You Too Can Be an Absolute Genius

'Have you ever thought about being an inventor, coming up with

'brilliant ideas for ingenious devices or clever machines?

'Well, I'm going to show you how you too can be an absolute genius.'

Some of you may be wondering what an inventor actually does.

Well, it's lots of different things.

For starters, they do their inventing

in an amazing variety of places. Oh, my word!

From ships...

to sheds...

to swimming pools.

They use loads of different tools, from a simple pen and paper...

to soldering irons...

to metal-working machines in workshops.

They work hard but they have a lot of fun as well.

Now, what kind of people make the best inventors?

How do you start out being an inventor in the first place?

And what kind of skills do you think you need?

When people notice things, when people are observant,

they make good inventors.

You need to be creative and have ideas of your own.

Seeing some of the crazy, wacky things in science-fiction films

and thinking, "Could I make that real?"

Be willing to do it.

-Mm-hmm.

-You can't say, "I'm going to be an inventor

-"but I'll do it later."

-Yeah!

-"I'll be an inventor later."

You have to be a really driven person,

you've got to want to get things done.

You also need to be able to see a problem that exists,

you need to find a need, something that needs to be solved.

Sam and Benjamin Houghton love solving problems.

They're Britain's youngest inventors.

So, what are you doing here, what's this?

This is so you don't strain your arm or cut your hand either.

I'll let you have a demonstration on this big rock.

OK, let me have a look. So it's like...

So, just pretend that you don't see the rock, you're digging down...

'The problem they wanted to tackle was how to avoid hurting

'yourself when you're using a tool like a spade

'and you hit something hard in the ground.'

If you didn't have this, you wouldn't have any grip and it would cut you.

-I get you. So it's a shock-absorbing handle.

-Yes.

-Yeah.

It can go in anything including a spade.

There's a bit of rock here, but I haven't seen it.

I'm digging away, I'm digging away, digging away...

LOUD TAP

Ah! And usually, it would go all the way through your arm

-and hurt your shoulder.

-Yeah.

-But there, the handle just absorbed all the shock from it.

-Yeah.

-That is cool.

-So it'll do the same with me.

-Yeah.

I don't feel a thing either.

-That's brilliant. And that's just with this handle?

-Yeah.

-Yeah.

-So the handle is your guys' invention?

-The handle is the best.

10-year-old Sam and 8-year-old Benjamin do a lot of their inventing

whilst playing.

-Hello. Is it all right if I come and play with you?

-OK.

'They've a special cupboard that helps them with their inventing.'

Oh, my word! This is heaven. Look at it! What's all this stuff here?

-Batteries.

-These are batteries. Anything else, what about that one?

-Loads of Meccano in there.

-Yep.

-That's tools and stuff.

-Lots and lots of tools.

So, in here you got lots of bits

and pieces and things that you can use for inventing things. Yeah?

-Yeah, make into all sorts of things.

-Yeah.

And I've heard you've invented something especially for me.

-Yeah.

-Well, you could say it was an invention, but let's see it anyway.

Yeah, let's go over here.

Ah. A Wakey Uppy Thing. So, what does this do then?

-It wakes you up in the morning.

-Hopefully, yeah?

'If you struggle to get up in the morning,

'then Sam and Benjamin's Wakey Uppy Thing could be the answer.

'First of all, it makes a scary noise.'

Is there a countdown to when it's going to go off?

-So, it's set for seven in the morning, is that?

-Yeah.

So, this is the time...oh, there's three seconds. Three, two, one.

GHOSTLY NOISE

So, that's the ghost noises.

'And if THAT doesn't work, their invention gives off

'a tempting breakfast aroma.'

To get you to leave your bedroom, there's the smell of bacon.

THEY SNIFF

-You can actually smell the bacon.

-SAM AND BEN: Yeah.

I get you. The ghost noises will go, "Something's happening,

"it's scary," and you'd normally go back to sleep once you've

realised nothing's happening, but then, when you smell the bacon,

you go, "Mmm, bacon, I might get out of bed to get the bacon."

-BOYS CHUCKLE

-I think I need this.

-Do you think this would actually get me out of bed?

-Probably.

-Only if you like bacon.

-That's true!

'So, Sam and Benjamin have lots of the qualities that

'go into making a good inventor:

'creativity, curiosity,

'and a determination to solve problems.'

Design colleges are great places to find out

how inventors come up with ideas.

