Whose idea was that? When his creation went on the rampage and threw a little girl down a well, Dr Frankenstein had to concede that it had all gone pear shaped. It was the prime example of a brilliant technological breakthrough taking on a life of its own, with dire consequences.

Fortunately, not all inventions are like that. The bicycle, for example, is one of the wonders of our time. Outraged pedestrians are forever bleating to the newspapers about cyclists riding on pavements in the wrong direction. But they forget, as they drive down to the letterbox, that motor cars kill far more people than bicycles, which make no noise, give nobody asthma, don't churn up roads, and for which you can always find a parking space. Neuroscientist Steven Pinker has calculated that a person on a bicycle is more energy efficient than any other animal or machine. No wonder cyclists feel entitled to ride wherever they jolly well please.

You don't hear people complaining about airplanes, but they are not nearly such a pleasant and healthy invention. They confirm the French philosopher Pascal's view that all our misfortunes stem from not being able to keep to our own bedrooms. Noise, billowing diesel fumes, tropical paradises spoilt by hideous hotels and pedalos, giant mutant strawberries on supermarket shelves in the middle of winter - all can be blamed on the plane. And that's just in peace time.

But ever since Icarus flew too near to the sun, people have yearned to take to the air like the birds. Leonardo da Vinci almost cracked it. Otto von Lilienthal was so thrilled with gliding from hilltops on arm-powered wings that he killed himself doing it. Now all we have to do is get ourselves to Gatwick and off we soar. We still show our amazement at being so far off the ground by the way we clutch the arms of our seats and keep calling for more duty-free drinks.

A more recent arrival, computers are still trading on a store of good will. Science magazine Focus recently rated them as the second greatest invention of all time, surely one of the greatest exaggerations of all time. It is true that, like the smallpox vaccination, computers have all but eliminated one of mankind's great scourges: filing. They have also given the practically illiterate a chance to work in our banks and utilities. They have helped mathematicians perform mind-boggling calculations and given Garry Kasparov a run for his money. The beautiful snaking roof of the channel tunnel terminal at Waterloo could not have been designed without computers. They have made some people rich.

On the other hand, computers have also allowed the geek to inherit the earth and infest the English language with gobbledygook. They have caused well-meaning people to be dragged to the keyboard and bombarded with meaningless, crazily punctuated messages until technophobia is induced and sufferer are are cast out to the fringes to be pointed at and ridiculed.

Powerless, they are like the man in the old joke whose psychiatrist gave him a Rorschach test, showing him abstract shapes and asking what they meant to him. Each time, the patient answered "sex". At the end of the session the psychiatrist diagnosed: "I'm afraid you're a sex maniac."

"Sex maniac? Me? Who's been drawing the rude pictures?" the patient demanded.

As well as trying to penetrate the thought processes of the downy cheeked programmer, the poor computer user is expected to know how to assemble a product that is frequently sold without essential attributes, such as cables, keyboards and printers. Imagine this happening in any other industry.

"Can I interest you in this powerful Mini Rover, does 0 to 170 in half a second, 40,000cc, power assisted cam shaft, fuel injection dip stick, very competitive at only 34,000? Wheels are extra, I'm afraid, and we don't have the steering column you need in stock right now. Perhaps you'd like to consider this very handy piece of software that will turn it into a tricycle?"

Now a book by Thomas Landauer called "The Trouble with Computers" reveals that computers aren't even as useful as everyone thought. Apparently, the more computers a company has, the more it spends on support and training, and the more time it loses through systems not working and office workers being distracted from their duties by game playing, flirting with online strangers and getting hopelessly lost on the Web.

Look, no wires

Some of the best inventions are the ones with that "why didn't I think of that?" (WDITOT) factor. How the Aztecs, who built their giant pyramids without the benefit of wheels, must have smacked their foreheads when they first caught sight of Spanish carts.

How a Roman, sweating over the answer to MCLXXXVII divided by MCCLXVII, might have wished the Arabs would hurry up and introduce 0. (On the other hand, looming millennium celebrations, heralding the arrival of the maximum number of zeros on the calendar, might persuade any ancient Roman still around to stick with capital letters.)

Corkscrews, hot water bottles, and many items of stationery such as paperclips, bubble wrap, see-through sleeves and Post-it notes - all have that satisfying, simple ingeniousness. Those milk cartons with annoying plastic pourers do not.

Trevor Baylis is a man who understands the virtues of low-tech. He is the inventor and maker of the BayGen Freeplay wind-up radio, which runs not on mains or batteries, but on clockwork. You turn the handle 60 times, or for 25 seconds, and it will give you 25 minutes of playing time.

An engineer by training, 60-year-old Baylis has worked for much of his life as a circus performer and stunt man. The result is a preoccupation with disability. "A lot of my stuntman friends came to a grimy end," he explains.

In 1984 Baylis founded a company called Orange Aids which made devices for the disabled such as one-handed can openers and foot-operated scissors. The company was struggling when, in 1993, Baylis saw a TV report on Aids in Africa. It said that the lack of communications in remote areas was preventing the spread of health education to help contain the epidemic. Baylis thought of the old-fashioned gramaphone, powered by elbow-grease. He made a radio in which a spring linked to a gear box worked a dynamo which powered the radio.

There's a green, ethical and practical invention for you, with oodles of WDITOT appeal. But when Baylis took the idea to electronics companies such as Phillips and Marconi, they could not see it. Nor could the Design Council. "If you want to be talked down to, go to the Design Council," advises Baylis.

Reluctant to expose his idea to the whole world, but desperate, Baylis asked the producers of TV's Tomorrow's World to feature the radio. It just so happened that, on a visit to England, the mergers and acquisitions director of a firm of chartered accountants in Cape Town saw the programme and offered to finance the idea.

BayGen was set up in 1995. The main factory is in South Africa, where 150 mixed ability workers turns out 2,000 radios each day. Two new plants in Mauritius are planned.

The BayGen radio has been used in Bosnia and all over Africa. The British Overseas Development Agency is supplying the Eritrean ministry of education with enough radios to set up educational listening centres all over the country. BayGen also markets the radio for the western world to listen to while fishing, sitting at the bottom of the garden or climbing mountains.

In spite of it all, Baylis is unhappy. He regrets that he had to set up his factory abroad and the rejections he suffered still rankle. Now he is particularly upset with Prince Charles. The Queen recently asked Douglas Buchanan, inventor of the knife-proof vest, to make protective boots for her corgis, whose paws are becoming tender in old age. When Baylis asked the Prince of Wales to sponsor his project for an Academy of Inventors to promote British innovations, he was turned down.

Bayliss rattles off a list of UK inventors who could not make themselves heard. Frank Whittle could have produced a jet aircraft as early as 1936 if anyone had listened. Joshua Silver, a professor of physics, has invented cheap, self-adjustable spectacles, at last proving to be a boon to the short-sighted in Africa, but still scorned here, Branco Babic invented, but never reaped the benefit of, the system used to put out the fires that raged after Desert Storm. James Dyson lost out on several earlier patents before becoming famous as the inventor of the Dyson bag-less vaccuum cleaner. "We are exceptional at creating new products, and appalling at giving credit," Baylis concludes.

Baylis knows of at least 1,000 inventors who would be keen to join his Academy. It would cost 2.5m to set up and would offer inventors a help line, check out the feasibility of their ideas, protect copyright, set up introductions. Eventually it would become self-funding through a share of any profits the inventors made. "We can make a renaissance of invention," says Bayliss.

How about it, Dr frankenstein?

Phone 01225 442289 for your own BayGen Freeplay radio, price £69.95.