Swimming Pool Scene POOL PEOPLE
POOL PEOPLE:
Trevor Baylis A Life Well Lived
A special tribute to one of the pool industry’s most colourful characters…
Well-known for his invention of the wind-up radio, English inventor, Trevor Baylis CBE died last month at the age of 80. Trevor was lesser known as a pool builder and a long-term customer and friend of Certikin who supplied equipment for both his pools and inventions. Bob Kent of MSI, formerly of Certikin, has fond memories
of Trevor: “My first encounter in the early days of Certikin with Trevor was way back in 1966 at Purley Pools where he was employed as technical manager. “A very intense yet charismatic character who as one of his task was creating a ‘high breed’ algae spore that only he knew the formulation that could, if needed, destroy it! “He was also the brains behind the first peristaltic automatic chlorinator manufactured by Chloromet Ltd East Grinstead. “We last met in South Africa during the embryonic days of his clockwork radio. He was a person you will always remember,” adds Bob.
A keen swimmer, Trevor swam for Great Britain at the age of 15 and narrowly missed qualifying for the 1956 Summer Olympics. Following national service, he took a job with Purley Pools, a company which made the first free-standing swimming pools. Epitomising English eccentricity, he demonstrated the pools by performing comedy diving routines, including one that involved plunging into the water in a woman’s dress that was set on fire to increase the dramatic effect.
AQUATIC DISPLAY This led him to forming his own aquatic-display company as professional swimmer, stunt performer and entertainer, performing high dives into a glass-sided tank. In the 1960s with money earned from performing as an underwater-escape artist in the Berlin Circus, he set up Shotline Steel Swimming Pools, which supplies swimming pools to schools. This brought him
into contact with Peter Geekie Pools in Oxford and he and Peter struck up a great friendship. Trevor invented the wind-up radio in response to the need to communicate information about AIDS in Africa. The radio, instead of relying on batteries or an external electrical source, is powered by winding a crank. This stores energy in a spring which then drives an electrical generator.
He developed the radio and 250 other inventions in his chaotic workshop at his home on Eel Pie Island, overlooking Ham Common in Twickenham, West London. It was here that Certikin Sales Director, Richard Way, visited him. “His home was as quirky as Trevor was,” Richard recalls. “He was a great character and I remember him fondly.
“He told me the highlight of his life was an audience with Nelson Mandela in 1995 in recognition of the impact his wind- up radio had in Africa.” Sadly, Trevor didn’t reap the financial rewards of his inventions saying: “We are brilliant at inventing but appalling in the way we treat inventors.
“I was very foolish. I didn’t protect my product properly and allowed other people to take my product away.”
ABOVE: Trevor Baylis pictured with our friend Althea Taylor-Salmon from Fortune PR. Swimming Pool Scene POOL PEOPLE 61
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