The April 1996 issue of the NASWA Journal contains a Technical Topics Article
on how the NASWA Research Laboratory developed a wind-up modification for the
R-390A boat anchor receiver. The laboratory appears to have gone out of
existence in the intervening years so it will be difficult to prove whether or
not this research violated Mr. Baylis' original patent and thus contributed to
his eventual financial demise. If anyone who was affiliated with the
laboratory has custody of the archives related to this research, I suggest
these files be destroyed before Mr. Baylis decides to sue NASWA and the author
of this intellectually stimulating article.
Joe Buch
N2JB
>Trevor Baylis: I've wound up broke despite inventions
>
>Trevor Baylis in his garden, which overlooks the Thames Photo: PAUL GROVER
>
>By Richard Gray, Science Correspondent
>The London Telegraph
>8:10AM GMT 17 Feb 2013
>
>290 Comments
>
>“I’ve got someone coming around in the next couple of weeks to do a valuation
>on my house,” says Trevor Baylis, as he walks into the sitting room of his
>home on Eel Pie Island, in Twickenham, south-west London.
>
>“I’m going to have to sell it or remortgage it – I’m totally broke. I’m living
>in poverty here.”
>
>Surely not? This is the man whose wind-up radio has sold in millions around
>the world, and was recently named among the 50 greatest inventions in British
>history.
>
>The story of Baylis and the clockwork radio he developed in his garden shed in
>the early Nineties should be a shining example of how British ingenuity can
>lead to success.
>
>On the walls of his house are nearly a dozen honorary degrees he has since
>received, a letter he was sent by the Prince of Wales on being awarded an OBE,
>and photographs of himself with Nelson Mandela.
>
>But as the eccentric 75-year-old inventor shows off the compact home and
>chaotic workshop he built himself nearly 40 years ago, he grows remorseful.
>
>Despite the apparent success of his wind-up radio and several follow-up
>products employing similar technology including a torch, a mobile phone
>charger and an MP3 player, Mr Baylis says he has received almost none of the
>profits.
>
>Due to the quirks of patent law, the company he went into business with to
>manufacture his radios were able to tweak his original design, which used a
>spring to generate power, so that it charged a battery instead. This caused
>him to lose control over the product.
>
>He built a home on Eel Pie Island in the 1970s for £20,000
>
>Now Mr Baylis wants the Government to protect future generations of inventors
>from suffering a similar fate.
>
>“We are brilliant at inventing but appalling in the way we treat inventors,”
>he says. “I was very foolish. I didn’t protect my product properly and allowed
>other people to take my product away. It is too easy to rip off other people’s
>ideas.
>
>“You have to take someone to court to stop them, but as a lone inventor, you
>just can’t afford to do that. If they just change the design slightly, then
>they can claim they have got around the patent.
>
>“The Government needs to stand behind the lone inventor. There needs to be
>better support to help inventors keep their designs and to help them fight
>against the big boys.”
>
>Mr Baylis has been lobbying for the patent system to become more robust and to
>turn the theft of intellectual property into a white-collar crime that carries
>a prison sentence.
>
>Currently patent infringement is considered to be a civil matter in the UK
>rather than a criminal matter. According to Mr Baylis, other countries such as
>the US and Germany provide far greater protection and support to their
>engineers and inventors.
>
>Next week Vince Cable, the Business Secretary, will sign a new agreement to
>establish a Europe-wide patent that will cover 25 countries and is aimed at
>simplifying the process of protecting designs for inventors.
>
>However, in a world of international trade, where products are manufactured on
>the cheap in countries such as China and imported, the risk of having a design
>stolen or copied is even greater due to the difficulties in bringing lawsuits
>and the poorer regulation in these countries.
>
>Even major companies like Apple have suffered from their technology being
>copied by Chinese firms.
>
>Mr Baylis insists that the Government should make tackling this problem a
>priority to help bolster the UK economy.
>
>“Even when someone has a bright idea, what tends to happen is that it goes off
>abroad to China to be manufactured. Once something is being manufactured
>overseas, then those ideas can be stolen.
>
>“The Government should definitely play more of a role in stopping this from
>happening. They should offer financial support, advice on developing people’s
>inventions, and help to keep that manufacturing here in the UK. It would make
>money for the British economy.”
>
>Over the past nine years, Mr Baylis has been using his own money to help fund
>a company designed to provide advice to inventors and helping them take their
>products to market.
