All you Gearheads steal this and you’re DA MAN!
British inventor asked to help build clockwork laptop
The British inventor whose clockwork radios brought the poorest and most remote parts of the world into the broadcasting age has been asked to help bring them computers.
Trevor Bayliss has flown to America to help design and build a wind up generator for a new laptop computer that is hoped will bring the internet to even the most impoverished and far flung parts of the third world.
Mr Bayliss has been asked by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to help build a laptop that costs only $100 (£56), then distribute it to hundreds of thousands of schoolchildren.
The project, launched in January at the World Economic Forum, has won the backing of five countries – China, Brazil, Egypt, Thailand and South Africa – who have said they will each buy more than a million computers.
The laptop will be designed to work in the harshest conditions away from modern civilisation.
It will be made to be durable, flexible and self reliant, with a rubber case that will make it almost indestructible.
It will be about the size of a lunch box and will be foldable like a traditional laptop. It will also have a display that can shift from full colour to glare resistant black and white.
A clockwork generator will be used to power the machine and that is where Mr Bayliss has been asked to supply his expertise.
The team at MIT Media Lab, which is led by Nicholas Negroponte, invited Mr Bayliss to America to see if he can convert the technology he used in the radio to a computer.
They want him to design a lightweight “hand crank” that can convert one minute of winding into 10 minutes of computer time.
Mr Bayliss said: “It is a great privilege and honour to be asked. I would say that it is possible. I don’t see why I cannot do it. I hope that I can also involve the team at Bristol University in the project. It is great that there is some British involvement in such a great scheme.”
Wow.
I’ve seen those radios in rural areas.
C.
nah… wouldn’t work – too many modern convieneces. what you need to do is steal only the battery, without the laptop. the laptop itself will actually annul the power of the rest of the construct, due to it’s digital components.
The nihohit is right, I’m afraid.
But I bet the battery would make a really cool motor for my Clockwork Globe. Or even a perpetual motion machine. I always wanted one of those 🙂
Actually, if you just include the laptop symbolically, it might work. Of course, the key word here is might.
Still, ytou could steal this instead…
http://www.teasmade.com/clarke.htm
yeah, the battery is the only real important component, but with this much support for mechanomancer toys. I wonder why they’re always portrayed as reclusive aritficer instead of a possible world spanning conspiracy that can bring ascension closer to their ideal.
And as far as modern conveniences are concerned, does this actually sound like some attempt by the clockworkers to turn the clock back somehow? To fight back the age of digital technology?
Hmmmm…. Aether and Clockworks the conspiracy… Yikes!