Wallace and Gromit's World of Invention (2010) s01e03 Episode Script
Home Sweet Home
Ooh! Ha-ha! Ooh! Ha-ha-ha-ha! Mmm-mmm Ah ah! Ooh! Ooh-ooh-ooh! Hello, viewers, and welcome to my World Of Invention, the show that takes the sigh out of science and puts the sheen on machines.
Household chores never end, do they, Gromit? That's something that's taxed the brain of many an inventor.
So, today we'll be looking at some cunning contraptions which give a helping hand around the home.
We'll be raising our cuppas to that most British of breakfast accessories, the Teasmade.
The best invention since the aqueduct.
My science correspondent, Mr Jem, will be looking into a fridge designed by none other than Albert Einstein.
It looks just like I'd hoped an Einstein-inspired fridge would.
And the amazing story of a boy in Malawi who's made household chores easier by bringing electricity to his entire village.
I was very happy and very excited, like, "Wow, I've done it!" Yeah! But first, let's meet some mechanical marvels that take the hassle out of housework.
And we're talking about domestic robots.
Over to you, Ashley, m'dear! Thank you, Wallace.
It's every inventor's dream to build a robot that can do anything a human can.
Hello! Well, up to a point.
And one of the first people to construct a robot that behaved like a human was British inventor Tony Sale.
Back in 1949, Tony was an officer in the RAF.
Proudly, we present George to the RAF Saffron Walden, brainchild of Pilot Officer Sale.
It was the beginning of the Cold War, and while lots of scientists were busy with the nuclear arms race, Tony was busy trying to make his robot's legs race.
Well, walk a bit, anyway.
The challenge was to build a walking robot, and that hadn't been done previously, and I thought I could do it, so I set to and got some motors for his feet and a radio control system, and there it was.
I had a walking, George robot.
It was important that George looked human and so it was this which gave people the rapport with him as a human-like thing, and they hadn't seen that before.
George was a sensation.
The press loved the story.
The attention was on a domestic robot, and so I had to have pictures of him mocked up pushing a vacuum cleaner, then mocked up behind a lawn mower.
He couldn't actually do that, but this was for the press, and they loved it.
But it wasn't just the newspapers that were excited about George.
When I met my wife, she thought that George was going to do all the domestic work in the house.
And he never has! But if George wasn't up to it, perhaps Robert the Robot could help around the house.
Men, if you want a household help who won't nag, gossip or rifle your wallet, why not let Robert the Robot walk over your threshold? He does everything but talk, while a woman ha! Hmm.
Anyway! Roberts's skills were really just limited to wearing a pinny a bit like most men, really.
30 years later, it was the home computer that gave hope to our domestic robot dreams.
And finally, meet the very latest home help.
Britain's first domestic robot goes on sale tomorrow.
He'll only do what he's told, through an ordinary home computer.
He won't answer back, and he never forgets.
Topo's going to be a very sophisticated toy for very rich people.
But an expensive toy is all it was.
Topo the robot's domestic talents were still just for the cameras.
People expected robots to do all these domestic things, I think.
They didn't realise the real technical difficulties in actually making a machine that could work in a human environment.
Even in this day and age, we're still struggling.
Just this year, in Berkeley University, California, the brightest brains and the biggest boffins programmed this PR2 robot to pick up and neatly fold up towels.
But each towel took the robot 25 minutes to fold.
We've had to speed up this footage, just so you don't fall asleep! It seems the only breakthroughs we've ever had are when our robot inventions just stop trying to be like humans.
Instead of multi-tasking and looking like us, these simple gadgets focus on doing just one task and doing it well.
It's nice to have a humanoid robot, but actually, of course, to do most of the tasks which people want done, it doesn't need to be humanoid.
All right, they don't need to be, but deep down, don't you want your robot to look like a member of the family? So, what became of George? Sadly, after 15 minutes of robotic fame, he was packed up and put into storage.
He's been gathering dust, all alone in Tony's garage, ever since.
Until now.
Engineer's last resort is just a large hammer.
Amazingly, after 60 years, Tony's wife's dream has come true, and George is finally helping out with the weekly shopping.
Although he just might be showing his age a little bit.
Housekeeping robots - just imagine! Er, meanwhile, put the kettle on, eh, lad? Now, where are we? Oh, yes! Malawi! We're going to the village of Wimbe to meet a bright young spark who's found a revolutionary way to light up his community.
And, Wallace, it's a truly extraordinary story about a local hero called William Kamkwamba who single-handedly has transformed the life of his entire village.
Most of the people don't have a chance to access electricity.
In the rural areas, it is only 2% who have electricity.
On top of growing up without electricity, William also had to go without proper education.
Here in Malawi High School, you have to pay school fees.
My parents didn't manage to pay.
Because of that, I was forced to drop out of school.
