Factory Making Wind-Up Radios

It will bring news and information to battery-poor people throughout the world, and is hailed by President Nelson Mandela as a “fantastic achievement.”

No ordinary radio, it is powered by a wind-up generator that is charged by cranking a round knob. Twenty seconds of winding produces 40 minutes of listening.

The radio was designed by Briton Trevor Baylis, and will go into production this month at a Cape Town factory.

Baylis got his idea after listening to doctors on a television documentary describe the difficulty of getting information about AIDS to people in remote African villages who could not afford or lacked access to batteries.