 heating up now. The steam is coming. There's a little burner just here and it will heat up in the steam and it will go click. There we are. So we're here at the Taylor Center here at the Wall Academy and you have the little... So what are we looking at here? This is a little heat engine with a low expansion on top and a high expansion underneath and when it heats up, the metal expands and stresses and suddenly it reverses itself and goes click. And that switches the kettle off. So we're here at the Taylor Center here at the Enterprise Hub, Wall Academy of Engineering and this is your name. So who are you? I'm John Taylor. I'm 80 years old and I've been inventing for 70 of those years. And you've been inventing, for example, within the United Kingdom and it's pretty famous for tea, right? So you're part of the tea kettle that billions of people are using around the world? Yes, yes. The kettle is an essential part of British life and it was unknown on the continent in the 80s. But because of the automatic kettle, it has now become used not only throughout the continent but throughout the world. It's not only for tea, it's for coffee, it's actually for food. This is the cheapest way, the best way to get good food, right? Absolutely. The electric kettle is the most efficient way of boiling water, that the element gets the energy straight into the water. Whereas if you put a kettle onto the top of a hob, then the element is not efficient and you end up with a big waste of energy and it's a hob top kettle used in America is about 25% efficient. And if all the kettles in America on their hob tops were changed overnight like that to British electric kettles, you could switch off all the nuclear power stations in America and never notice the difference. So this is the style right here where there's basically no cable and it's plastics and it's cheap, right? No, it's not cheap, it's inexpensive, which is a different thing. All right, so this is just an example of what you've been doing and we're here at the Taylor Centre. So what is this about, this place right here? Should we walk around? Yes, yes. It's to keep the centre in London for inventors, young people in particular, to actually have a centre that they can go to, to get advice in rooms like this, have a meeting. Walk over here and we've got some young people, we've got some young people here. It's basically like a hub in the centre, meeting rooms and then advice. And some startups, right? Some guys and girls around here doing a... We've got a startup. Hello, who are you? My name is Becky Hamilton. I'm the founder of a company called Recoil Nepads. So basically it's a new Nepad for manual trades workers. So it uses two layers with six springs in between. And the idea is when you nail the impact is absorbed by the springs and the pressure is insured evenly across your knee. Can you show you some pictures of it if you'd like? So do you think that the hub is going to enable information for these young startups and it's like a workspace, right? The whole purpose of the hub is that it's a centre to give information of intellectual property, finance, how you make things and then how you change an invention into innovation into a practical product. So right here we're seeing, this is a video? Yeah, so basically this is the business that I've got, the product that I've got. It started at my university as part of my engineering degree and then I just carried on with it, applied for an enterprise fellowship with the Royal Academy of Engineering and I've just continued to develop it from there. And what are you hoping to be able to do from now on? Ideally launch it on the market and look at internationalisation. So we did a test batch last June but we're really hoping to scale it up and start selling in the US, Canada, Australia and really just get the product out there and get people aware of it. And we're here with Dr. Taylor and you've been doing stuff that's in billions of devices so it'd be nice if that's what you'd like to do, right? Yeah, yeah, definitely. Get everyone. Yeah, it's really helpful to hear from other people who have been there and done it themselves. So what kind of advice do you think these guys need to have to be able to get to success? The important thing is to make things right as well as you possibly can and then worry about what it's going to cost because if it's the best that can be made in the world, there'll be a market for it. You think the UK has pretty good stuff like good engineering, good start-ups, good ideas historically, right? I think it has the best. I think it has the best of innovation, invention and the services that go with it. There's Cambridge University, there's some other universities that are pretty good. Yeah, Cambridge University have just endowed a professorship of innovation and that changes an invention into a product. That's the main purpose of innovation. Let's just look around here. So there's basically there, maybe busy, maybe not, right here. Some basically the start-ups can sit around, the talk gets things done. Absolutely, it's wonderful facilities here for one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine. Twenty people in this room, whereas it's one of the bigger rooms where the other rooms are suitable for five or six or a dozen or whatever it is. There's the facilities here available to be used. And those are, have you interacted, have you seen