You may have heard about them on late-night talk radio, or seen them at a recent exhibition on emergency preparedness. They're radios powered by a hand-cranked electric generator. They never need new batteries or wall current, and they'll work anywhere that a radio signal can be heard. Some have additional features including a solar cell for charging the internal battery on sunny days, and a small spotlight. Some models have an electric outlet that can power other battery-driven devices, such as laptop computers, off the hand-cranked generator.

Created by an award-winning British inventor named Trevor Baylis, the "clockwork radio" was originally conceived as a godsend for less developed regions of the world where many people have neither an electric power grid nor the financial means to buy lots of expensive batteries.

Picked up and brought to market by BayGen Company of South Africa, the crank-powered radio proved too expensive for most rural Africans to afford. But it quickly caught on among affluent survivalists in Europe and America and has become a popular item in emergency preparedness catalogs and expos. The latest models are so efficient that about one minute of cranking will run the radio for up to an hour.

For Baylis, the best news is that, as his radios become more popular, the manufacturing cost is coming down. The Red Cross and U.N. relief organizations have started distributing the devices. Soon, they may become widely used in the very places Baylis was most concerned about, especially rural Africa.

The 2020 Group
GLOBAL SITUATION REPORT
Editor Michael Lindemann
Vol. 1 No. 3 - Feb. 10, 1999 - Part 2
GSReport@aol.com