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Wind-up radio:
A Public Radio Commentary
by Bill Hammack
Listen using RealAudio
My wife gave me a most unusual radio for my birthday: It runs off
a spring! It has a huge crank on the back that I turn fifty times
- it takes only thirty second - and then for an hour out comes
extremely clear sound. The energy source for this radio - the
hand wound spring - is a step back in time, back to the energy
used in the middle ages. In that age the spring was the only
convenient way to store energy, especially energy for running a
clock.
Medieval people used muscle, wind or water for energy. They
plowed by hand or used an animal, and they ground wheat using
energy from windmills or water wheels. But none of these energy
source were good enough for keeping time. Time required a
continuous source of energy.
You can't keep time with human or animal power - they both tire -
and wind and water also stop. But a spring can store energy and
release it slowly and continuously {tick tock sounds} and count
off the seconds. Eventually of course we replaced this spring
with electricity, gasoline, or batteries. And, why, with such
energy sources available, would anyone today invent and market a
spring powered wind-up radio like the one my wife gave me?
Well, for the same reason a spring was used in the middle ages:
Because there was no choice but a spring. The idea for a wind-up
radio came to British inventor Trevor Baylis while watching a
television program on the spread of AIDS in Africa. He learned
the disease spread fast because of difficulties in communicating
with remote villages. They lacked electricity to run radios - and
also lacked batteries because they cost a month's wages. After
the program Baylis fell into a kind of dream state thinking of
what it must be like to live in such a village.
Then this life-long tinkerer rushed to his workshop and designed
a wind-up radio. He even built a working model using the spring
from an automobile seat belt retractor. In a sense the easy work
was done, and the hard part was to come: To be successful an
invention of this type had to be mass produced.
Baylis had to attract a manufacturer - and from them the tens or
even thousands of dollars needed to purse patent claims worldwide.
After filing for a patent in the United Kingdom an inventor has
only 12 months to file international patents to protect his idea
- a very expensive process. Baylis submitted his idea to
manufacturers everywhere - and got rejected everywhere. Even
provoking one expert to tell him that the spring, which powered
the radio, wouldn't work: It would weigh 100 pounds and run for
only ten minutes. This expert suggested Baylis run the radio with
human heat from "under the armpit." Instead Baylis took a gamble:
He went public with his idea, risking that someone might steal
it.
He pitched his idea on BBC TV. Within four days he struck a deal
with a South African entrepreneur - no British or American
manufacturer expressed interest. Soon 150,000 radios were sold
across Africa. This wind-up radio, powered by a hand-turned
crank, is now bringing information to all of Africa.
And now the US has taken notice of his radio. They are sold here
as a novelty item. And Baylis the inventor... well he's received
acclaim and even an honor from the Queen of England.
And Baylis isn't done changing the world: He's reported to be
working on a wind-up computer!
Copyright 1999 William S. Hammack Enterprises
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