I was on automatic pilot; ideas for gadgets kept coming, fed by a force of energy flowing through me and around me.

All inventors, they say, are a little mad. I reckon that only completely sane people are willing to admit they are slightly crazy.

Ideas for gadgets for the disabled were coming into my head so fast they seemed to be arriving from somewhere outside of me, beamed down by an unremitting force. I had little control over them, or their flow. I would wake up in the middle of the night. A blinding flash of an idea would rouse me from my bed and I'd rush down to my workshop to have a go at it before the inspiration dimmed.

Invention isn't some impenetrable brand of magic; anyone can have a go.

The key to success is to risk thinking unconventional thoughts. Convention is the enemy of progress.

But having had your bright, fresh, original idea, the really hard part is turning it into a successful product. That's what takes all the sweat.

Visionaries and dreamers have always been dusted with a little oddity.