Trevor Baylis CBE, the creator of the wind-up radio passed away this week. Baylis was, arguably, one of Britain’s greatest inventors and was best known for his BayGen Clockwork Radio in 1994. This device was not only instrumental in spreading accurate news about AIDS across the Global South, it was also a significant part of numerous significant, radio- and communications-based, development aid projects in Africa and around the Word, whose impact it is hard to underestimate. 

In 1994, Baylis appeared with his radio on Tomorrow’s World, and this led to the radio’s mass-production. Tragically, the inventor did not protect his work sufficiently and he never made any money from the radio, on account of a patent law loophole. 

Warner’s RadioUser magazine will pay tribute to Baylis’s work with a feature in the May 2018 issue of the magazine. If you wish to contribute, you can contact the editor at the e-mail address, below.

Georg Wiessala 
[email protected]