Modern Wind-up Gadgets: Energy Products Articles: Eco20/20

Modern Wind-up Gadgets

No, dear infants who never wound a watch; the topic is not wind, as in breeze. It's wind-up, like clockworks. Speaking of which, would someone influential and eco-friendly please make a big push to re-establish coil-spring watches as a charming, old-fashioned, eco-friendly option over those boring battery operated piffles. Spring-operated clockworks were fun. They were elegant. They were mysterious and tempting. And if you've never taken apart a coil-spring watch, you've missed out on a fascinating experience. It's very sad; this fading away of that time-honored test of courage. People no longer appreciate that the sweetest road to becoming an experienced do-it yourselfer is to take something apart just for the heck of it; and then swear and sweat your way through the process of figuring out how to put it back in working order.

Modern Wind-up Gadgets

You can still get a wind-up watch, from 'vintage' e-bay auctions and antique shops. If you treat it right and give it a little twist of the winder each morning, it could last a long time. If you take it apart, you might learn a thing or two about craftsmanship, but don't expect to ever get it running again. Parts are getting iffy.

* The newest flood of wind-up gadgets can be credited to British inventor Trevor Baylis who marketed a wind-up radio that was so popular that wind up radios are now to be found from hundreds of different makers. The hurricane store, online, has several. Solarific.com offers one that has both a crank and a solar panel, so it can be charged with solar in the day-time; and hand-cranked at night.

* There are also hundreds of wind-up flashlights and camping lanterns; and strangely, an assortment of bike lights although it should be easier to run those on wheel-power. A minute or two of hand-cranking gives anywhere from 15 minutes on high-power super-bright camp lights, to 90 minutes of light on the smallest bike lights. Weatherproofing should be a fairly standard feature, but on the cheap models, do check to be sure. The cyba-light brand of wind-up camp lights is available at thesolarcentre.co.uk. And there are plenty of other sites that carry dynamo-powered lights.

* A Wind-Up Media/MP3 Player is available from ventusfreeenergy.com that does everything an ipod does and more. It has an internal Lithium Ion battery that can be recharged fully from a USB port, or the internal dynamo system which provides approximately 40 minutes audio play time for each 1 minute of winding.

* The Weza Foot Pump Generator is an energy source that can be used for jumpstarting car and boat engines. When you step on the Weza's pedal the generator spins. Or it can be charged from an AC or a DC source, in addition to foot-generated power.

Coming full sweep seems fitting, so let's end where this started - with clocks. Good old-fashioned wind-up alarm clocks have been around forever. The Bulova company, bless it's heart, still makes them.