Another one who could actually make something gone...
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- posted
6 years ago
RIP Trevor Baylis
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- posted
6 years ago
That is sad news.
I met him in 2007 and enjoyed a drink and dinner with him. Excellent company.
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6 years ago
Awww... I have one of his clockwork radios, the real clockwork ones designed for the African market.
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6 years ago
why didn't he think of using a hand cranked dynamo and rechargeable batteries in the first place? Much more practical, and how dynamo torches work as well.
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6 years ago
rechargeable batteries don't last for ever, and presumably weren't as good when he designed his radio as they are now.
I have to buy a new phone every 3 years because the battery fails.
Owain
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6 years ago
I just get new batteries.
NT
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6 years ago
One of the design criteria was to have some thing that didn't need batteries. Batteries being hard and/or prohibitivly expensive to come by in rural Africa.
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6 years ago
It's very misleading to snip what I replied to. It's cordless phones I get new batteries for.
NT
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6 years ago
I have 15 (wired up) phones in a 2 bedroom flat. I don't need cordless.
At £4.99 for a new mobile it's cheaper than a new battery.
Owain
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6 years ago
I'm imagining you trying to get from one side of the flat to the other, pic king up each wired phone in series, putting down the one before it. What mobiles are 4.99 new?
NT
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6 years ago
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6 years ago
Yes I knew him when he worked for Decca Radar. A nice bloke always with some idea in his head it seemed.
The thing about him was that he had a foot in both the electronics and mechanical engineering camps, which was a handy talent when designing rugged radar sets for ships. Brian
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6 years ago
No, I have a PABX with call park and recall facilities.
The cheap one in Tesco that does Facebook and Google :-)
And it came with a USB charging plug too.
Owain
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- posted
6 years ago
Not in africa, and the price of the batteries would probbaly make mhe radio unafordable to those they were aimed at, and it takes quite a bit of effort to recharge batteries from a hand crank. I would have thought today solar panels would be the answer.
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6 years ago
I was expecting
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6 years ago
More recently I've seen a dynamo powered by a slowly descending weight to provide light
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6 years ago
That's a pretty good idea, I saw one where a kite could be flow using simim alr princibles as the kite rises it pulls the reel generating electricity a nd when it gets high up and yuo need to bring it down a motor is used to re tract the cord which only takes about 25% of the energy collected from it b eing raised. not as cheap or easy as gravitylight but they diod have one generating abou t 2KW.
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6 years ago
Or on a slightly bigger scale,
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Tim
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6 years ago
Ni-cads weren't all that much and would last for a good many years.
Not more than winding a spring. Did it even have a "going train", or did the radio stop while you were winding it?
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6 years ago
Not so convenient for little Abioye to do their homework without requiring other infrastructure, and at 0.0027 kWh per tonne you can drop a metre, a piss in the ocean if you have got the infrastructure.
How many years of playing yo-yo does that £650K grant work out at?