Trevor Baylis

Trevor Baylis
CBE
Baylis in 2006
Born Trevor Graham Baylis
(1937-05-13)13 May 1937
Kilburn, London, England
Died 5 March 2018(2018-03-05) (aged 80)
Eel Pie Island, London, England
Nationality British
Known for Wind-up radio
Awards
Website www.trevorbaylisbrands.com

Trevor Graham Baylis CBE (13 May 1937 – 5 March 2018) was an English inventor best known for the wind-up radio. The radio, instead of relying on batteries or external electrical source, is powered by the user winding a crank. This stores energy in a spring which then drives an electrical generator. Baylis invented it in response to the need to communicate information about AIDS to the people of Africa.[1] He ran a company in his name dedicated to helping inventors to develop and protect their ideas and to find a route to market.[2]

Early life and education

Trevor Baylis was born on 13 May 1937 to Cecil Archibald Walter Baylis, an engineer, and his wife, Gladys Jane Brown, an artist,[3] in Kilburn, London.[2][4] He grew up in Southall, Middlesex, and attended North Primary School and Dormers Wells Secondary Modern School.[3]

Career

His first job was in a Soil Mechanics Laboratory in Southall[5] where a day-release arrangement enabled him to study mechanical and structural engineering at a local technical college.[6]

A keen swimmer, he swam for Great Britain at the age of 15;[4] he narrowly failed to qualify for the 1956 Summer Olympics.[6][7] In 1959, Baylis started his National Service as a physical-training instructor with the Royal Sussex Regiment[5] and swam for the Army and Imperial Services during this time. When he left the army he took a job with Purley Pools,[5] the company which made the first free-standing swimming pools. Initially he worked in a sales role,[6] but later switched to research and development.[8]

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 artist in the Berlin Circus, he set up Shotline Steel Swimming Pools, a company which supplies swimming pools to schools.[5][9]

Invention

Baylis's work as a stunt man exposed him to the needs of disabled people, through colleagues whose injuries had ended their performing careers. By 1985, this involvement had led him to invent and develop a range of products for the disabled called Orange Aids.[10][8]

In the late 1980s or early 1990s,[10][11][12] Baylis saw a television programme about the spread of AIDS in Africa and realised that a way to halt the spread of the disease would be to educate and disseminate information by radio.[11][13] Within 30 minutes, he had assembled the first prototype of his most well-known invention, the wind-up radio.[11] The original prototype included a small transistor radio, an electric motor from a toy car, and the clockwork mechanism from a music box.[14] Baylis filed his first patent in 1992.[15]

While the prototype worked well, Baylis struggled to find a production partner. The turning point came in 1994 when his prototype was featured on a film produced by Liz Tucker for the BBC TV programme Tomorrow's World, which resulted in an investor coming forward to back the product.[16][11] With money from investors he formed a company called Freeplay Energy; in 1996, the Freeplay radio was given the BBC Design Awards for Best Product and Best Design.[11] In the same year Baylis met Queen Elizabeth II and Nelson Mandela at a state banquet, and also traveled 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.[17]

The year 1997 saw the production in South Africa of the new generation Freeplay radio, a smaller and cheaper model designed for the Western consumer market which uses rechargeable cells with a generic crank generator.[18]

During the 1990s, Baylis was also a regular on the Channel 4 breakfast programme, The Big Breakfast.[19]

In 2001, Baylis completed a 100-mile walk across the Namib Desert, demonstrating his electric shoes and raising money for the Mines Advisory Group.[6] The "electric shoes", developed in collaboration with the UK's Defence Evaluation and Research Agency, use piezoelectric contacts in the heels to charge a small battery that can be used to operate a radio transceiver or cellular telephone.[20][21]

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 licence agreements for inventors, but they also consider starting up new companies around good ideas. The company is based in Richmond, London.[22][23]

Personal life

For many years, Baylis lived on Eel Pie Island on the river Thames.[24] He regularly attended jazz performances at the Eel Pie Island Hotel.[25] He was single and was well known for being a pipe-smoker.[26] In March 2010, Baylis stated that he was sexually abused at age 5 by a Church of England curate.[27] This was also covered in his 1999 autobiography, Clock This. He died on 5 March 2018, at the age of 80, having been debilitated by Crohn's disease.[28]

Awards and honours

Baylis was appointed an Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) for humanitarian services in the 1997 Birthday Honours[5], and a Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in the 2015 New Year Honours for services to intellectual property.[29][30] In 1999, Baylis received the Pipe Smoker of the Year award from the British Pipesmokers' Council, which honoured famous pipesmokers.[31] Baylis was awarded 11 honorary degrees from UK universities.[8] He received honorary doctorates from Heriot-Watt University in 2003 and Leeds Metropolitan University in 2005.[32][33]