William decided to school himself by visiting the local library every day.
One day I found this book called Using Energy.
I saw the cover of the book had a picture of a windmill and when I opened it inside, they say a windmill could pump water and generate electricity.
I was like "Wow!" Aged just 14, William set out to build one.
I didn't have money to buy materials, so what I did, I went to a junk yard.
For the blades, I used PVC pipes.
I made a fire and then I start putting the pipes on the fire and then when it started melting I was putting it on the flat ground and then stretching it to make it flat so that I can make the blades.
I found the bamboo, which I tied together with the blades so that it can be strong.
Using wood from gum trees, William built a 5 metre-high tower and attached his PVC blades to the top.
Finally, William used a dynamo connected to the rim of an old bike wheel, which he hoped would convert the windmill's movement into electrical power.
When I was doing that, lots of people were laughing at me.
I was afraid that, if this thing is not going to work, they will say that you are a little crazy, so I was like just crossing my fingers.
Let this thing work! So I put it up, and slowly but surely, it started spinning.
But would his make-shift creation actually produce electricity? That night, he put it to the test.
He wired his windmill to a small light bulb, climbed the tower and waited for the wind to blow.
At first, a little bit of light just came on, and I was like, "Oh, now the light is coming.
" And suddenly a strong wind starts blowing, and the blades started turning a little faster and spinning.
And then the light bulb was just like bright, and I was like, "Wow!" I was I was very happy and very excited, like, "Wow, I've done it!" William had taken some scrap metal and pipes, and along with an old bike, brought electricity to his home.
With his brilliant creation an astounding success, he built two more one to pump water and irrigate the fields, another one to generate more electricity.
People from the nearest town couldn't believe how they could charge up a mobile phone in the village.
By 2006, William was being invited to conferences all around the world to inspire others.
Trust yourself and believe.
Whatever happens, don't give up.
He then won a scholarship to the Ivy League Dartmouth College, USA.
Back home, the boy they once thought was crazy has totally transformed his area.
Now, with international support, he's built new school rooms and even has plans to build a football stadium.
I'm happy, because other people can be encouraged to come up with the ideas.
For me, science is important, because you can do lots of things that can help you or help your community or help your nation or help the world.
What a switched-on fellow! Just goes to show how one bright idea can make a real difference.
Now, how's that tea coming on, eh, lad? Ah-ha! Not quite quick enough there, Gromit.
Let me introduce the L-A-D, my Labour Assisting Device.
A kind of automated dogsbody, really.
Mmm, just the ticket, LAD! Tea! It's what makes Britain great.
Don't you agree, Wallace? And do you know, we drink 165 million cups of it every day.
It's conquered class barriers, energised an empire and bought a nation together in its darkest hours.
But it was one infamous device that fused the British love of invention and tea.
And Blue Peter! This is the complete bedside tea maker.
It was borrowed by me from the Science Museum.
It does look a little odd, but it makes a very good cup of tea, I'll tell you.
Now, what John Noakes has got here is the very first ever commercially produced tea maker, patented in 1902 by gun maker Frank Clarke.
It's been going marvellously until I get hold of it Nowadays we take the idea of labour-saving devices like this for granted, but Frank Clarke's clever engineering was way ahead of its time.
And, believe it or not, the basic mechanics of every tea maker has remained the same ever since.
Five minutes before your alarm goes off, an electric element starts heating the water in the kettle.
Eventually, the water boils, and steam pressure forces the water out of the kettle and into a separate pot containing your teabags.
The now empty and lighter kettle rises up on a spring, which switches off the heat and sets off your alarm, waking you up with a lovely cup of tea.
With a collection of over 175 different Teasmades, Sheridan Parsons is a big fan.
The Teasmade is a wonderful invention, the best invention since the aqueduct.
It's something everybody can enjoy and make use of.
Definitely the best thing to put next to your bed.
It was the British company Goblin who decided to call the automatic tea maker the Teasmade in 1936.
And that's what they've been called ever since.
Sometimes I have these incredible dreams and always when they start to get really interesting my Teasmade chooses that moment to boil the water, pour it into the teapot and wake me up.
Sales of Teasmades reached their peak in the 1970s when they were selling about 10,000 units a week, and it was a real luxury item.
It cost the equivalent of two weeks' wages in those days.
At the time when they were developing so many nice new models, many people didn't have central heating in their homes, and if they did, they certainly didn't have programmable timers like today.
So to be able to stay in bed, have a cup of tea before you got up in the morning and faced the freezing cold kitchen downstairs was wonderful.
For nearly a century, the Teasmade presented a scientifically created dream of domestic bliss.
But, like all dreams, it had to come to an end.
Teasmades started to decline in popularity during the 1980s, and that happened quite quickly.
I think it was partly because they were on The Generation Game conveyor belt, which gave them rather a naff image.
