News > One Laptop Per Child

For the last year and a half we’ve been working with the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) project, which aims to provide a tool to help children learn around the world. Electricity is difficult to obtain in many of the areas that the laptops will be used, and we bring to the project our long experience in powering electronic devices in the developing world, such as our Lifeline radio which was the first radio designed specifically for use by women and children in developing areas. Our human-powered chargers are also the most efficient ones you can find, requiring less effort to generate any particular amount of electricity.

Our technology director John Hutchinson has put a massive amount of work into creating a charger suitable for OLPC’s needs. Even though their laptop is very careful with battery consumption, it still needed more energy than the hand-cranked Freeplay devices to date. When it turned out that OLPC’s initial idea of including a Freeplay generator right in the laptop couldn’t make sufficient use of the human power available, John developed a separate unit that has a large handle and other improvements, and that can be clamped to a table to provide a solid base for applying full human power. Here’s a photo of our OLPC charger under development. This is not the final production model! But it does use the same technology found throughout our product line, so not much about it should surprise you.

We’ve recently received a firm order for these chargers, with the first shipment to Peru expected in late November. We look forward to powering a great many OLPC laptops around the world.

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