Like this one, the Royal College of Art in Kensington, London.

All these different things are works in progress from students

at the college.

Around me are absolutely loads of brilliant inventions. I love them.

And one of my favourites is here.

This is a radio-controlled pen.

Let me show you, here's my radio controller

and I can move the pen just by pushing the buttons here. I love it.

Now, radio controls and coloured pens are not new

but the way they're being used here is very inventive.

So, what exactly is an invention?

Now, sometimes inventing things isn't necessarily coming up

with a completely new idea from scratch, is it?

No, sometimes it's about watching how people use things.

Take this ketchup bottle, for example.

The very first person who turned this upside down was an inventor.

-Ahh.

-They came up with a way of storing it where you're going

to get all of the ketchup out at the end.

But somebody came up with a great idea -

why not have a really large base so it naturally sits that way up?

And you're going to get all of your ketchup out.

It's observing people's behaviour and thinking,

"How can I make this use easier?"

So, an invention can be adapting something that already exists.

Benjamin Houghton has done just that with a toy teacup

he's turned into a special bathroom plug.

Now, there's a plug over there,

-that looks like an old-style plug.

-Yeah.

You would basically plug it in but it would be really hard to grip

and your chain will be probably broken.

Sometimes you pull it out and it gets sucked back in.

And you can't empty the bath.

And you don't have enough time because the hot water really hurts.

Yes! "Ow, ow, ow," you're trying to get it out.

-But...

-Go on.

-..if you use this instead...

-Shall we try it?

-OK.

-OK.

-So, we just knock it, yeah?

-Yeah. Two, three...

Push it over. Done, all the water gone down

and that's my invention done.

-Oh, brilliant.

-And I told my dad.

-Give me five for that.

Inventions can also be making brilliant improvements

to something that's part of our everyday lives,

like, for instance, the swimsuit.

Sportswear inventor Fiona Fairhurst came up with a genius idea

whilst watching the swimming at the 1996 Olympics.

A new swimsuit had come out, designed to make swimmers go faster.

Looking at this new invention that Speedo had just launched

and thought, "I can do better than that,"

and the ideas started to flow.

She came up with an idea for a swimsuit called Fastskin,

inspired by the way that sharks moved through the water.

Sharks have a very rough skin made up of tiny teeth-like structures.

These help channel water very efficiently down its body.

Fiona's Fastskin was designed to mimic the shark's skin.

I took a skin sample from a shark,

put it under a very powerful microscope,

I could see the lumpy and bumpy surface.

It was completely the opposite of what I was expecting.

I was expecting that it'd be really smooth.

So, it was a real surprise to see these teeth-like structures...

-Like, sticking out?

-Yeah. Very V-like and zigzag-y, and very rough.

So, have you got those lumps and bumps in your swimsuit then?

Absolutely. You can see them.

-Let's have a look.

-If we stretch the fabric,

you can see these grooves very finely.

-You can, they're just, like...

-Tiny millimetres.

-Yes.

And they channel the water, so from your head down to your feet

they travel completely in straight lines

and because we use a hydrophobic coating...

Hydrophobic - so it doesn't like water?

It repels water a bit like your cagoule?

Yeah, you can actually...

-I'll hold it like this and you pour some on.

-Yeah.

We can just get the beads of water to roll around on the surface.

It just sits on top.

I want to see just how good Fiona's Fastskin swimsuit is

so I'm going to swim one length of this pool

in my ordinary costume and Fiona's going to time it.

Then, I'm going to try it in the Fastskin swimsuit

and see if I can do it any quicker.

'Now, I'm swimming as fast as I possibly can.'

-Ooh!

-How did I do?

18 seconds. That's not bad, so I'm told.

But can I go any faster?

It feels really... It feels so strange.

It's like I'm on a trampoline and I'm getting a bit more...

You're getting so much more push.

'So how will the Fastskin compare?'

'Remember, those tiny grooves in the swimsuit fabric help channel

'the water more effectively down my body so I should swim faster.'

-How did I do?

-18.25.

-Oh!

-FIONA LAUGHS

So my last one, 18.78. This one, I've got 18.25,

so I've knocked off about half a second,

which - just for a 25-metre pool - that's pretty good.

And now I'm pretty tired!

So an invention can be taking an object that already exists

and adapting it,

or improving it so much that it becomes brand new.

For inventors, inspiration is the name of the game.