Ladies'hair conditioners and curlers.
Fitted, quilted bedspread.
An electric alarm tea maker And probably the final death knell was when Norma Major admitted that she kept one by the bedside in Downing Street.
The Teasmade had gone out of fashion.
Britain had changed too.
Nine to five had become 24/7, and the idea of a nice cup of tea in bed seemed to belong to another age.
Even the mighty Goblin went bust in 2001.
I think the Teasmade is a wonderful machine.
It somehow expresses something of the quirkiness of the British mind.
It's such a wonderfully social thing to sit in bed with a cup of tea and take your time getting up.
There's nothing quite like it.
Oh, yes! I'll drink to that.
Oh-ho! Look at this, Gromit.
Now, that's what I call multi-tasking.
Oh, thanks, LAD.
Oh, er a-hem.
Next up, here's Mr Jem with a rather cool invention which never got off the drawing board.
The fridge.
An amazing household invention that most of us take totally for granted.
It was in 1927 when the first domestic fridge was introduced the General Electric Monitor Top.
But by the mid 1930s, fridges in the home were starting to become widespread.
They were the housewife's dream, and from then on, the daily shopping trips for perishable food became a thing of the past.
But early fridges tended to use pretty nasty chemicals, and these occasionally leaked.
Could this design have been the answer? It was the brainchild of one of the greatest minds ever Albert Einstein.
And this is it - Einstein's fridge.
How do you fancy one of these in your kitchen? That is the strangest-looking fridge I have ever seen.
It looks just like I'd hoped an Einstein-inspired fridge would.
Delightfully complicated and reliant on relative gravitational potential.
This is Einstein's equivalent of the pumps and pipes at the back of your fridge.
But you'll see on this model they still haven't made anywhere to put your beer yet.
But how does it get things cold? Well, like most fridges, it uses the principle of evaporative cooling.
And you can feel the power of that for yourself.
Lick the back of your hand.
Blow on it.
It feels cold, and that's because, as it dries, all the little liquid water molecules are rising up to become a vapour and disappearing.
To do that requires energy, and it gets this energy by stealing heat from the back of your hand.
Which is why evaporation makes things feel cold.
Einstein's fridge uses the same principle and thankfully it doesn't use saliva.
It uses liquid butane.
The stuff you get in camping gas bottles.
Now, where evaporating water gets things a little chilly, evaporating butane can get things totally freezing.
In here, I've got some liquid butane.
It's under pressure at the moment, so it's not evaporating, and nothing's getting cold, but if I release the pressure and pour it into a pipe, like you get at the back of your fridge it starts evaporating straightaway, much quicker than water.
That's because butane is highly volatile.
That means it evaporates quickly.
But it's also highly flammable, which means this is something you definitely should not do at home.
Just like the saliva on the back of my hand, it evaporates more quickly if I blow on it.
It's nearly all gone now.
That's almost too cold to hold, and that's because, as the butane evaporated, it stole all the heat from its surroundings, freezing anything nearby, giving it that familiar frosted-up look, like you get at the back of a refrigerator.
Now, this is how Einstein's fridge works and pretty much all household fridges.
An evaporating liquid grabs the heat from the air surrounding your food, keeping it cold.
So, if Einstein's fridge works, why don't we all have one at home? He may have been an amazing thinker, but he wasn't much of a businessman and he never got a manufacturer to take it on.
So, his design stayed firmly on the drawing board.
Luckily today, there are still great minds conjuring up amazing-looking fridges, and one of those is Emily Cummins.
Emily has designed a fridge that she hopes can bring refrigeration to every corner of the planet.
And all done as an A-Level project.
And in the spirit of all the best inventors, it was done in a garden shed.
- So this is it! - This is the fridge.
Say milk, for example - how much longer does it stay fresh? Obviously milk, leave it out in very warm conditions - 30 degrees it goes off very quickly.
Here in my fridge, - it can last up to three or four days.
- Three or four days? - Yeah! - The very first mechanical fridge was invented literally to keep beer cool in Germany, right? Was there any of that? Well, I am actually considering now making a fridge for camping to keep beer cool, obviously, and for festivals and things like that, but actually what's important to me is really helping people and people that really need this product.
So, for me the first point of call was actually people who don't even have refrigeration, so how can I enable people to have a fridge when they don't already? Emily realised her design was perfect for parts of the world with no electricity.
And in southern Africa, she worked with local people to turn scrap materials into fridges.
To make a version of Emily's fridge, line a plastic bucket with wire mesh and put a metal container in the middle.
Fill the gap with anything that'll hold water sand, wool, earth, you name it.
Pour in the water.
It can be as dirty as you like, because it'll never touch the food.
When the water evaporates, it cools down the container in the middle.
And all your food stays nice and cool.
