
BayGen was set up in 1995. The main factory is in South Africa, where 150 mixed ability workers turns out 2,000 radios each day. Two new plants in Mauritius are planned.
The BayGen radio has been used in Bosnia and all over Africa. The British Overseas Development Agency is supplying the Eritrean ministry of education with enough radios to set up educational listening centres all over the country. BayGen also markets the radio for the western world to listen to while fishing, sitting at the bottom of the garden or climbing mountains.
In spite of it all, Baylis is unhappy. He regrets that he had to set up his factory abroad and the rejections he suffered still rankle. Now he is particularly upset with Prince Charles. The Queen recently asked Douglas Buchanan, inventor of the knife-proof vest, to make protective boots for her corgis, whose paws are becoming tender in old age. When Baylis asked the Prince of Wales to sponsor his project for the Academy of Inventors to promote British innovations, he was turned down.
Bayliss rattles off a list of UK inventors who could not make themselves heard. Frank Whittle could have produced a jet aircraft as early as 1936 if anyone had listened. Joshua Silver, a professor of physics, has invented cheap, self-adjustable spectacles, at last proving to be a boon to the short-sighted in Africa, but still scorned here, Branco Babic invented, but never reaped the benefit of, the system used to put out the fires that raged after Desert Storm. James Dyson lost out on several earlier patents before becoming famous as the inventor of the Dyson bag-less vaccuum cleaner. "We are exceptional at creating new products, and appalling at giving credit," Baylis concludes.
Baylis knows of at least 1,000 inventors who would be keen to join his Academy. It would cost 2.5m to set up and would offer inventors a help line, check out the feasibility of their ideas, protect copyright, set up introductions. Eventually it would become self-funding through a share of any profits the inventors made.
"We can make a renaissance of invention," says Bayliss.
How about it, Dr Frankenstein?
Phone 01225 442289 for your own BayGen Freeplay radio, price £69.95.