‘Cracking Ideas’ scheme set up by Wallace and Gromit
Virgil:
March 28th, 2007
Wallace and Gromit, Britain’s favourite plasticine heros, are well known for their inventiveness. In the long line of wacky contraptions, they have produced mechanical trousers, mind-altering devices, rabbit-sucking machines, get-out-of-bed-o-trons, and even a spaceship. The nations Patent Office jokingly calls them “Britain’s foremost inventors”!
Nick Park, their creator, has now had his characters begin a partnership with the Patent Office. The ‘Cracking Ideas’ scheme encourages young children to come up with funky ideas for new inventions, and the scheme supports this by automatically patenting any of the feasible ideas. It’s just the kind of thing that Mr Park would have loved as a child, having decided from the age of 8 that he wanted to grow up and be an inventor, such that he could make a time machine and visit the dinosaurs. In his own words he describes his subsequent career - animating Wallace and Gromit, which can take up to 7 years per production - a kind of “mad inventor” activity too.
This all sounds fantastic and I’m glad kids are being encouraged to be creative. However I give an F-minus grade to one of the first inventions: a purpose-built ladder that helps spiders get out of the bath!
April 5th, 2007 at 6:40 pm
[…] The creators of Wallace and Gromit, Aardman Animations was recently given permission to build a new £10 million headquarters next to its current studio. The new complex will have three stories, and even boasts its own mini-cinema. Most fitting however is that it will also feature a set of wind turbines on its roof that will provide 25% of the place’s energy - which seems to be a (perhaps unintentional) homage to the technological inventiveness of the star character Wallace. […]