some of the start-ups, what they're doing and what kind of projects they have? At the moment, no, I've been ill and unfortunately I've not been able to see a lot of what has taken place so far. But the idea is that they can apply and the winners get access here, right? Yes. And they help them launch. That's right, yes. They help get to millions. That is the object of the exercise, yes. All right, maybe let's walk around, let's walk back there. So I've searched your name on the internet and I've seen you also have some other passions like in clocks and in... Yes, clocks and my passions are clocks, flying, sailing, mountaineering, skiing, you name it. I love doing it. Flying, like with the special airplanes? Yes, yes. I even saw online that you had an accident last year, right? Well, if you're going to have an accident, you may as well have a proper one, yes. I'd never had an accident before. What happened? I don't really know. All right. It's one of those things that... I had a co-pilot with me and he didn't know either, so... There was a scary moment. No, not scary. Not scary? Not time to be scared. Okay, no time. It's like that movie where the pilot lands on the lake, which is called... The Hudson. The Hudson. Yes. Yeah, it's just that kind of moment. You've got to get the wings level and that will help you sort it out, yes. And you were part of doing a clock and a special clock? Do you have clocks also, like a collection or...? Yes, I collect antique clocks and I also make clocks. There's a clock outside of Corpus Christi College in Cambridge, which is completely different from a normal clock and a normal clock is boring, it just tells the time. Whereas my clock is an invention and it's a homage to a great inventor, John Harrison, and it's a clock turned inside out so that the mechanism is around the outside showing how it works and you have to find a new way of showing time and it shows time racing away around the dial and the dial itself is the start of time and it comes out in a wave and so that the things all tied together give you a lot of art and a clock and something that actually works. It's got LEDs but it's mechanical. Yes. And John Harrison was one of the British clocks, kind of like inventors. He was one of the greatest inventors of all time, let alone clocks. He invented bimetal, which I use in large quantities in the thermostats and controls and he also invented the first clock, which would go to sea and that enabled the same system is used by the GPS. It all comes back to time. GPS uses time to find out where you were and Harrison was the first person who made a sea clock. That revolutionized the boats, I mean sailing? Absolutely. It allowed you for the first time to, no pun intended, on the first time but it allowed you for the first time to find out where you were by taking the clock with you to give you the time back at Greenwich. You then found out what the local time was and the difference between the two is how far around the world you are. And the clock that you've made is using the grasshopper? Using the grasshopper escapement actually designed by John Harrison as the first device which had virtually no friction. Nobody had thought about it before him and he designed the first clock with the components which didn't require oil because of the low friction of the system. So I'm from Switzerland. I've been to the Patek Philippe Museum and stuff like that but I wonder what kind of antique clocks do you have? Is it all from British or could be from some other French? Yes, you can't collect everything so I tend to collect English clocks and it's in the golden age of when the pendulum was first invented and you got the first accurate clocks in the world. Way before Switzerland got interested in watches. Yeah, there was later, right? They did a lot of mechanical small things. Going back at least 300 years when the pendulum was first being introduced and accurate clocks were being built for the first time. And you say that the clock is actually one of the most important inventions ever? The clock to me is different. Everybody says that the wheel was the most important invention of mankind. The wheel is the servant of mankind whereas the clock controls mankind and has made a bigger impact on the way we live than the wheel itself. But I think what you've done with the tea kettle is also a pretty big deal and you also have you been talking and thinking about some new things? You were talking about the sun cooker, like solar, are you trying to do something like that? If you're an inventor you can't stop thinking so that all the time new ideas are easy. It's making a practical reality that's the difficulty and the practical reality, the changing it, that's what innovation is all about and that's why I'm so keen to endow this new professorship to concentrate on innovation. So it's not only about inventing. It's not only just about coming with ideas or... Ideas are easy. Ideas are easy. Everybody has good ideas. It's changing that idea into practical reality that is the difficulty. So would you imagine here it's going to be get very, very busy here at the Taylor Centre. I mean, the new revolutionary things that might change billions of lives. Yes, I'm sure that it's already busy. I'd like to see it overflowing with young people learning, swapping ideas, talking with mentors and being the centre that they know they can come to to get the information.