most well-known invention, the Wind Up Radio. He patented the idea and then tried to get it into production, but was met with rejection from everyone he approached.

The turning point came when his prototype was featured on the BBC TV programme Tomorrow's World. With money from investors he formed a company Freeplay and in 1996 the Freeplay radio was awarded the BBC Design Award for Best Product and Best Design. In the same year Baylis met Queen Elizabeth II and Nelson Mandela at a state banquet, and also travelled to Africa with the Dutch Television Service to produce a documentary about his life. He was awarded the 1996 World Vision Award for Development Initiative that year.^[1]

1997 saw the production in South Africa of the new generation Freeplay radio, a smaller lighter model designed for the Western consumer market with a running time of up to an hour on twenty seconds of winding. This radio has since been updated to include a solar panel so that it runs in sunshine without winding.

Numerous tours, interviews and television appearances have followed, and Baylis has been awarded many honours including the OBE in 1997, and eleven honorary degrees from UK universities (1998 to 2005). He continues to invent, and in 2001 he completed a 100 mile walk across the Namib Desert demonstrating his Electric Shoes and raising money for the Mines Advisory Group.

Following his own experience of the difficulties faced by inventors, Baylis set up the Trevor Baylis Foundation to "promote the activity of Invention by encouraging and supporting Inventors and Engineers". This led to the formation of the company Trevor Baylis Brands PLC which provides inventors with professional partnership and services to enable them to establish the originality of their ideas, to patent or otherwise protect them, and to get their products to market. Their primary goal is to secure license agreements for inventors, but they also consider starting up new companies around good ideas. The company is based in, Richmond, London.

[edit] Quotes

"The key to success is to risk thinking unconventional thoughts. Convention is the enemy of progress. As long as you've got slightly more perception that the average wrapped loaf, you could invent something"

"A good idea turns every cog in your mind, making you scared of bed in case the whole machine grinds to a halt."

"I’d work eighteen-hour stretches and fall asleep in my clothes. Then I’d wake up in the middle of the night, brew a pot of tea, and start work again. I was tired, but work had become pure enjoyment."

"But there is only one person I blame for getting shafted, and that’s myself. I went into the deal which I thought would secure the future of Orange Aids with culpable impetuosity. I had been used to doing business on a handshake and my word of honour, and I made the error of actually believing what the men in the pin-striped suits told me."

"As they say, art is pleasure, invention is treasure, and this nation has got to recognise that. If they can spend a fortune on dead sheep and formaldehyde, then it can spend a bit more of that money on inventors."

[edit] Bibliography

Baylis, Trevor (1999). Clock This: My Life as an Inventor. ISBN 0-7472-6332-9.

[edit] References

Trevor Baylis, Biography, (four-page document duplicated by the author), January 2006 - this document is the source of much of this article, its contents can be found reproduced verbatim on many websites