THE inventor of the clockwork radio, Trevor Baylis, is adapting his wind-up technology to tackle the scourge of landmines.
The engineer, currently appearing in a series of mobile telephone commercials, believes that his combination of cogs, springs and elbow-power can save millions of pounds for mine-clearance charities and overcome the lack of electrical power in remote areas.
Instead of having to recharge batteries, a mine clearer would simply wind a handle on a generator pack that converts clockwork energy into an electrical charge. The 60-year-old inventor has been working on the project with Guartel, a leading manufacturer of landmine detectors, and has talked to Pentagon officials.
Mr Baylis, whose radio invention earned him an OBE and a BBC Design Award, said: "This is a way of using my personal power approach to save lives. We're going to be making a generator that has got enough power to use with traditional scanning equipment. It could be worn as a backpack or possibly at the waist."
Working in his studio in Twickenham, south-west London, the inventor hopes to start tests on a prototype clockwork detector next year. He is also developing a talking book to store data on how to deal with landmines on a micro-chip. Powered by clockwork, the book could give out information in any language so that relatively untrained clearance workers would have life-saving knowledge at their fingertips.
Mr Baylis designed his wind-up radio for people in the Third World without access to electricity or batteries. He is convinced that the same mechanism can be adapted to mine clearance. "Landmines are detestable things. They are sinister and barbaric. The approach that Diana, Princess of Wales took in campaigning against them was laudable and needs to be continued."
Paul Arnold, the director of Guartel, said: "Until recently we thought clockwork could not produce enough power for a landmine detector. But developments have meant powering one by clockwork is now feasible. The problem of using batteries is a large one and the cost is significant."
The clockwork idea was welcomed by Bob Gravett, a technical adviser at the Mines Advisory Group. "Anything that can minimise the dangers to our clearance teams must be welcome. We will have to see how this develops," he said. But Guy Willoughby, of the Halo Trust anti-mines charity, was sceptical. "A mine detector is not a leisure item like a radio. We are in a very serious and dangerous business. I'd have to be very clear exactly how a clockwork mine detector would work before I would be able to trust someone's life to it."
