Trevor Baylis obituary
Trevor Baylis, who has died aged 80, is best known for being the inventor of the wind-up radio, but he also created hundreds of other devices, including many to help people with disabilities. He liked to proclaim: "I don't do things because I want to do good; I do things because I like to show off." Nevertheless he did a great deal of good with the wind-up radio, which he conceived in 1991 and first produced in 1994. He held in contempt what he called "spivs, crooks and vulture capitalists" and suggested there should be a royal academy of invention that would help neglected inventors get their ideas off the ground without being ripped off.
His dislike of exploiters came from experience. A few years before his wind-up radios began to sell at the rate of 120,000 a month, many of them bound for Africa, he had conceived more than 200 devices to help people with disabilities. He did most of this in less than three months of creative effort in which food and sleep played inconspicuous roles. The inventions included one-handed bottle and can openers, whisks, graters, sieves, sketching easels, embroidery frames and binoculars, as well as smoking aids for those who had difficulty in co-ordinating their limbs (he was an unreconstructed heavy pipe smoker).
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