>
>But faced with growing financial dire straits, the firm is struggling. Mr
>Baylis himself now survives by earning money as a motivational after-dinner
>speaker, but despite clearly loving to talk, even this source of income is now
>drying up.
>
>As he bustles around his one-bedroom home, Mr Baylis, who is single, tells a
>torrent of bawdy jokes and one liners.
>
>He built the house, which features its own mooring on the Thames and a
>five-metre swimming pool in what doubles as his entrance hall, in the 1970s
>for just £20,000.
>
>He had fallen in love with Eel Pie Island as a young man due to a passion for
>jazz – in the 1960s the island was famed as a jazz and blues venue. There are
>now 120 inhabitants on the island and a number of artists’ studios.
>
>Mr Baylis shares his home with Ike, a plump Labrador. On the walls he has a
>few pictures of his “lady friend”, but it is clear his house lacks a woman’s
>touch. “I never throw anything away,” he says. “You never know when it might
>be useful.”
>
>Screws, bolts, pieces of wire, cogs, circuit boards and fuses litter the
>place. Even old microwave meal trays are put to good use as makeshift drawers
>for some of his odds and ends.
>
>The garden, which overlooks the Thames, is designed with the simple
>functionality of a bachelor in mind. There are plastic flowers sitting in pots
>on top of synthetic grass, the ultimate in low maintenance.
>
>The shell of a classic car he attempted to build in his younger days sits on
>one side of the garden as a rather extravagant parasol stand.
>
>Running around the outside of the main part of the house is what Mr Baylis
>calls his “studio”. It is the workshop where he continues to tinker with ideas
>and build devices using an impressive selection of band saws and lathes.
>
>He has invented more than 250 products, including a shoe that generates enough
>electricity as you walk to charge a mobile phone, a self-weighing briefcase,
>and a device that allows the disabled to open jars with one hand.
>
>On the shelves around his workshop are dozens of wind-up radios, torches and
>other clockwork devices.
>
>He still has the original prototype of the wind-up radio he first built back
>in 1991 after watching a television programme about the spread of Aids in
>Africa.
>
>By allowing people to access the air waves – and therefore information – in
>remote areas of the continent where there was no electricity, he hoped it
>could help tackle the spread of the disease by allowing advice about
>contraception to reach everyone.
>
>An ugly black box with a large metal key in the back, the original prototype
>ran for just 14 minutes before needing to be wound up again, but over time the
>efficiency improved and the product became slicker.
>
>In 1995, following an appearance on Tomorrow’s World, he set up Baygen Power
>Industries before the company was renamed Freeplay Energy.
>
>It was at this point that the design began incorporating cheap rechargeable
>battery technology and his involvement ceased. Freeplay has gone on to sell
>more than three million wind-up radios, with that number growing every day.
>
>John Hutchinson, chief technology officer at Freeplay, said Mr Baylis had
>voluntarily sold his shares in the company and that technology had moved on,
>leaving his original patent outdated.
>
>He said: “Freeplay developed its own technology and by 2000 no more clockwork
>radios were made. The method was to use human power to recharge a battery.
>Trevor sold his shares in the company and the now outdated patent was
>incorporated into Freeplay.”
>
>Earlier this year the wind-up radio was named by the Radio Times as one of the
>50 greatest British inventions of all time, along with the steam engine, the
>television, the jet and the world wide web.
>
>Now Mr Baylis, a former professional swimmer and stunt performer, contents
>himself with soaking in the hot tub he has built in his garden every morning
>and taking Ike for long walks.
>
>But he fears that he may have to sell his beloved home as debts begin to
>mount. Other properties on the island have sold for up to £400,000.
>
>He has also been offered £80,000 for his treasured Jaguar E Type, which he
>keeps locked away from the elements in a garage.
>
>“I don’t want people looking at me and thinking how sad it is that I am now
>living in poverty,” he says. Instead he wants his situation to be a cautionary
>tale. “If people are not going to be rewarded for their inventions, then why
>should they invent at all. This nation was built on inventions and
>manufacturing.
>
>“People like James Dyson have done very well, but not many of us have all the
>business skills we need to bring a product to market.
>
>"Students need to be taught about intellectual property in schools and the
>Government needs to have people who have themselves invented working for them.
>
>“We need to value inventors, otherwise more will end up with nothing.”
>
>
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