A BRITISH company has developed an incredible new light bulb ‘GravityLight’ powered by gravity.
London-based design and innovation initiative deciwatt.org designed the GravityLight as a sustainable solution for 1.5 billion people, who rely on biomass fuels such as kerosene for lighting.
The bulbs will be distributed for free among communities in India and Africa that do not have reliable access to electricity.
Kerosene is responsible for thousands of deaths across the developing world every year and can also be expensive. The World Bank estimates that, as a result, 780 million women and children inhale smoke equivalent to smoking two packets of cigarettes every day.
Deciwatt.org, one of the divisions of design company Therefore, said the trend for rapid advances in technology has made their product possible.
The GravityLight was co-invented by Therefore directors Martin Riddiford and Jim Reeves.
It uses a sack of sand to gradually pull a piece of rope through a dynamo mechanism, which generates electricity to power a Light Emitting Diode (LED) light.
Manufacturers claim a three-second pull on the rope to raise the sack will keep the LED bulb running for up to 30 minutes, the Daily Mail reported.
The relatively simple devices progressively need less energy to run, enabling a whole range of relatively simple gadgets to be powered by unconventional means.
“The digital age has made products much power hungry but now there’s a reversal of that – everyone’s chasing lower power again,” Riddiford said.
Deciwatt.org has already more than tripled its goal after appealing for support through crowd funding website indiegogo.
With the £33,000 ($55,000) initially requested, they had promised to fund the manufacture of 1,000 gravity-powered lights for free distribution to poor communities in Africa and India.
