Trevor Baylis was born in London. As a boy, he was a keen swimmer and narrowly missed selection for the UK 1956 Olympic swimming team. He studied engineering at a technical college. After serving as a physical training instructor in the army, he worked for a firm selling swimming pools.
He gave swimming and diving displays and became a stunt man and professional swimmer. He performed high dives into small glass-sided tanks and accomplished underwater escapes to entertain crowds. It was dangerous work and he knew several performers who had suffered injuries or become disabled. He had always been an inventor and, in 1985, he set up a company, Orange Aids, to develop products for the disabled.
In 1991, he watched a television programme about the spread of AIDS in Africa. He learnt that there was a desperate need to educate and inform people about the disease and how to prevent its transmission. Radio broadcasts would be an ideal way to do this, but many poor did not have electricity in their homes or could not afford to buy batteries for a radio. Before the programme had finished, he went to his workshop and built a prototype wind-up radio. He used the clockwork mechanism from a music box to drive an electric motor from a toy car to power a small transistor radio. He developed the idea so that, instead of using batteries or mains electricity, the listener would wind a clockwork crank. This stored energy in a spring that drove the generator that operated the radio. In 1992, he took out a patent on the idea and then approached many different people and companies to try to get the product into production and distribution. Everywhere he went, he was met with incredulity and rejection.
However, in 1994, his novel idea was shown on an episode of the BBC TV programme Tomorrow’s World. He found investors and, with their backing, he started a company, Freeplay Energy, to make clockwork radios. The product proved popular in the developing world. Baylis was celebrated as a great inventor. In 1996, he received the World Vision Award for Development Initiative and the Freeplay radio was awarded the BBC Design Award for Best Product and Best Design. He met Queen Elizabeth II and Nelson Mandela and travelled to Africa to produce a documentary about his life.
He continued to invent. He developed some ‘electric shoes’, so that a walker charges a small battery that could power a cell phone or other small device. In 2001, he demonstrated them by making a 100-mile walk across the Namib Desert in Africa.
He founded a company, Trevor Baylis Brands, to help inventors develop and protect their inventions. It was inspired by the difficulties he had experienced.
Baylis received awards and honours, including honorary degrees and the OBE and CBE from the Queen. However, whilst he was a great inventor, he was not a successful businessman and never made a substantial personal return from his many ventures. He sold his shares in Freeplay cheaply and lost his patent for the clockwork radio. He said, ‘I was very foolish. I didn’t protect my product properly and allowed other people to take my product away.’
Take a step backwards to find a simpler way. To many people, the idea of a clockwork radio seemed retrograde and silly. It was easy to find fault with the idea. The radio would stop in the middle of a programme and need winding. The wind-up mechanism made the radio bulky. Surely batteries were simpler. From a Western viewpoint, these were all valid points but, in the poorest parts of Africa, they were not. Sometimes, a cheaper and less sophisticated solution will find a big market.
Use mass media to gain exposure. Baylis could not sell his idea to the companies and backers he approached. It took a TV appearance for the clockwork radio to gain support. If the normal routes do not work, then try something radical – and big.
Protect your invention. Secure your patents and renew them. Retain some equity in the companies you create. Be businesslike and secure proper agreements. Baylis admitted, ‘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.’