10 Idea Crackers

Back in the 1980s, Liverpool FC player Craig Johnston took a long hard look at the team’s football boots and got thinking; what if they could give the player greater control of the ball? From these first thoughts grew the mighty Predator^®, as worn by David Beckham, Zinedine Zidane and rugby ace Johnny Wilkinson.

Johnston worked with Adidas^® to develop the Predator^®, but a key breakthrough came when a chance comment about slippery boots inspired him to take the rubber off a table tennis bat and stick it to his own boots with superglue. Hundreds of prototypes later he arrived at the Predator^®; the world’s best-selling football boot.

Johnston has certainly come a long way since his early days as a boot boy at Middlesborough FC, responsible for cleaning and polishing hundreds of boots each day. “You get a good feel for any product that you spend that long with”, says Johnston. So next time you’re stuck with a boring repetitive task, take heart; it could be the ideal training ground for future fame and fortune.

Have FruityFaces^® made their way from the Dragon’s Den^® to your school dining room yet?

If you’ve sat down for lunch with ‘Fenne’, ‘Mengi’ or ‘Sesey’ lately , then the answer is ‘yes’. These inflatable cases, designed to stop fruit from getting squashed in your school (or picnic) bag, are the brainchild of Paige Allen, a businesswoman and mother of three, who feels passionately about promoting children’s health.

Like many simple but great ideas, FruityFaces^® are the answer to a problem experienced by the inventor, in this case an inability to carry soft fruits such as peaches and nectarines without them getting bashed, bruised and a bit yukky. Allen looked around but couldn’t find anything that would do the job - and make fruit fun to eat. So she set about creating her own solution.

“Have faith and perseverance” she says, “there are people with a wealth of skills and experience who are often willing to help you if you ask.” FruityFaces^® launched in May 2006 and have already been a finalist in the Fruit Industry Awards ‘Innovation of the Year’ Award.

Trevor Baylis is a former professional swimmer, stunt performer and underwater escape artiste, best known for inventing the wind-up radio.

It all started when Baylis saw a TV programme about the spread of AIDS in Africa. It showed how radio could be a useful tool for stopping the disease; the trouble was, most people couldn’t afford the batteries. Before the programme had finished Baylis was in his workshop, experimenting. And soon he had a working prototype for a clockwork radio with a wind-up mechanism (a bit like an overgrown watch).

Baylis patented the idea, but no manufacturer was interested – until he was featured on the TV programme Tomorrow's World. Investors came forward and Baylis was able to develop his wind-up radio, later voted Best Product and Best Design at the BBC Design Awards.

“As long as you've got slightly more perception than the average wrapped loaf, you could invent something,” says Baylis, who in 2001 completed a 100-mile trek across the Namib Desert in his Electric Shoes (which charge a mobile phone battery). It seems we haven’t heard the last of him.

Ah, the humble windscreen wiper; where would we be without it? Frankly, it would be hard to tell, especially on rainy days…

We might still be wiping our windscreens by hand if it wasn’t for Mary Anderson and her ‘automatic car window cleaning device’, patented in 1903. It was on a trip to New York that Mary noticed tram drivers opening their windows to see in the rain – and she immediately began to sketch her ideas for a swinging wiper arm.

Anderson’s invention was a huge step forward, but the driver still had to operate the wiper by hand, which could be dangerous. Mechanical wipers soon solved this problem, and by 1916 they were standard on all American cars. The design has stayed pretty much the same ever since.

Whilst wipers may seem obvious now, there hadn’t been a strong demand for them in the early days. Horse-drawn carriages and trucks moved at slow speeds and glass wasn’t needed to protect the driver or act as a windbreak - unless you had a particularly windy horse!

If you’ve ever dreamed of going to wizard school or playing Quidditch, it’s almost certainly because you’re one of the millions of people that have read the stories of Harry Potter^®.

J K Rowling’s story really shows that a good idea can happen anywhere. She famously wrote the first Harry Potter^® book during 1994-5 in a number of different cafés in Edinburgh, while her baby daughter slept.

Rowling, born in South Gloucestershire in 1965, has since written six Harry Potter^® books and is about to release a seventh: ‘Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows’ (12 July, 2007). So far, her books have sold more than 377 million copies and been translated into more than 63 languages. The rights to her work, have made her very wealthy through the sales of the books, films and merchandise

So, next time you go out, take some paper and a pencil. Who knows, we could be reading one of your books soon…

We all know that smoke alarms are a good idea, right? So why do so many people who go out and buy them never get around to fitting them?