Emily's fridge is a beautifully simple design.
But I've got to admit, I would have loved it if an Einstein fridge had made it.
Imagine how cool it'd be to get a beer out of one of these.
Fancy that, an invention by Mr Einstein getting a cold reception.
Not like my L-A-D, of course.
There's nothing he can't turn his hand to cleaning, dusting, ironing me smalls.
How did we ever get by without him, eh, Gromit? Yes, well Next stop, Eel Pie Island, where we're going to meet this week's Inventor of the Week, Mr Trevor Baylis, creator of the wind-up radio.
And that's no wind-up.
Hello, welcome to Haven Studio, come on in.
So, basically, this is, if you like, my playroom.
You can call it a studio, if you like.
But the nice thing about it is, it is part of my house.
It's part of me.
Trevor has dedicated his life to bringing us inventions that help us around the home.
It was in this very room in 1989 that Trevor first came up with his now famous idea of the wind-up radio.
I was watching a programme one day about the spread of HIV, AIDS in Africa.
This was the most ghastly thing you could imagine.
They said the only way they could bring the information to people was by radio.
But there was a problem.
Most of Africa didn't have electricity, and the only form of electricity was in the form of batteries, which were horrendously expensive.
I suddenly had this idea.
Surely there's enough power in a spring to drive a dynamo, which should drive a radio.
But I had to prove to myself that it would work.
And I had a small DC motor, which I knew, when run in reverse, becomes a dynamo.
And I literally put that into the chuck of this, like that, and I joined these two wires here to the back of this cheap transistor radio and then, when I held the motor and turned the handle, I got the first bark of sound from the radio.
And that was done within 20 minutes of seeing that programme.
After presenting one of the first models to Nelson Mandela, Trevor went on to sell millions of radios, and in 1997 was awarded the OBE.
But his love of invention had been inspired 55 years earlier as a boy when he found a Meccano set on a war-time bomb site.
When I was a child, I used to know all about nuts, bolts, screws and washers.
I could do the most amazing things with my Meccano set and yet at that time I couldn't actually write my name! And now, at 73, Trevor shows no sign of winding down.
In fact, quite the opposite.
This is one of the latest - it's a walking stick.
Why would I want a wind-up walking stick? Let me show you.
You can see where you're going.
It's got a hooter on it.
Should you drop your keys or something, you can pick them up, cos it has a magnet on, see? Keep it simple, stupid.
I don't get up in the morning and say, "I'm going to invent something.
" It doesn't work like that.
There's an expression, "Chance favours the prepared mind.
" It's not about money.
There are no pockets in a shroud.
I won't be remembered by how much money I've made, but I think I should be remembered by the wind-up radio.
# Knock me down with a feather # Clever Trevor # Ooh, ah! Ooh, ah! You know people often ask me, what are your top five most useful household gadgets? Well, why don't we take a look? Down a bit, LAD.
Ow! Let's join my archive librarian, Goronwy.
Thanks, Mr Wallace.
This week, we've got five gadgets all designed to use in your own home.
So, at number five, can you guess what this is? No, it's a home computer! And it's the brainchild of Mr Roland Emmet.
And what I like about it is you can see how it works.
That goes in there, that comes out of that, and there's the elephant which, when computers got smaller, became the mouse.
And out pops the answer.
Oh, I've forgotten what the question was now.
And at number four, if you are in the dining room and your dinner's in the kitchen, here's the answer! Or you could just go into the kitchen.
Our third useful household gadget is a 1935 invention with real versatility.
Not only is it a table it's a washing machine, a sink and a bath! And as if that's not enough, you can play Shove Ha'penny on it as well, which for younger viewers is the 1930s version of Grand Theft Auto.
In second place, everybody's looking for new ways to generate clean energy at home.
Well, back in 1965, Malcolm Pickard of Trowbridge in Wiltshire had already found one.
Teenagers! I wouldn't say it's that clean and I imagine it would produce a fair bit of CO2, but there's certainly plenty of it about.
Well done, Malcolm.
And at number one, our most useful gadget is something that throws beer across a room.
No, it's not a student.
It's a beer-launching fridge, invented by American John WCornwell.
Going to throw a party? Why not throw the beer as well? After being flung through the air, it'll certainly have a good head on it.
Just like clever old John W.
And that's the beer-launching fridge.
A beer-launching fridge? Well, I never! Here, maybe I can re-programme my LAD.
Saucer, cup, some freshly-brewed tea Ah-ha, brilliant! My afternoon tea-throwing robot.
Spot of milk, please, LAD.
Oh! And, er two sugars.
Oh, dear, ha-ha! Oh, no, no! No, pack it in Oh, ow! Gromit! Do something! Ow, me dogsbody's gone doolally! Ah! Ow! Duck and cover! Flying saucers! If you've enjoyed our show, grab your mouse and log on to our World Of Invention website You'll find a fantastic competition, details of our roadshow as well as lots of ways to get you inventing.
