Five years from now we’ll be wondering how we ever lived without self-making beds, electric unicycles and artificial nose hair. Or that’s what the boffins at the 36th International Exhibition of Inventors in Geneva last week were hoping, at least. At this showcase for madcap innovation inventors from 45 countries descended on possibly the least innovative nation in Europe to demonstrate their creations to potential investors.

Many gadgets followed national stereotypes: the Italian Enrico Berruti’s self-making bed is perfect for when Mamma’s not around; the German Heina Gruber showed a way of roasting huge quantities of meat with hot air; the Frenchman Denis Thévenin’s super-mirror system allows him to check his hair from every angle; Ryan Liu of Taiwan exhibited a bizarre PC-linked toy that turned instant messages into facial expressions; and the Swiss Pascale Pittet had found a way to control precisely how much food was on her plate.

Techno-nonsense? Not according to Britain’s most successful inventor, James Dyson. “An inventor can’t be afraid to look ridiculous or stupid,” he says. “He can often sound like a crank but that’s just because he’s mad about his product. You need total dedication, even if that means you can appear to be unbalanced.

“Lone inventors can still make world-changing products. I made more than 5,000 prototypes in a shed behind my house.”

Dyson has just announced the winner of the £5,000 James Dyson award, an annual international design competition for students. Michael Chen, from Britain, invented the Reactiv cycling jacket, which has built-in LEDs that change colour when the rider slows down, speeds up or lifts his arm to indicate a turn. “We wanted to encourage students to solve a problem, to make something that does something better,” Dyson says. “Children and students are very good at this but it seems to be stamped out of us later in life.”

Part of the problem is patent law, Dyson believes. “Songwriters and authors don’t have to renew their intellectual rights every year in every country around the world, and for up to £2,000 each time. It’s very expensive to file and renew patents, and it’s extremely expensive to fight patent battles in court.”

At least Britain is still innovating, according to Trevor Baylis, inventor of the wind-up radio and president of Trevor Baylis Brands, a company that helps amateur scientists to get their ideas off the ground. “We get seven or eight inventors approaching us every day,” Baylis says. “We’ve helped 2,500 so far.” According to the World Intellectual Property Organisation, the UK is sixth in the international patents chart, filing more each year than China (and Switzerland).

And the artificial nose hair? It’s a reusable nasal wig to protect against inhaled pollutants. No prizes for guessing that the person responsible for that invention is American.

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