There's that moment where they come up with this fantastic idea.

BIN!

But where do these ideas come from?

For me, I like to get out there and talk to people and ask questions.

I sometimes carry a little notebook around with me

and it's brilliant now with digital technology,

I can use my telephone and photograph something that I'll see.

A good thing is to set yourself a problem and solve it.

Problems are a good place to start

when you're coming up with inventions.

Inspiration for an idea can come from being annoyed about something.

This is a good example. You're sitting having a cup of tea

and you get crumbs on your table

so why not have a coaster that has space for a brew AND a biscuit?

If there's a need there and you can solve that,

then that's your job done as an inventor.

Mark Wemyss-Holden teaches design and technology.

He's invented something designed to solve

a very particular kind of problem.

This is, for me, an answer to a classroom question or frustration

that I think technology teachers in general suffer

from on a daily basis, which is people that think they can't draw.

And it's the most frustrating feeling because you think,

you CAN draw, you just been a bit of time and practice,

a bit of something to help guide you.

IsoSketch is a tool for drawing three-dimensional shapes.

Mark's ingenious invention could soon be a standard

piece of equipment in school pencil cases.

Mark makes them himself on this laser cutting machine

at Aquinas Sixth Form College in Stockport

where he works as a teacher. He's liked making

and inventing things from a very young age.

Back as a young kid, probably about five or six,

I started going...

At the weekends, I started going to my granddad's garage

with my good, old granddad.

We used to make things out of wood, used to make things like this.

This was one of the early ones, a little wooden fish.

And we developed into making little games,

made a tabletop cricket set which is this little thing here.

Mark's inspiration for his invention has come from a problem

he came up against at work.

Other inventors find problems to tackle at home.

SHE CHUCKLES

The thing that I find really difficult about painting

my nails is making sure the varnish doesn't go on...you know,

carpets or tablecloths and then there's that whole thing

of drying your nails, not touching your hair, the furniture.

If only there was a better way to do this.

Meet student inventors, Jyoti Chadda and Monique Anderson.

Their invention is just what all messy nail-painters need.

The Handy Mat is basically a nail-painting hand aid

which allows you to paint your nails anywhere at any time

without damaging the surfaces you're leaning on.

-I think I get how it works, but can you just show me?

-Yeah, sure.

You just place your fingers in here,

three fingers in the strap and then this is what you use to close it.

Just pull it that way, then you can just paint your nails

and to open it, you simply just pull it here.

And then the reason it's got seven fingers is

so you can use it for both hands.

What made you come up with the idea for this?

At home, I was constantly getting shouted at by my mum

for getting nail varnish on the sofas, on our cream carpets,

bed linen. Then I realised it wasn't just me

who was getting nail vanish everywhere, it was a lot of people.

-Yeah, everyone does it.

-Everyone does it.

There we have it, two simple but really clever inventions.

Proof that a great way to get inspiration for an invention

is to look for problems to solve in your everyday life.

Once you have come up with your great idea for an invention,

that is just the beginning.

You have then got to explore and develop your idea.

You've got to ask yourself,

who is your invention for?

You might have some idea, about, "Right, I think this could

"work as a solution," but the sooner you can make something and try

it and maybe show other people and get their input, the better.

It's about, "How can I improve it, what's the next step?"

I just want to explore it and take it as far as possible.

If you want to know something is going to work, the best way of

doing that is to actually build a model of it and test your ideas and

see if, in reality, they actually do what you think they're going to do.

It doesn't have to be super-advanced engineering or mechanics or

building processes,

or anything, you can do it with stuff you've got around your house.

Inventor Emily Cummins develops a lot of her ideas for her inventions

in her granddad's shed in his back garden in Keighley, Yorkshire.

My granddad inspired me to be an inventor.

What I used to do with my granddad

was spend hours with him in this shed,

and I used to watch as he would take these scraps of materials

and turn them into toys for me and my cousins,

and I think I was just fascinated by making things and being creative.

My granddad really made me believe that I could also invent things.

Emily's inventions solve problems that make a real difference to

the daily lives of ordinary people.

She has invented this water carrier on wheels to help communities

in developing countries where they have to walk miles to collect water.

She has also come up with a design for a special fridge that

doesn't need electricity.

The way that it works, there are two cylinders, one inside the other.

What you can see here is this inner cylinder is where you would

store your products, so, your meat or your vegetables or your medicine.

