John Taylor on being an inventor

The Life Scientific

BBC

Technology, Personal Journals, Society & Culture, Science

4.6 • 1.4K Ratings

🗓️ 29 May 2018

⏱️ 29 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

John Crawshaw Taylor is a prolific inventor who specialises in designing and manufacturing thermostatic controls. His ingenious integrated control system is found in in one billion electric kettles worldwide, enabling kettles to switch off automatically when the water boils, stopping the element from boiling dry and preventing plastic kettles from catching fire under a worst case scenario. 600 million of his safety controls for the small electric motors have been sold to date, and are used mainly to prevent the motor in windscreens wipers from overheating. He talks to Jim Al-Khalili about his struggle with severe dyslexia at school, the art of inventing and why he doesn't believe in selling an idea. Producer: Anna Buckley.

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	Hey, it's Doleepa, and I'm at your service.
0:04.7	Join me as I serve up personal conversations with my sensational guests.
0:08.8	Do a leap interviews, Tim Cook.
0:11.2	Technology doesn't want to be good or bad.
0:15.0	It's in the hands of the creator.
0:16.7	It's not every day that I have the CEO of the world's biggest company in my living room.
0:20.7	If you're looking at your phone more than you're looking in someone's eyes, you're doing the wrong thing.
0:26.0	Julie, at your service.
0:28.0	Listen to all episodes on BBC sales.
0:31.6	This is the BBC.
0:33.0	Hello I'm Jim Alkalele and you're about to listen to the quite excellent
0:38.0	podcast of the Life Scientific in which I get top scientists to tell me how they got to where they are today.
0:46.0	He's a prolific inventor who believes in seeing an idea through from start to finish.
0:51.0	He cut his inventing teeth on a thermostatic control for a lightning fighter
0:55.8	jet, which he adapted for use in windscreen wipers and other small electric motor systems
1:01.0	found in cars. Half a billion of these controls have been
1:05.1	sold to date and they're still very much in demand. John Cross or Taylor
1:09.7	welcome to the Life Scientific. Thank you. You're the first guest on the life scientific, John, to arrive by plane and more importantly one
1:18.0	that you flew yourself.
1:20.1	So how were conditions over the Irish Sea this morning?
1:24.0	It was bright sunshine in the Isle of Man,
1:27.0	but when we arrived over Wales, it was cloudy.
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from BBC, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of BBC and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.