And we need more of them. This is why James Dyson is so passionate about encouraging more young people to pursue science, technology and engineering. The James Dyson Foundation is a charitable organisation that supports students and teachers via bursaries, education programmes and teaching materials. The James Dyson Award is an international design award. It exists to inspire the next generation of design engineers by celebrating their work and elevating them on a global platform.
The award is run by the James Dyson Foundation as part of its mission to inspire young people about design engineering, to fulfill their potential and become engineers. As design engineers we do something about it. A new idea. Dyson today. Dyson engineers. Dyson worldwide. Material science. I spend a lot of time taking things apart and putting them back together, considering how they work and how they might work better. Observation is important.
The inspiration for incorporating a cyclone on a vacuum cleaner came from a visit to a sawmill. Using an industrial cyclone it was able to remove the sawdust from the air.
We develop technology iteratively - making the smallest changes, building prototype after prototype until we have got it as close to perfect as we can muster.
Testing and prototyping is at the heart of the most successful technologies. Prototypes allow you to quickly get a feel for things and uncover subtle design flaws. Dyson prototypes are subjected to months of repetitive and rigorous testing. These are made using SLS Selected Laser Sintering - a rapid prototyping technique that moulds plastic or ceramic particles together to form a fully-working model.
Do you have a design motto or ideal that you are striving for function over form etc? We consider that something is beautiful only when it works properly; we value function over form or design. Good design requires good technology. Our machines look the way they do because of how they work. Every arc, nut, bolt and girder tells a story. Design should not be afraid to bare its innards. I do not set out to redesign any particular object. My passion for inventing stems from frustration and hunger to develop something that works better.
We are developing a wealth of technologies. Last week, we saw the fruits of our labours as we launched our newest Airblade technology. As we focus on better performing and sustainable engineering, the application of technology like this becomes an exciting reality.
It is the development of these technologies that allows us to challenge conventional design in and outside the house. Perfectionism is knowing that there is no such thing as perfection; there will always be a way to make something work better.
We are always looking for better ways to make things work — even with our own machines we go back to the drawing board again and again. And it is critical in the design process: no one way is right. I challenge my young graduates to think boldly and ask questions.
The creation of technology is fast paced but successful ideas take time to finesse. High technology increasingly allows you to speed up this process. We have a wide range of rapid prototyping machines, allowing designs to be generated and prototyped within two or three days, rather than the several weeks it used to take me to make a prototype vacuum cleaner. I would roll out brass cyclones with a mangle in my coach house near Bath [in the west of England].
Today our research, prototyping and primary testing is still done in Malmesbury by engineers. Once we are happy with the design it is sent to South East Asia, where further testing, including reliability testing, is undertaken along with final assembly. After that it goes in production for export to 60 countries across the world. But the ideas still all start here in Wiltshire in the UK. Can it keep that innovative edge in today's Kickstarted marketplace?
Like Apple, Dyson Inc. But that doesn't seem to have slowed it down. The company's latest product—the cordless Animal hand vac—continues the less-is-more streak, once again leaving competitors in the dust. Wired: How long did you spend tinkering to develop your first bagless vacuum? James Dyson: I've been inventing since college, which was 42 years ago. And the process is pretty much always the same.
You see some big problem—something that has a big Achilles' heel—and you can then proceed in one of two ways: You either develop a technology to solve the problem, or you happen to come across a technology that solves the problem. When you start, you really think you're going to get there quickly, and it always takes much longer than you ever thought.
Wired: Both your ballbarrow design and cyclone technology were ripped off by other companies—most famously Hoover, which lost the patent suit you brought. Do you believe that intellectual property should be preserved at all costs? Dyson: My own view is that patents are absolutely correct. Henry VIII promoted them in England and said they should last for 20 years, and they still do so today.
If you didn't have patents, no one would bother to spend money on research and development. But with patents, if someone has a good idea and a competitor can't copy it, then that competitor will have to think of their own way of doing it.
So then, instead of just one innovator, you have two or three people trying to do something in a new way. Wired: But today it seems like patents are often being used to stymie competition. Do you believe in open source design? Dyson: A lot of the steps of software development are not that inventive. I think it's fine for that to be open source. A patent has to be something more, something unexpected. My view—a very contrary view—is that patents increase competition. If you really want to improve technology, if you want things to work better and be better, you've got to protect the person who spends a lot of effort, money, and time developing that new technology.
But you can't patent something that another skilled engineer in the field could have calculated or done with his basic knowledge. Wired: Now that Dyson is a sprawling, multinational corporation, how do you keep the spirit of innovation alive? Dyson: We try to make the corporation like the garage.
We don't have technicians; our engineers and scientists actually go and build their own prototypes and test the rigs themselves. And the reason we do that—and I don't force people to do that, by the way, they want to do it—is that when you're building the prototype, you start to really understand how it's made and what it might do and where its weaknesses might be. If you merely hand a drawing to somebody and say, "Would you make this, please? You're not understanding it.
You're not feeling it. Our engineers and scientists love doing that. James Dyson has revolutionized ordinary household items by reinventing them from scratch. Here's a look at some of his major innovations. At 22, Dyson designs a high-speed marine transport vehicle. His Sea Truck can carry 3 tons at nearly 50 mph. His wheelbarrow has a ball-wheel that won't sink in dirt. It grabs a 50 percent UK market share.
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