Around the inner cylinder you have got the outer cylinder.

Now, this has holes in it.

Her fridge works by putting a material between the inner

and outer cylinder that can both soak water up

and allow it to evaporate,

like sand, for instance.

When the fridge is put in direct sunlight it heats up on the outside,

and the water evaporates through the holes.

That causes the inner cylinder to cool,

creating a fridge that doesn't need electricity.

The problem for Emily was that there wasn't really

a demand for an invention like this in the UK.

I had to think about how else this product could be used,

and where else it could make a difference.

What I realised was that for people in Africa who don't have access

to electricity, who don't even have refrigeration now, this fridge

would be absolutely perfect for them in the hot temperatures.

So, Emily's idea developed once she realised who was really going

to need her invention.

Now, people in countries like Namibia

and Zambia are building their own fridges based on her design.

Rob Smith is another inventor motivated by real need.

He has developed an invention that helps him overcome

a serious disability. It looks like a mitt made out of pieces of Velcro.

So, Rob, how did you get the idea for your gripping aid?

Well, I had an accident about 16 years ago,

I fell down a cliff, so I use this wheelchair now.

His accident resulted in a major spinal-cord injury.

It meant that my hand function was really reduced,

so I don't have a very strong grip at all, and not much finger movement,

so I needed to invent something to help me

hold the things that I wanted to hold to overcome that problem.

So, I started to design some prototypes, have a

think about it, and... Shall I show you the first one?

Yes, let's have a look.

I'm going to use my teeth to put it on because my fingers don't work very well.

Then I thought, "I can use pieces of Velcro on my fingers to

"pull my fingers into shape,"

and if I wanted to grip an object then I could attach these

fingers down here, and maybe I would be able to hold it into a fist,

but this just wasn't strong enough, these Velcro pieces were just

not strong enough and they were coming undone all the time, and

that made it really difficult for me to grip the objects I wanted to.

So, that was your first prototype,

and I suppose you learned something from that.

This is a version that we now produce, this has gone

through another few levels of development to get to this stage.

We've got these rings, as well, so I don't have to use my teeth

so much to do it, I can pull things tight with the ring.

So, you would put the thing in your hand here,

do that up tight, and then I have got a really good, firm

grip on whatever I'm going to hold.

That's genius.

Rob's gripping aid means he can do things that most of us

take for granted.

Like, holding a saw to cut through a piece of wood, or, being able

to grip a joystick so he can play and beat me at computer games.

-Yeah!

-Oh!

-Game to me.

As we have seen,

it's really important to develop your idea by making prototypes,

and by working out just who your invention is really for.

Testing how well your invention works is absolutely crucial.

Usually, you only discover how good your invention is by giving

it to other people to try out.

It's a really important stage.

Having a great idea is easy, so actually developing it and

testing it is actually the hard bit, but it's also the really fun bit.

Testing is one of the most important things that you

do as an inventor, as a designer.

You'll come up with your first idea

and you'll look at it as if there has been not a better product made.

Testing is really, really important, because you could make a mistake,

but you might not find out that you have made that mistake for a long time.

If you haven't tested your invention, it is virtually nothing.

Testing and retesting and refining something, is the best

possible method of getting to the best possible solution.

Now, you might think that inventors usually

work in places like a lab, a workshop, or maybe even a shed.

Well, I'm about to meet one who works on a ship,

right here on the River Thames.

Yusuf Muhammad creates many of his inventions on board

his floating workshop, HMS President.

This is where he does lots of testing.

So, Yusuf, we have come onto your ship where you invent things.

As an inventor, does working on a ship help you creatively?

I think it does, it's just nice to be somewhere different

something where you've got different lines, and different shapes.

Things that you wouldn't normally see.

And it's always good to get inspired by things that are different.

Below the surface of the river, on the ship's lower deck,

is where Yusuf builds and tests his ideas.

So what is this invention that we're looking at here?

Well, this is Automist.

It automatically puts out fires in the home.

How does that work?

Well, you just have this little unit here which fits onto any

normal tap in the kitchen,

and then the whole system is triggered by a heat alarm.

So, it detects the temperature in the room,

it can tell that there is a fire, and then you get jets of water mist

which fill the whole room and a fire can't survive in those conditions.

Now, this final design looks absolutely fantastic, really slick

and fits in with the tap.

You must have gone through a lot of processes to

get your invention looking this good.