Pull your finger out and get clicking.
Household chores never end, do they, Gromit? That's something that's taxed the brain of many an inventor.
So, today we'll be looking at some cunning contraptions which give a helping hand around the home.
We'll be raising our cuppas to that most British of breakfast accessories, the Teasmade.
The best invention since the aqueduct.
My science correspondent, Mr Jem, will be looking into a fridge designed by none other than Albert Einstein.
It looks just like I'd hoped an Einstein-inspired fridge would.
And the amazing story of a boy in Malawi who's made household chores easier by bringing electricity to his entire village.
I was very happy and very excited, like, "Wow, I've done it!" Yeah! But first, let's meet some mechanical marvels that take the hassle out of housework.
And we're talking about domestic robots.
Over to you, Ashley, m'dear! Thank you, Wallace.
It's every inventor's dream to build a robot that can do anything a human can.
Hello! Well, up to a point.
And one of the first people to construct a robot that behaved like a human was British inventor Tony Sale.
Back in 1949, Tony was an officer in the RAF.
Proudly, we present George to the RAF Saffron Walden, brainchild of Pilot Officer Sale.
It was the beginning of the Cold War, and while lots of scientists were busy with the nuclear arms race, Tony was busy trying to make his robot's legs race.
Well, walk a bit, anyway.
The challenge was to build a walking robot, and that hadn't been done previously, and I thought I could do it, so I set to and got some motors for his feet and a radio control system, and there it was.
I had a walking, George robot.
It was important that George looked human and so it was this which gave people the rapport with him as a human-like thing, and they hadn't seen that before.
George was a sensation.
The press loved the story.
The attention was on a domestic robot, and so I had to have pictures of him mocked up pushing a vacuum cleaner, then mocked up behind a lawn mower.
He couldn't actually do that, but this was for the press, and they loved it.
But it wasn't just the newspapers that were excited about George.
When I met my wife, she thought that George was going to do all the domestic work in the house.
And he never has! But if George wasn't up to it, perhaps Robert the Robot could help around the house.
Men, if you want a household help who won't nag, gossip or rifle your wallet, why not let Robert the Robot walk over your threshold? He does everything but talk, while a woman ha! Hmm.
Anyway! Roberts's skills were really just limited to wearing a pinny a bit like most men, really.
30 years later, it was the home computer that gave hope to our domestic robot dreams.
And finally, meet the very latest home help.
Britain's first domestic robot goes on sale tomorrow.
He'll only do what he's told, through an ordinary home computer.
He won't answer back, and he never forgets.
Topo's going to be a very sophisticated toy for very rich people.
But an expensive toy is all it was.
Topo the robot's domestic talents were still just for the cameras.
People expected robots to do all these domestic things, I think.
They didn't realise the real technical difficulties in actually making a machine that could work in a human environment.
Even in this day and age, we're still struggling.
Just this year, in Berkeley University, California, the brightest brains and the biggest boffins programmed this PR2 robot to pick up and neatly fold up towels.
But each towel took the robot 25 minutes to fold.
We've had to speed up this footage, just so you don't fall asleep! It seems the only breakthroughs we've ever had are when our robot inventions just stop trying to be like humans.
Instead of multi-tasking and looking like us, these simple gadgets focus on doing just one task and doing it well.
It's nice to have a humanoid robot, but actually, of course, to do most of the tasks which people want done, it doesn't need to be humanoid.
All right, they don't need to be, but deep down, don't you want your robot to look like a member of the family? So, what became of George? Sadly, after 15 minutes of robotic fame, he was packed up and put into storage.
He's been gathering dust, all alone in Tony's garage, ever since.
Until now.
Engineer's last resort is just a large hammer.
Amazingly, after 60 years, Tony's wife's dream has come true, and George is finally helping out with the weekly shopping.
Although he just might be showing his age a little bit.
Housekeeping robots - just imagine! Er, meanwhile, put the kettle on, eh, lad? Now, where are we? Oh, yes! Malawi! We're going to the village of Wimbe to meet a bright young spark who's found a revolutionary way to light up his community.
And, Wallace, it's a truly extraordinary story about a local hero called William Kamkwamba who single-handedly has transformed the life of his entire village.
Most of the people don't have a chance to access electricity.
In the rural areas, it is only 2% who have electricity.
On top of growing up without electricity, William also had to go without proper education.
Here in Malawi High School, you have to pay school fees.
My parents didn't manage to pay.
Because of that, I was forced to drop out of school.
William decided to school himself by visiting the local library every day.
One day I found this book called Using Energy.
I saw the cover of the book had a picture of a windmill and when I opened it inside, they say a windmill could pump water and generate electricity.
