John Taylor, Born 1936
INVENTOR OF KETTLE THERMOSTATS & CLOCKS
John Taylor was educated a King William’s College on the Isle of Man and Corpus Christi College Cambridge, where he graduated in natural sciences. After graduation he joined his father Eric's company Otter Controls as a Graduate Trainee. When Eric Taylor died in 1971, his son took over as Chairman of Otter Controls. He focused on its subsidiary Castletown Thermostats, which had started by making bimetallic thermostats for use in various industries. In the 1960s, the market for electric kettles was growing, and Castletown extended its manufacturing plant to produce and test a new device for controlling kettles. During the 20 years from 1979 until 1999 the company developed several successful product series, expanded worldwide, and sold over 200 million thermostat controls for electric kettles. It is estimated that today that electric kettles with these controls are used over one billion times per day worldwide, by over 20% of the world's population. In addition to his business interests John Taylor has a keen interest in clocks. This includes collecting historic clocks, and designing and making remarkable clocks (known as Chronophages) of his own design. He is also a noted philanthropist.
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