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Subject: Dead Media Working Note 07.1
Dead media: Candle-Powered Radio; Bayliss's Clockwork
Radio
From: wex_AT_media.mit.edu (Alan Wexelblat), sej_AT_aol.com
(Stefan Jones)
Candle-Powered Radio
From: wex_AT_media.mit.edu (Alan Wexelblat)
Source: excerpt forwarded to me from "Design for the Real
World" written by Victor Papanek. I'm not sure this is a
dead tech or still in use...
"In 1962 I began to design and develop a new type of
communications device.
"An unusually gifted graduating student, George
Seegers, did the electronic work and helped build the
first prototype. The resulting one-transistor radio,
using no batteries or current and designed specifically
for the needs of developing countries, consisted of a used
tin can. (...) This can contained wax and a wick that
burned (just like a wind-protected candle) for about
twenty-four hours. The rising heat was converted into
enough energy (via thermocouples) to operate an earplug
speaker. The radio was, of course, non-directional,
receiving any and all stations simultaneously. But in
emerging countries, this was then of no importance: there
was only *one* broadcast (carried by relay towers placed
about fifty miles apart).
"Assuming one person in each village listened to a
'national news broadcast' for five minutes daily, the unit
could be used for a year until the original paraffin wax
was gone. Then more wax, wood, paper, dried cow dung
(which has been successfully used as a heat source for
centuries in Asia), or for that matter anything else that
burns could continue to keep the unit in service. All the
components: earplug, speaker, hand-woven copper radial
antena, and 'earth' wire terminating in a (used) nail,
tunnel diode, and thermocouple, were packed in the empty
third of the can. The entire unit was made for just below
9 cents (1966 dollars).
...
"After further developmental work, the radio was
given to the U.N. for use in villages in Indonesia. No
one, neither the designer, nor UNESCO, nor any
manufacturer, made any profit or percentages out of this
device since it was manufactured as a 'cottage industry'
product."
The Bayliss Wind-up "Freeplay" Radio
From SeJ_AT_aol.com (Stefan Jones)
Source: Donald G. McNeil Jr., New York Times News
Service, 1996
"MILNERTON, South Africa - Even in relatively rich
South Africa, half the homes have no electricity. Go far
enough off the beaten track and there are villages with no
place to buy even a little AAA battery. So in much of
Africa, the portable radio is of little use.
"Maybe not for long. For about six weeks now, a small
factory in this town just north of Cape Town has been
cranking out radios with cranks. Give the handle a few
aerobic turns and the Freeplay radio holds forth for half
an hour.
"It is no threat to a Sony Walkman. It weighs six
pounds, it's built like an overstuffed lunch box, and it
has a tinny speaker. But its wholesale price is only $40
and it gets AM, FM, and shortwave, meaning it can pick up
the British Broadcasting Corporation or the Voice of
America, so a circle of mud huts can zip back into the
Information Age with a twist of the wrist.
"There is a market out there. 'Ghana wants 30,000,'
said Christopher Staines, an executive of BayGen Power,
the manufacturer.
"Their next product, due out next year, is a wind-up
flashlight.
"The manufacturer, BayGen Power, is just as offbeat
as its wares. The $1.5 million in venture capital that
founded the company came from British foreign aid; the
Liberty Life Foundation, the philanthropic arm of a major
South African insurance company, and the socially-
conscious owners of the Body Shop, a British cosmetics
chain. A third of the company's factory workers are blind,
deaf, in wheelchairs, or mentally ill, and a consortium of
agencies for the disabled owns 60 percent of the company's
stock - one of Liberty Life's conditions.
"The patent is the work of Trevor Bayliss, a British
scientist who in 1990 was listening to a BBC program on
AIDS in Africa that mentioned the difficulty of sending
the safe-sex message because many villages could not
afford batteries. He went to his workshop, built a
prototype, and then could not market it.
"There are actually 13 patents covering the
mainspring and gears that drive a little dynamo. The
spring does not in any way resemble a Swiss watch's.
Unwound, it is 30 feet long and designed for rewinding
auto seat belts. A double-spool mechanism keeps its
tension constant, which is crucial, and the gearing is
sophisticated."
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