That’s the question that puzzled Nick Rutter and Sam Tate, the innovative team behind FireAngel^®; a new type of smoke alarm that plugs into a light fitting and recharges when you switch it on. With this neat, award-winning device, Rutter and Tate successfully knocked down the two main barriers to fitting and maintaining a smoke alarm; they made it easy (as easy as changing a light bulb) and they took away the need for batteries. It’s brilliantly simple and as a result, FireAngel Ltd has grown into an international operation in just a few years.

The company now develops and manufactures a number of home safety products including a wide range of self-charging alarms and domestic fire fighting equipment.

Inventors often talk about the ‘light bulb moment’ when an idea pops into their heads. For this young company, who have taken a great idea and turned it into a growing business, the future certainly looks bright.

It’s not every innovator who can claim to be a household name, but many of us know ‘Dyson’ thanks to his famous bag-less vacuum cleaner.

Dyson first had the idea for a ‘cyclonic’ vacuum cleaner back in the 1970s, but it wasn’t until 1983 that he was able to launch the first model, known as the 'G-Force'. At that time, no UK manufacturer was interested. So Dyson launched the G-Force in Japan, and then took the bold step of setting up his own company to manufacture the Dyson^® vacuum cleaner. The rest, as they say, is history.

Dyson went on to become one of the UK’s most popular brands. Seeing this success, other manufacturers (many of whom had rejected Dyson’s original G-Force) were quick to jump on the bandwagon with their own bag-less cleaners. This resulted in Dyson suing Hoover^® UK for patent infringement – with Hoover^® eventually coughing up around £2.5 million in damages.

Dyson claims “I just want things to work properly”; a philosophy that has propelled him to great personal fortune – and no small measure of fame.

Next time you sit down for dinner, spare a thought for Frederick McKinley Jones; the man who first made it possible to transport meat, fruit, vegetables, eggs and other fresh produce without it turning black, mushy, furry and stinky en route to your table.

Jones invented the first automatic refrigeration system for long-haul trucks in 1935, completely changing the food transport industry. By 1949, the US Thermo Control Company, co-founded by Jones, had boomed to a $3,000,000-a-year business; equivalent to over £250 billion a year in today’s money.

Despite his success, Jones was never satisfied and kept looking for ways to improve his cooling units. For example, he created other devices to keep fruit from drying out or becoming over-ripe before reaching its destination.

By the time Jones died in 1961, his inventions were serving people throughout the world. He was a behind-the-scenes contributor to many of the luxuries of modern living, such as supermarkets and fast food restaurants, which would struggle to survive without long-haul deliveries. It just goes to show, a passion for refrigeration can be cool after all.

Frank Hornby is known for inventing Meccano^®, patented in 1901 as ‘Improvements in Toy or Educational Devices for Children and Young People’; hardly a snappy title, but it helped to make Hornby a millionaire.

Hornby started out making toys for his sons; mainly bridges, trucks and cranes, which he modelled from sheet metal. The breakthrough came when he realised that, if he could make separate interchangeable parts that would bolt together, many different models could be built from the same pieces. Bingo. Or, in this case, Meccano^®.

Fortunately, Hornby’s employer saw the potential of this interesting and educational new toy and provided workspace – and the chance for Hornby to pursue his ideas. The first sets went on sale soon after, containing 16 parts and instructions for making 12 models. Sales were slow at first, but by the 1930s, Hornby had made his first million.

Today there are thousands of enthusiasts all over the world still building Meccano^® models or running Hornby’s other great invention; the Hornby^® Train set. He showed that by having an idea and sticking with it, you can bolt together your dreams.

A former test pilot might not seem the ideal person to design a new type of pushchair, but Owen Maclaren MBE can add the collapsible baby buggy to his impressive list of achievements.

Maclaren was inspired when his daughter visited from the United States with his first grandchild. After watching her struggle with an ordinary pushchair, Maclaren used his knowledge of lightweight, collapsible structures to create a brand new type of child transport.

His first buggy, designed and patented in 1965, weighed just 3kg (6lb) and collapsed to the size of an umbrella. It was durable and safe – and it liberated parents from the tyranny of a bulky pram. Suddenly, anyone who was anyone wanted a Maclaren^® B01 (the first model). And today there are dozens of styles on sale in over 50 countries.

Pilots also owe Maclaren a debt of thanks for the landing gear that enables aircraft to take off and land in a cross-wind, and a sealing device that allows Spitfire fighter planes to survive a bullet through the radiator - proving innovative minds rarely stop at one cracking idea.