Hello, I'm Krestey Young, and this is a podcast from the Desert Island Discs archive.

For rights reasons, we've had to shorten the music.

The program was originally broadcast in 1999, and the presenter was Sue Lolly. My castaway this week is an inventor. Today he's a rich man thanks to the household

appliance that bears his name and millions will use every day of their lives. But the

road to success has not been easy. His ingenuity has never been in question.

While still at college he designed the sea truck, a flat bottom boat used by the military.

He followed this with the ball barrel, a wheelbarrow with a ball for a wheel.

But the invention which eventually made his fortune met with skepticism, mistrust and envy wherever he went.

Only supreme self-confidence and undying commitment rescued him and his family from

financial ruin. There's no such thing as a quantum leap in development or research, he says, only

dogged persistence. He is the creator of the bagless vacuum cleaner, James Dyson.

Not a very romantic thing to have dedicated your professional life to James, or is it in your view? Well it is in a way I mean an

obsession is romantic I think and I've been lucky enough to have been creating

things and creating is romantic, rewarding, emotional.

But not necessarily a thing of beauty or would you argue that your vacuum cleaner is a thing

of beauty?

Well that would be dangerous thing to say say but yes I mean I love machinery I love

engineering and I see tremendous beauty in machinery and I think things that

work well start to look good as well.

But how it looks is what is distinctive of course about your vacuum cleaner, not least because

it has this transparent box.

You can see the dirt going into it. And I know you've always believed is very very important

...