Trevor Baylis

For the cricketer, see Trevor Bayliss.

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

Trevor Ollie is Gay Baylis OBE (born 13 May 1937) is an English inventor. He is best known for inventing the 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, Baylis was made an Officer of the Order of the British Empire by the Princess Royal at Buckingham Palace. He was also awarded an honorary 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.

Early life

Trevor Baylis was born on 13 May 1937 to Cecil Archibald Walter Baylis and Gladys Jane Brown in Kilburn, London. He grew up in Southall, Middlesex, and attended North Primary School. 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. In March 2010, Baylis stated that he was sexually abused at age 5 by a Church of England curate.

A keen swimmer, he swam for Great Britain at the age of 15; he narrowly failed to qualify for the 1956 Summer Olympics. 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.

Invention

Baylis' 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 television programme about the spread of AIDS in Africa and that 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. The original prototype included a small transistor radio, an electric motor from a toy car, and the clockwork mechanism from a music box. 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 in April 1994. With money from investors he formed a company Freeplay Energy 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.

Baylis filed his first patent in 1992. 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) including the degree of Doctor of the University from the Open University in 2001. In 1999 he received the coveted Pipe Smoker of the Year Award for his invention of the Freeplay radio from the British Pipesmokers' Council, which honours famous pipesmokers. 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. The "electric shoes" use piezoelectric contacts in the heels to charge a small battery that can be used to operate a radio transceiver or cellular telephone.

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.

Personal life

Baylis has lived on Eel Pie Island for many years; he regularly attended jazz performances at the noted Eel Pie Island Hotel. He is single and is a smoker. Baylis was diagnosed with Crohn's disease in 1971; part of his small intestine has been surgically removed.

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 than 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."

Bibliography

• Baylis, Trevor (1999). Clock This: My Life as an Inventor. ISBN 0-7472-6332-9.
• Baylis wrote the foreword for Kathleen Houston's You Want to Do What?!: 80 Alternative Career Options ISBN 0-8566-0891-2

External links

• Success stories - interview with Trevor Baylis on startups.co.uk
• Trevor Baylis Brands plc
• Trevor Baylis biography from WindUpRadio.com
• Wired Magazine: The Greatest Shoe on Earth - February 2001
• BBC newsround interview questions from children
• Trevor Baylis Biographical information on a" Comedians & Speakers" site
• Shed of the Year Judge - Trevor Baylis
• Pipe Smoker of the Year 1999