When the national lockdown prevented a visit to Thales, seven-year-old Esme Parker of Didsbury Road Primary School decided to fight back against the global pandemic by inventing an automated anti-COVID-19 system.

Earlier this year, Thales hosted a visit from a number of local teachers who were keen to get some ideas for how to get children interested in engineering. The visit led to the school launching its ‘Primary Engineer Competition’, in which the pupils were challenged to design and build a moving vehicle.

Aspiring engineer Esme Parker, aged seven, was one of four winners with her invention of an ice cream van, which passed the tests of ‘having a beautiful design, being fully functioning and capable of travelling in a straight line.’ The prize was a special trip to Thales for a VIP look around but, as has happened to events across the country, the government’s social distancing rules prevented it from taking place.

Being of practical mind, Esme set about inventing something else: an automated anti-COVID-19 cleaning device.  With the plans complete, she put pen to paper – or rather fingers to keyboard - and wrote a letter to Thales which explained how the machine works, complete with an artist’s impression of how it would look. Her invention, she explained:

‘…is a machine that can suck germs off the outside of your skin or surfaces.  It is an archway that goes on every door with holes that suck off the germs and all of them go down into a filter and uses [UV] light…to kill germs.’

^{Copyright © 2020 Esme Parker.  All rights reserved.}

This is rather special.  Esme has attempted to solve an urgent real-world problem by combining the principles of air pressure differentials and micro-filtration, with the anti-bacterial properties of UV light into a finished design, intended for installation in any doorway. 

She wouldn’t use those words, of course, but her intelligence and creativity are a credit to her, and to her parents and her school.  These are exactly the qualities that Thales and other manufacturers want to inspire in these engineers of the future. Well done, Esme!

Director of Anti-Submarine Warfare & Cheadle Site Director, David Osborn, wrote back, congratulating Esme on her ‘magnificent invention’ and offering his ‘personal guarantee’ to invite her as his guest to Cheadle Heath as soon as the government’s advice on social distancing permits.

We know that the pandemic will eventually run its course.  When that happens, we will be relying on engineers and other innovators to put the world back on its feet.  And the next time that a global disaster threatens, it will be engineers that we inspired as children – Esme and her peers - who will protect us.