I remember being briefed on the TV80 flat screen TV, for example, where Clive, Jim Westwood and I were sat about a glass table. Clive moved the flat-screen cathode-ray tube to the centre of the table and then placed the Fresnel lens in front, explaining that theyʼd compressed the dimensions of the image because it saved battery power, but re-established that aspect ratio using optics, which obviously doesnʼt use any battery power at all. He then placed a little Piezo ceramic speaker in the centre of the table. That was position on the other side of the tube so you had the Fresnel and the Piezo speaker side by side.“Then he got out a flat packet which was a lithium battery that Polaroid used in their instant cameras. I couldnʼt believe how many advantages it had. Packing density, for example, and I think it was very good at producing a sudden burst of power. You could draw a lot of current from it and it had a terrific shelf-life. I eventually devised a method of just sliding it out so it was very easy to change the battery.
“Clive just slipped the battery underneath the flat tube and said ʽThatʼs it. I donʼt want anything longer or wider than that,ʼ and that was my brief. Heʼd thought it through and it was clear and pure. It wasnʼt muddled with little details and incidentals that just werenʼt important at the conceptual stage.”