I was like "Wow!" Aged just 14, William set out to build one.
I didn't have money to buy materials, so what I did, I went to a junk yard.
For the blades, I used PVC pipes.
I made a fire and then I start putting the pipes on the fire and then when it started melting I was putting it on the flat ground and then stretching it to make it flat so that I can make the blades.
I found the bamboo, which I tied together with the blades so that it can be strong.
Using wood from gum trees, William built a 5 metre-high tower and attached his PVC blades to the top.
Finally, William used a dynamo connected to the rim of an old bike wheel, which he hoped would convert the windmill's movement into electrical power.
When I was doing that, lots of people were laughing at me.
I was afraid that, if this thing is not going to work, they will say that you are a little crazy, so I was like just crossing my fingers.
Let this thing work! So I put it up, and slowly but surely, it started spinning.
But would his make-shift creation actually produce electricity? That night, he put it to the test.
He wired his windmill to a small light bulb, climbed the tower and waited for the wind to blow.
At first, a little bit of light just came on, and I was like, "Oh, now the light is coming.
" And suddenly a strong wind starts blowing, and the blades started turning a little faster and spinning.
And then the light bulb was just like bright, and I was like, "Wow!" I was I was very happy and very excited, like, "Wow, I've done it!" William had taken some scrap metal and pipes, and along with an old bike, brought electricity to his home.
With his brilliant creation an astounding success, he built two more one to pump water and irrigate the fields, another one to generate more electricity.
People from the nearest town couldn't believe how they could charge up a mobile phone in the village.
By 2006, William was being invited to conferences all around the world to inspire others.
Trust yourself and believe.
Whatever happens, don't give up.
He then won a scholarship to the Ivy League Dartmouth College, USA.
Back home, the boy they once thought was crazy has totally transformed his area.
Now, with international support, he's built new school rooms and even has plans to build a football stadium.
I'm happy, because other people can be encouraged to come up with the ideas.
For me, science is important, because you can do lots of things that can help you or help your community or help your nation or help the world.
What a switched-on fellow! Just goes to show how one bright idea can make a real difference.
Now, how's that tea coming on, eh, lad? Ah-ha! Not quite quick enough there, Gromit.
Let me introduce the L-A-D, my Labour Assisting Device.
A kind of automated dogsbody, really.
Mmm, just the ticket, LAD! Tea! It's what makes Britain great.
Don't you agree, Wallace? And do you know, we drink 165 million cups of it every day.
It's conquered class barriers, energised an empire and bought a nation together in its darkest hours.
But it was one infamous device that fused the British love of invention and tea.
And Blue Peter! This is the complete bedside tea maker.
It was borrowed by me from the Science Museum.
It does look a little odd, but it makes a very good cup of tea, I'll tell you.
Now, what John Noakes has got here is the very first ever commercially produced tea maker, patented in 1902 by gun maker Frank Clarke.
It's been going marvellously until I get hold of it Nowadays we take the idea of labour-saving devices like this for granted, but Frank Clarke's clever engineering was way ahead of its time.
And, believe it or not, the basic mechanics of every tea maker has remained the same ever since.
Five minutes before your alarm goes off, an electric element starts heating the water in the kettle.
Eventually, the water boils, and steam pressure forces the water out of the kettle and into a separate pot containing your teabags.
The now empty and lighter kettle rises up on a spring, which switches off the heat and sets off your alarm, waking you up with a lovely cup of tea.
With a collection of over 175 different Teasmades, Sheridan Parsons is a big fan.
The Teasmade is a wonderful invention, the best invention since the aqueduct.
It's something everybody can enjoy and make use of.
Definitely the best thing to put next to your bed.
It was the British company Goblin who decided to call the automatic tea maker the Teasmade in 1936.
And that's what they've been called ever since.
Sometimes I have these incredible dreams and always when they start to get really interesting my Teasmade chooses that moment to boil the water, pour it into the teapot and wake me up.
Sales of Teasmades reached their peak in the 1970s when they were selling about 10,000 units a week, and it was a real luxury item.
It cost the equivalent of two weeks' wages in those days.
At the time when they were developing so many nice new models, many people didn't have central heating in their homes, and if they did, they certainly didn't have programmable timers like today.
So to be able to stay in bed, have a cup of tea before you got up in the morning and faced the freezing cold kitchen downstairs was wonderful.
For nearly a century, the Teasmade presented a scientifically created dream of domestic bliss.
But, like all dreams, it had to come to an end.
Teasmades started to decline in popularity during the 1980s, and that happened quite quickly.
I think it was partly because they were on The Generation Game conveyor belt, which gave them rather a naff image.
Ladies'hair conditioners and curlers.
Fitted, quilted bedspread.
An electric alarm tea maker And probably the final death knell was when Norma Major admitted that she kept one by the bedside in Downing Street.
