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THE INCREDIBLE INVENTIONS OF TONY CUTHBERT THE INCREDIBLE INVENTIONS CUTHBERT TONY Could Tony Cuthbert, a gifted and prolific inventor with serious dyslexia, be the new Edison of the 21st century? ne Monday morning recently, Tony Cuthbert woke up in his remote Welsh cottage and went to his battered Pentium 2 laptop in the corner of the bedroom. Typing slowly, key by key, he tapped out: "Hear is an inventoin for a new chuck deavice, using an aloy with a low liuqifactoin temperature [sic]." Inventors normally guard their ideas jealously, and try to patent them before talking about them, but Tony doesn't care who knows about Monday's little inspiration. "Having new ideas isn't a problem for me. I come up with at least one moderately interesting invention every day and a really good one about once a week." He says it completely without arrogance and with a touch of surprise, as if talking about someone else. "It may be something to do with my dyslexia, but I seem to think differently from other people." At the age of 54, Tony can't remember how many bright, technological ideas he has had, but he reckons they must run into "many thousands"—most of which he says he has forgotten. Michael Laughton, Professor of Electrical Engineering at London University, who has spent the last decade informally scouring Britain for out-of-the-way inventors, says Cuthbert is unique. "Tony is the most prolific and gifted inventor I have come across. Given the right kind of backing, he could easily surpass Edison's record of a thousand patents." The rewards of technological creativity are notoriously fickle and often illogical: the inventor of a complex vacuum cleaner has earned a few million, but a simple cardboard milk carton has made someone else a billionaire. If there were any justice in the world of invention, Tony Cuthbert would now be a multi-millionaire, too—for his new clutchless gearbox and brake system alone. But then there's also the Cuthbert turbine, the Cuthbert magnetic separator, the Cuthbert Rain Enhancer, Cuthbert sub-sea ice technology—and a couple of free-energy devices as well. And yet he has only his disability pension on which to live. "One of Tony's problems is that some of his inventions are so revolutionary that they can threaten existing technologies," says Professor Laughton. "That makes it difficult for him to convince the various industries he has tried to interest." James Dyson had precise- ly this problem with his vacuum cleaners, and finally ended up having to manufacture the machines himself. But Cuthbert is not in the entrepreneur mould. "I know it's my fault," he admits disarmingly. "Dyson succeeded because he has a one-track mind and was able to focus his energies on one invention, but I have so many different ideas at once that so far I haven't concentrated on any one of them long enough." At school, Cuthbert had been the classic classroom dunce. Profoundly dyslexic before the word had been coined, he was bottom of the class in everything except science. "More suitable for manual labour than mental work" said his final report when he left his Liverpool school at the age of fifteen. He began work as a garage hand, then joined the merchant navy as an engine boy. He was then eighteen. Within two years, he had risen to the rank of Chief Electrician—one of the youngest in the whole merchant fleet. "I had no formal training at all, but I seemed to instinctively understand how things worked. Whenever there were any electrical problems on board, I somehow just knew how to fix them. That's how I got the job so young," he says. He stayed with the merchant navy for 20 years, ending up overseeing the electrical installations on new merchant ships built in Poland and Finland. Severe arthritis forced him into early retirement at the age of thirty-seven. But, despite illness, he found his mind bubbling with ideas, so he set up his own consultancy. Word of mouth in the mid-Wales by Tony Edwards © 2000 E-mail: tony.edwards@ir.clara.net Tony Cuthbert E-mail: cuthbert@enta.net Website: www.cuthbert-physics.com APRIL — MAY 2000 NEXUS - 55 by Tony Edwards © 2000 E-mail: tony.edwards@ir.clara.net