Subscribe A further two years later the TV headset is at last hitting the streets
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A further two years later, the TV headset is at last hitting the streets.It is not, he maintains, anti- social. "It is the most irritating thing in the world to have someone interrupting while you watch a programme. And if someone talks at a cinema you go mad." Wearing the headset, he maintains, is "you saying I am engaged, leave me alone. It is like reading a book - there is nothing more irritating than someone ruining your concentration."Children will focus their minds on educational programmes "It is really one to one and they will concentrate. Viewed so close-up the screen is so vast they cannot fail to."Johnson is now on a roll Two further ideas could propel him into the stratosphere.
One is an alarm to prevent the theft of video recorders, TV sets, car radios and mobile phones. Called Elarm , it works from a small battery and emits a piercing shriek at random intervals when the power is switched off or the set is pulled out of the wall. Because the shriek is random, the small batteries can last for two days and any attempt to remove them kills the set for good. This device is bound for a German electronics company.The other could be the biggest money-spinner of all.
Tantalum, a rare metal found mainly in Russia, is the least corrosive metal in the world - 10 times less corrosive than titanium, the metal currently used to coat parts to prevent rusting. But scientists have been unable to use Tantalum commercially to coat parts - until now. Scientists in Russia have come up with a method of Tantalum coating and Willy Johnson is bringing it to the West. Already, a company in the US is lining up to take over the project.The good news is that Johnson has not entirely lost his faith in Britain.
He has teamed up with Southampton University, just a short flight away from his Guernsey base, to help develop Elarm and Tantalum coating. Currently they have 20 such projects under way.He is putting thousands of pounds into a research programme with the university. He will help the university's scientists find commercial buyers for their collaborative inventions. Sadly, if past form is anything to go by, they will not be British.. The News from Nairobi is that Britain and the US have withheld their funding from the world's top environmental protection body, threatening it with bankruptcy.
This was the culmination of an exceptionally acrimonious negotiating session here at the end of which the two governments, the biggest donors to the United Nations Environment Programme, have effectively issued it with an ultimatum: reform or die. Both governments hope that their ultimatum will produce a reborn organisation, leading a new drive to protect the world's deteriorating environment If this happens, they say they will resume their funding. But they are prepared to see it go under if it does not change. One immediate consequence of this week's row is that Elizabeth Dowdeswell, executive director of UNEP, announced an unprecedented step for a UN chief She is to voluntarily step down at the end of the year. She told me yesterday that she was sad at having seen "the worst of diplomacy" at the meeting, and angry that the organisation was being "held hostage" while governments worked out their differences.A seven-hour, last-ditch negotiating session degenerated into farce with delegates shouting at each other and Asian and African ambassadors openly laughing at environmental ministers. John Selwyn Gummer, the British Environment Secretary, told the Council before angrily leaving the meeting: "This is a terribly sad occasion."The UK will withhold its contribution, but since that comes to only about pounds 4.3m, this is more of of a symbol than a saving. Gummer said he was "totally committed" to the organisation but added that it might not survive to hold another Council meeting unless it reformed.