The Teasmade had gone out of fashion.
Britain had changed too.
Nine to five had become 24/7, and the idea of a nice cup of tea in bed seemed to belong to another age.
Even the mighty Goblin went bust in 2001.
I think the Teasmade is a wonderful machine.
It somehow expresses something of the quirkiness of the British mind.
It's such a wonderfully social thing to sit in bed with a cup of tea and take your time getting up.
There's nothing quite like it.
Oh, yes! I'll drink to that.
Oh-ho! Look at this, Gromit.
Now, that's what I call multi-tasking.
Oh, thanks, LAD.
Oh, er a-hem.
Next up, here's Mr Jem with a rather cool invention which never got off the drawing board.
The fridge.
An amazing household invention that most of us take totally for granted.
It was in 1927 when the first domestic fridge was introduced the General Electric Monitor Top.
But by the mid 1930s, fridges in the home were starting to become widespread.
They were the housewife's dream, and from then on, the daily shopping trips for perishable food became a thing of the past.
But early fridges tended to use pretty nasty chemicals, and these occasionally leaked.
Could this design have been the answer? It was the brainchild of one of the greatest minds ever Albert Einstein.
And this is it - Einstein's fridge.
How do you fancy one of these in your kitchen? That is the strangest-looking fridge I have ever seen.
It looks just like I'd hoped an Einstein-inspired fridge would.
Delightfully complicated and reliant on relative gravitational potential.
This is Einstein's equivalent of the pumps and pipes at the back of your fridge.
But you'll see on this model they still haven't made anywhere to put your beer yet.
But how does it get things cold? Well, like most fridges, it uses the principle of evaporative cooling.
And you can feel the power of that for yourself.
Lick the back of your hand.
Blow on it.
It feels cold, and that's because, as it dries, all the little liquid water molecules are rising up to become a vapour and disappearing.
To do that requires energy, and it gets this energy by stealing heat from the back of your hand.
Which is why evaporation makes things feel cold.
Einstein's fridge uses the same principle and thankfully it doesn't use saliva.
It uses liquid butane.
The stuff you get in camping gas bottles.
Now, where evaporating water gets things a little chilly, evaporating butane can get things totally freezing.
In here, I've got some liquid butane.
It's under pressure at the moment, so it's not evaporating, and nothing's getting cold, but if I release the pressure and pour it into a pipe, like you get at the back of your fridge it starts evaporating straightaway, much quicker than water.
That's because butane is highly volatile.
That means it evaporates quickly.
But it's also highly flammable, which means this is something you definitely should not do at home.
Just like the saliva on the back of my hand, it evaporates more quickly if I blow on it.
It's nearly all gone now.
That's almost too cold to hold, and that's because, as the butane evaporated, it stole all the heat from its surroundings, freezing anything nearby, giving it that familiar frosted-up look, like you get at the back of a refrigerator.
Now, this is how Einstein's fridge works and pretty much all household fridges.
An evaporating liquid grabs the heat from the air surrounding your food, keeping it cold.
So, if Einstein's fridge works, why don't we all have one at home? He may have been an amazing thinker, but he wasn't much of a businessman and he never got a manufacturer to take it on.
So, his design stayed firmly on the drawing board.
Luckily today, there are still great minds conjuring up amazing-looking fridges, and one of those is Emily Cummins.
Emily has designed a fridge that she hopes can bring refrigeration to every corner of the planet.
And all done as an A-Level project.
And in the spirit of all the best inventors, it was done in a garden shed.
- So this is it! - This is the fridge.
Say milk, for example - how much longer does it stay fresh? Obviously milk, leave it out in very warm conditions - 30 degrees it goes off very quickly.
Here in my fridge, - it can last up to three or four days.
- Three or four days? - Yeah! - The very first mechanical fridge was invented literally to keep beer cool in Germany, right? Was there any of that? Well, I am actually considering now making a fridge for camping to keep beer cool, obviously, and for festivals and things like that, but actually what's important to me is really helping people and people that really need this product.
So, for me the first point of call was actually people who don't even have refrigeration, so how can I enable people to have a fridge when they don't already? Emily realised her design was perfect for parts of the world with no electricity.
And in southern Africa, she worked with local people to turn scrap materials into fridges.
To make a version of Emily's fridge, line a plastic bucket with wire mesh and put a metal container in the middle.
Fill the gap with anything that'll hold water sand, wool, earth, you name it.
Pour in the water.
It can be as dirty as you like, because it'll never touch the food.
When the water evaporates, it cools down the container in the middle.
And all your food stays nice and cool.
Emily's fridge is a beautifully simple design.
But I've got to admit, I would have loved it if an Einstein fridge had made it.
Imagine how cool it'd be to get a beer out of one of these.