You wouldn't believe how much testing we had to go through,

I mean, particularly with it being a safety product,

you really have to make sure it works.

But, initially, when we first came up with the idea,

I was just in my back garden experimenting with

a jet washer, and spraying mist just above the barbecue.

Nice, so you were testing with your barbecue and a hose,

and you call that work!

So, can we see it in action?

Sure, you might want to stand back a little bit, though.

"Might want to stand back," I'm a bit worried about this.

Ooh!

SHE LAUGHS

That shocked me!

Ooh! For some reason I just didn't think it would be that powerful.

They look like just little, small sprayers,

but that was so powerful,

you could just see how it would put out fires before they get big.

Yusuf's invention shows that to be a successful inventor, you need

to test your ideas as early as you can.

And then keep testing the different stages of your design

until it is finished.

If at first you don't succeed, then try and try again.

And that's the thing with inventing, sometimes the first thing

that you come up with just doesn't work that well.

So, how do you deal with that?

There's a lot of inventors that have been very persistent,

and they have not taken no for an answer.

That, I think, is quite valuable, because it might be that the

world is not ready for something that you have thought up.

You have to be good at taking criticism, you have to be

good at accepting that you're not always right first time.

I think it's very important for inventors to, sort of, keep going,

don't let anyone discourage you, use anything that someone says

positively, and make it benefit you, and help you.

It's by having a real passion and determination,

that's what gets you over the hurdles.

If you don't believe it, if you think, "Oh, I'm going to fail,

"oh, I always fail," then you are determined to fail.

If it doesn't work, then just change it a bit and try again.

Inventor Dan Watson knows all about the value of persistence.

He has been working on one invention for three years.

It is called the escape ring.

It is designed to fit into trawler nets

and to stop fishermen catching fish before they are fully grown.

There are several problems that they have, so,

sometimes the nets don't catch the right fish, or they catch the small

fish which you don't want to catch because you can't keep them, anyway.

Small fish can't escape the net

because of what happens to the net underwater.

The meshes of the net close up,

they get really tight when they're under tension.

Oh, so, like when it's being pulled?

Absolutely, so, literally, it's really hard for the fish

to get through the mesh.

The other problem is that sometimes fish don't

know they are in the trawler net, because they can't see it,

because it's so dark down there.

But, Dan's invention tackles both these problems.

It fits into the net,

and you can see it holds the mesh really wide open.

-Another feature of the ring is that it also lights up.

-Lights up?

Like an emergency exit, so they can really see it,

so, if I switch this on, and then turn off the lights...

you can see that actually it's quite well illuminated,

-and they are able to see that.

-Yes.

So they swim towards that and check it out.

And the fish can always come out, because it can fit through.

I like that.

Surely this isn't your first attempt,

surely you had lots of prototypes before this?

I went through a lot of prototypes, for instance,

I started making my rings,

and I made them out of what I thought was a very strong material,

aluminium.

It then turned out that when you put aluminium in the sea,

it starts to erode, it starts to dissolve, basically,

so I couldn't use that material.

He tried lots of different materials and designs,

he was able to keep making new versions of his escape ring

using this amazing 3-D printing machine.

So, this is probably attempt number, maybe 10, maybe 15.

I mean, there's been a lot of them in the past.

And I have some of them here, which I can show you.

Can have a look?

Dan went through all these different prototypes before it was right.

His determination to overcome problems is impressive.

I think you have to believe in your ideas, and you have to know

that things are going to go wrong on the way, it happens to everybody.

Whoever is making something, big companies, individual people,

they all make mistakes.

But the really important thing to do is to learn from those mistakes

and use it to your advantage,

because you might learn something completely new

that nobody has ever seen before, but only because you tried.

Dan's story shows how important persistence is for inventors.

You've got to believe in your idea, and be able to deal with setbacks.

We've seen how inventors come up with great ideas, develop

and test them and keep going until their invention is perfected.

And, if you, too, think you can be an absolute genius,

then here are a few top tips.

If you can find a problem that everybody has that hasn't

been solved, and you can think of a way of solving that,

then you really are on to a winner.

Be creative and use your imagination.

Try to make your idea as soon as possible, even if

it's just out of a bit of cardboard or plasticine.

Your invention has to work.

Go out and find people who can help you,

and simply ask them questions.

Take it seriously, and keep on going no matter what.

Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd