Trevor Graham Baylis CBE was an English inventor most famous for the wind-up radio. The radio, instead of using batteries or an external source of electricity, is powered by the user winding a crank. This stores energy in a spring, which then drives an electrical generator. Baylis invented it due to the necessity to communicate information regarding AIDS to the “people of Africa.” He owned a company under his name that aimed at assisting inventors in developing and protecting their ideas and finding a route to market.
Where Did Trevor Bayliss Live?
Baylis was born to artist Gladys Jane Brown and engineer Cecil Archibald Walter Baylis in Kilburn, London, on 13 May 1937. Baylis hails from Southall, Middlesex. His educational background has been at North Primary School and Dormers Wells Secondary Modern School. Baylis worked first at a soil mechanics laboratory in Southall, through which he studied mechanical and structural engineering through a day-release scheme at a local technical college.
Early Life and Career
A talented swimmer, he competed for Great Britain at 15; he narrowly missed the 1956 Summer Olympics. In 1959, Baylis served his national service as a physical training instructor with the Royal Sussex Regiment, and during that time, he swam for the Army and Imperial Services.
After he left the army, he joined Purley Pools, a company that had recently patented the first freestanding pool. First, he was a salesman, then changed over to R&D after some years.
Baylis’s performing career as a stuntman 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.
What Did Trevor Baylis Invent?
In the late 1980s or early 1990s, Baylis saw a television program about the spread of AIDS in Africa and had the idea that one way to slow the spread of the disease was to educate and inform by radio. In 30 minutes, he came up with the prototype of his most famous invention, the wind-up radio. The prototype included a small transistor radio, an electric motor from a toy car, and the clockwork mechanism from a music box. Baylis filed his first patent in 1992. The prototype worked, but Baylis could not find a production partner.
What is Trevor Baylis famous for?
It was then in 1994 when his prototype appeared in a film made by Liz Tucker for the BBC TV program Tomorrow’s World, which saw him get an investor to sponsor the product. Investors’ money saw him set up a company called Freeplay Energy; in 1996, Freeplay Radio received the BBC Design Awards for Best Product and Best Design. That year Baylis also met Queen Elizabeth II and Nelson Mandela at a state banquet and also toured Africa with the Dutch Television Service to produce a documentary about his life. That year he received the 1996 World Vision Award for Development Initiative.
Why did Trevor Baylis invent the wind-up radio?
The free-play radio that came out in South Africa in 1997, a smaller and less expensive model developed specifically for the Western consumer market, makes use of rechargeable cells using a generic crank generator. In the 1990s, Baylis appeared regularly on Channel 4’s breakfast program, The Big Breakfast
In 2001 he completed a 100-mile walk across the Namib Desert to demonstrate his “electric shoes,” raising money for the Mines Advisory Group. The “electric shoes,” developed in cooperation with the Defence Evaluation and Research Agency of the UK, consist of piezoelectric contacts located in the heel and charge up a small battery that can drive a radio transceiver or cellular telephone.
Trevor Baylis Foundation
Baylis founded the Trevor Baylis Foundation to “encourage and facilitate the activity of invention.” This led in September 2002 to the establishment of the company ‘Trevor Baylis Brands PLC,’ whereby inventors obtained professional partnerships as well as services to support them in bringing their novelty before the courts or patent offices as appropriate, getting their products launched into the marketplace.
The company was interested in licensing agreements for inventors but also had an interest in creating new companies around good ideas. The company was headquartered in Richmond, Greater London. In 2013, it was reported that the company was financially failing and survived only on Baylis’ private finances. Two months after his death, Trevor Baylis Brands PLC declared insolvent, and it stopped trading at the beginning of 2019.
Hobbies and Interests
Baylis lived for many years on Eel Pie Island on the River Thames. He often would go to see live jazz at the Eel Pie Island Hotel. Baylis was a pipe smoker, and in 1999, he received the Pipe Smoker of the Year award from the British Pipesmokers’ Council.
Hardships and Challenges
It was reported in 2013 that Baylis was suffering from personal financial hardship and living in relative poverty because he earned little money from his commercialized wind-up power invention, especially since he had lost legal control over the product after it had been re-engineered by his corporate partners, and he continued to earn only a meager income as an after-dinner motivational speaker. Baylis said in March 2010 that when he was five, he was sexually abused by a Church of England curate. This is mentioned in his 1999 autobiography, Clock This.
Death and Funeral
He died on 5 March 2018 at the age of 80 after a fall on a path on Eel Pie Island, having been afflicted with Crohn’s disease in his final years. At the time of his death, he was unmarried and had no living next of kin. A funeral was held at Mortlake Crematorium on 13 March 2018, where his body was cremated in a novelty coffin fashioned as the wind-up radio that he had invented
Honours and Awards
Baylis was appointed an Officer of the Order of the British Empire for humanitarian services in the 1997 Birthday Honours and a Commander of the Order of the British Empire in the 2015 New Year Honours for services to intellectual property. Baylis received 11 honorary degrees from UK universities. He gained an honorary doctorate from Heriot-Watt University in 2003, Leeds Metropolitan University in 2005, and the University of Northampton in 2009.