Fancy that, an invention by Mr Einstein getting a cold reception.
Not like my L-A-D, of course.
There's nothing he can't turn his hand to cleaning, dusting, ironing me smalls.
How did we ever get by without him, eh, Gromit? Yes, well Next stop, Eel Pie Island, where we're going to meet this week's Inventor of the Week, Mr Trevor Baylis, creator of the wind-up radio.
And that's no wind-up.
Hello, welcome to Haven Studio, come on in.
So, basically, this is, if you like, my playroom.
You can call it a studio, if you like.
But the nice thing about it is, it is part of my house.
It's part of me.
Trevor has dedicated his life to bringing us inventions that help us around the home.
It was in this very room in 1989 that Trevor first came up with his now famous idea of the wind-up radio.
I was watching a programme one day about the spread of HIV, AIDS in Africa.
This was the most ghastly thing you could imagine.
They said the only way they could bring the information to people was by radio.
But there was a problem.
Most of Africa didn't have electricity, and the only form of electricity was in the form of batteries, which were horrendously expensive.
I suddenly had this idea.
Surely there's enough power in a spring to drive a dynamo, which should drive a radio.
But I had to prove to myself that it would work.
And I had a small DC motor, which I knew, when run in reverse, becomes a dynamo.
And I literally put that into the chuck of this, like that, and I joined these two wires here to the back of this cheap transistor radio and then, when I held the motor and turned the handle, I got the first bark of sound from the radio.
And that was done within 20 minutes of seeing that programme.
After presenting one of the first models to Nelson Mandela, Trevor went on to sell millions of radios, and in 1997 was awarded the OBE.
But his love of invention had been inspired 55 years earlier as a boy when he found a Meccano set on a war-time bomb site.
When I was a child, I used to know all about nuts, bolts, screws and washers.
I could do the most amazing things with my Meccano set and yet at that time I couldn't actually write my name! And now, at 73, Trevor shows no sign of winding down.
In fact, quite the opposite.
This is one of the latest - it's a walking stick.
Why would I want a wind-up walking stick? Let me show you.
You can see where you're going.
It's got a hooter on it.
Should you drop your keys or something, you can pick them up, cos it has a magnet on, see? Keep it simple, stupid.
I don't get up in the morning and say, "I'm going to invent something.
" It doesn't work like that.
There's an expression, "Chance favours the prepared mind.
" It's not about money.
There are no pockets in a shroud.
I won't be remembered by how much money I've made, but I think I should be remembered by the wind-up radio.
# Knock me down with a feather # Clever Trevor # Ooh, ah! Ooh, ah! You know people often ask me, what are your top five most useful household gadgets? Well, why don't we take a look? Down a bit, LAD.
Ow! Let's join my archive librarian, Goronwy.
Thanks, Mr Wallace.
This week, we've got five gadgets all designed to use in your own home.
So, at number five, can you guess what this is? No, it's a home computer! And it's the brainchild of Mr Roland Emmet.
And what I like about it is you can see how it works.
That goes in there, that comes out of that, and there's the elephant which, when computers got smaller, became the mouse.
And out pops the answer.
Oh, I've forgotten what the question was now.
And at number four, if you are in the dining room and your dinner's in the kitchen, here's the answer! Or you could just go into the kitchen.
Our third useful household gadget is a 1935 invention with real versatility.
Not only is it a table it's a washing machine, a sink and a bath! And as if that's not enough, you can play Shove Ha'penny on it as well, which for younger viewers is the 1930s version of Grand Theft Auto.
In second place, everybody's looking for new ways to generate clean energy at home.
Well, back in 1965, Malcolm Pickard of Trowbridge in Wiltshire had already found one.
Teenagers! I wouldn't say it's that clean and I imagine it would produce a fair bit of CO2, but there's certainly plenty of it about.
Well done, Malcolm.
And at number one, our most useful gadget is something that throws beer across a room.
No, it's not a student.
It's a beer-launching fridge, invented by American John WCornwell.
Going to throw a party? Why not throw the beer as well? After being flung through the air, it'll certainly have a good head on it.
Just like clever old John W.
And that's the beer-launching fridge.
A beer-launching fridge? Well, I never! Here, maybe I can re-programme my LAD.
Saucer, cup, some freshly-brewed tea Ah-ha, brilliant! My afternoon tea-throwing robot.
Spot of milk, please, LAD.
Oh! And, er two sugars.
Oh, dear, ha-ha! Oh, no, no! No, pack it in Oh, ow! Gromit! Do something! Ow, me dogsbody's gone doolally! Ah! Ow! Duck and cover! Flying saucers! If you've enjoyed our show, grab your mouse and log on to our World Of Invention website You'll find a fantastic competition, details of our roadshow as well as lots of ways to get you inventing.
Pull your finger out and get clicking.