See also

References

  1. ↑ "Trevor Baylis – The Biography of the Inventor of the Clockwork Radio Trevor Baylis CBE".
  2. 1 2 "Trevor Baylis OBE, our President". Trevor Baylis Brands plc. company website. Retrieved 5 March 2018.
  3. 1 2 BAYLIS, Trevor Grayham. ukwhoswho.com. Who's Who. 2015 (online Oxford University Press ed.). A & C Black, an imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing plc. (subscription required)
  4. 1 2 "My Secret Life: Trevor Baylis, inventor", The Independent, magazine section p7, 3 November 2008
  5. 1 2 3 4 5 Barker, Dennis (5 March 2018). "Trevor Baylis obituary". The Guardian. Retrieved 5 March 2018.
  6. 1 2 3 4 "Obituary: Trevor Baylis". BBC News. 6 March 2018. Retrieved 7 March 2018.
  7. ↑ "My Secret Life", The Independent, ibid. Saying he had failed to qualify by 0.1 sections, he listed his as his "biggest regret"
  8. 1 2 3 Bailey, Jan (5 March 2018). "Archive profile: Trevor Baylis, inventor of the clockwork radio". E&T: Engineering and Teachnology. Retrieved 7 March 2018.
  9. ↑ Deeble, Sandra (30 August 2003). "A clockwork forage". The Guardian. Retrieved 5 March 2018.
  10. 1 2 "Trevor Baylis". Lemelson-MIT Program. Retrieved 5 March 2018.
  11. 1 2 3 4 5 Bhamra, Tracy (7 March 2018). "Trevor Baylis: the wind-up radio inventor who forced companies to take sustainable design seriously". The Conversation. Retrieved 7 March 2018.
  12. ↑ McNeil Jr., Donald G. (16 February 1996). "This $40 Crank-Up Radio Lets Rural Africa Tune In". New York Times. Retrieved 7 March 2018.
  13. ↑ Quinn, Ben (5 March 2018). "Trevor Baylis, inventor of the wind-up radio, dies aged 80". The Guardian. Retrieved 5 March 2018.
  14. ↑ "Trevor Baylis". The Times. 6 March 2018. Retrieved 7 March 2018.
  15. ↑ IP Review Online Archived 28 August 2008 at the Wayback Machine., Interview with Trevor Baylis, January 2008
  16. ↑ Radio 4 PM Programme "Trevor Baylis was the classic British inventor".
  17. ↑ Biography of Trevor Baylis, World Vision Award for Development Initiative, World Vision website, January 2006
  18. ↑ "About Us". Freeplay Energy. Retrieved 29 May 2012.
  19. ↑ Aldersey-Williams, Hugh (25 August 1999). "Thursday Book: The future is clockwork". The Independent. Retrieved 13 March 2018.
  20. ↑ "Trevor Baylis to test electric shoes". The Engineer. Retrieved 7 March 2018.
  21. ↑ "These Boots Were Made for Talking". Wired. 28 June 2000. Retrieved 7 March 2018.
  22. ↑ Baylis, Trevor (1999). Clock This: My Life as an Inventor. ISBN 0-7472-6332-9.
  23. ↑ Baylis wrote the foreword for Kathleen Houston's You Want to Do What?!: 80 Alternative Career Options ISBN 0-85660-891-2
  24. ↑ "Obituary of music promoter Arthur Chisnall". The Independent. 4 January 2007. Archived from the original on 30 October 2007. Retrieved 3 November 2007.
  25. ↑ Peter Watts (26 April 2006). "Eel Pie Island Records". Time Out London. Archived from the original on 7 February 2008. Retrieved 3 November 2007.
  26. ↑ "How We Met: Bob Flowerdew & Trevor Baylis". 25 October 2009.
  27. ↑ "Trevor Baylis sexually abused at church". BBC News. 28 March 2010. Retrieved 28 March 2010.
  28. ↑ "Trevor Baylis: Wind-up radio inventor dies aged 80". BBC News. 5 March 2018. Retrieved 5 March 2018.
  29. ↑ "No. 61092". The London Gazette (Supplement). 31 December 2014. p. N8.
  30. ↑ "2015 New Year Honours List" (PDF).
  31. ↑ Hall, Amanda (12 November 2000). "City Profile: An inventor, heart and sole". Daily Telegraph. Retrieved 7 March 2018.
  32. ↑ "Heriot-Watt University Edinburgh & Scottish Borders: Annual Review 2003". www1.hw.ac.uk. Archived from the original on 13 April 2016. Retrieved 30 March 2016.
  33. ↑ "Past honorary awards" (PDF). Leeds Metropolitan University. p. 3. Retrieved 7 March 2018.
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