Trevor Baylis
| Trevor Baylis CBE | |
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Trevor Baylis at the DIY and Garden Show in Earls Court, London, January 2006
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| Born | Trevor Graham Baylis May 13, 1937 Kilburn, London |
| Nationality | British |
| Known for | Wind-up radio |
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Website www |
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Trevor Graham Baylis CBE (born 13 May 1937) is an English inventor. He is best known for inventing the wind-up radio. Rather than using batteries or external electrical source, the radio is powered by the user winding a crank for several seconds. This stores energy in a spring which then drives an electrical generator to operate the radio receiver. He invented it in response to the need to communicate information about AIDS to the people of Africa. He runs Trevor Baylis Brands plc, a company dedicated to helping inventors to develop and protect their ideas and to find a route to market.
Trevor Baylis was born on 13 May 1937 to Cecil Archibald Walter Baylis and Gladys Jane Brown in Kilburn, London. He grew up in Southall, Middlesex, and attended North Primary School and Dormers Wells Secondary Modern School.
His first job was in a Soil Mechanics Laboratory in Southall where a day-release arrangement enabled him to study mechanical and structural engineering at a local technical college.
A keen swimmer, he swam for Great Britain at the age of 15; he narrowly failed to qualify for the 1956 Summer Olympics. When he was 20 he started his National Service as a physical training instructor and swam for the Army and Imperial Services during this time. When he left the army he took a job with Purley Pools, the company which made the first free-standing swimming pools. Initially he worked in a sales role but later in research and development. His swimming skills enabled him to demonstrate the pools and drew the crowds at shows, and this led to forming his own aquatic display company as professional swimmer, stunt performer and entertainer, performing high dives into a glass-sided tank. With money earned from performing as an underwater escape artiste in the Berlin Circus he set up Shotline Steel Swimming Pools, a company which supplies modular swimming pools to schools in the UK.
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