Essay

Self-powered

By Tony Laszlo

These days, one of my favorite "toys" is a little portable radio. Not one of those trendy gadgets that play music downloaded from the Internet. No, the one I've got does just plain old AM band. But it has an innovation that sets it apart from transistor radios of the past. It's "self-powered." You don't have to plug it in or install batteries to make it run. You just turn it on and let it do its thing.

Well, there is just one small catch. Every now and then, you do have to grab the swivel-mounted handle that's attached to its side, and give it a few nice turns, clockwise. Crank for a minute and a half, listen to the tunes for about half an hour or so. Not a bad deal if you think of it as an all-in-one entertainment and exercise machine.

It even provides nostalgia, as well. When I was a kid, I had lots of toys that jumped and bounced and played music when you wound them up. These worked very well, usually until my little brother or I broke them by overwinding.

This radio takes me right back to those carefree days. In fact, if I can get a little Freudian here for a moment, I wouldn't be surprised if something out of my childhood spurred me on to buy this gadget in the first place. Perhaps there is some primal and deep human desire that is satisfied by "making" something go, rather than having it run as a consequence of plugging it into a hole in the wall.

I call this toy of mine a radio, but actually it is marketed as survival equipment. It has a flashlight and siren built into it, and it can even be used to recharge a cellphone. But these are rather power-intensive tasks, compared to the radio function. At least with the one I've got, if you want to use it as a proper flashlight or battery-charger, you should be prepared to spend much of your day turning that little handle round and round. Not terribly practical.

Still, self-power is a field to keep an eye on. We should see some development in the area of artificial pacemakers, for example. Traditionally, people with these devices implanted next to their hearts have had to undergo additional operations to replace expired battery packs. Pacemakers that run on energy generated by the patient's body are now being devised.

As much as I'm enjoying my daily cranking, I don't think that all everyday electrical appliances should work like my radio. Rather, I'm hoping for something better. I'd say the folks creating those new pacemakers are onto something.

Electrical products should be designed to draw energy from us (or from the environment), without our even taking notice. During our daily lives, we humans emit body heat, which could be harnessed. And we are forever in motion (even when sleeping). Whenever we open a door or draw a curtain, our arms could be generating at least a "half a crank" of energy, no? When we drag our feet across the carpet, why must that energy escape out into the cosmos? Why can't it be directed to, say, our radios?

Shukan ST: Aug. 18, 2006

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