Tostock engineer and inventor John Parnum hopes to become an inspiration with 'ingenious machines'

Flames flicker at the windows, sirens wail, a fireman shins up a ladder to rescue a trapped child, and an ambulance pulls up alongside.

Thankfully this is not a real emergency. It his happening in miniature in the workshop of engineer John Parnum, long-time inventor of what he calls ‘ingenious machines’.

Peek behind the scenes, into the back of the box where the drama unfolds, and you will see a baffling array of wires and gadgets all controlled by a tiny computer.

A coin in the slot sets the scene in motion with lights, sound and action. ‘House on fire’ is just one of the amazing machines John has produced over the years.

The automaton even features the recorded voice of his grandson Charlie – then aged 10 – calling out for help.

Every square inch of the workshop at John’s Suffolk home is crammed with a mind-boggling mix of potential components and completed creations.

Jostling for position are a LEGO-sorting machine, an automatic drinks mixer, a ‘waste pipe’ organ, a device for demonstrating how wings lift an aircraft off the ground, and many more.

“I live in organised mess,” says John. “I lose things then I find them again.”

He is fast running out of space. The answer, he says, will be to build another shed. “Luckily we have quite a large garden.”

His wife Jane – they have been married almost 50 years – is well used to sharing their home with his inventions.

There are machines in pretty much every room of the house, including more automata like a rock band, a jazz band and ‘battle of the dinosaurs’.

The bands combine his twin passions of machines and music. “If I’d not been an engineer I’d love to have been a musician, my dad was a very good pianist,” he says.

His version of the seaside arcade stalwart the penny-pusher – laden with two pence pieces – is a favourite with their eight grandchildren.

He jokes that Jane didn’t know what she was marrying. She says she does now, and there might have been a clue when he booked their honeymoon in north Wales because of the steam railways – another of his passions.

But these days it’s not just the joy he gets out of creating his machines – he wants to use them to do good, whether that is raising money for charity or inspiring the next generation.

He is a dedicated STEM ambassador – part of a scheme to help children connect with science, technology, engineering and maths, bringing the subjects to life and demonstrating their value in life and careers.

For John it means taking his creations into schools on a mission to introduce children to the wonders of what makes them work – and hopefully motivate youngsters to start making things themselves.

STEM ambassadors give their time and enthusiasm free of charge and he would love to hear from schools who would like him to visit.

He says that in Suffolk the take-up has been low, especially since Covid.

“We would like to do a lot more. I want to do things with kids that are fun and engage with them, and open their eyes to what is available in the world,” he says, demonstrating a robot bug with light-sensor eyes that follows a torch beam around the table.

John, who lives in Tostock, has previously helped Thurston Scouts and Cubs with their science badges.

Last month he staged a two-day exhibition of his machines at Tostock village hall and raised more than £1,000 for EACH (East Anglia’s Children’s Hospices).

“The exhibition went better than I could ever have expected,” he says.

“The money was a mix of door, refreshments and machines. We had a wide age range visit, many families and kids, even one couple from Colchester.”

John was born in Cambridge. “My father was a physicist and engineer, and I always wanted to be an engineer,” he says.

But it was a visit to Southend pier that sparked his lifelong obsession with building machines.

When his father took him there as a boy it was not so much winning a few pennies on the fruit machines that captivated him, but how they worked.

“I made my first arcade game, using relays and bulbs, when I was 15,” he recalls.

He went to university, then into mechanical engineering. “None of us had really thought of what we were going to do after university – companies came to us and interviewed us. I was offered three jobs.”

Later he had a succession of senior roles in engineering, including working on the development of industrial heat pumps that could be installed in prisons to recover heat from the showers.

Then he came to Bury St Edmunds as an engineering director at Vinten’s, specialists in equipment for the film and television industry, where he led projects including robotic control of cameras for TV studios.

After a spell at W T Atkins machine tools in Thetford, he was approached by a German company and was with them for 22 years, coming up with new machines for the electricity industry.

“But my hobby was always making machines,” he says. “We have four children. When they were young, I’d use the machines for fund-raising for their schools.”

Some of the automata were made in the 1980s but have since been extensively modernised. John describes them as mini-theatres.

“The ideas came from me, or my children. It was my son, Iain, who said you should do something to do with dinosaurs.”

John has since updated ‘Battle of the dinosaurs’ which features an array of fearsome beasts in a gory Jurassic scene. The children insisted on the blood, John says.

A pterodactyl flies overhead, and a T-Rex emerges from the fray with the head of another dinosaur dangling from its jaws.

Since retiring at 68, John, who is now 74, has had more time to devote to his hobby.

The availability of small, cheap computers costing less than £10, that he uses to control his inventions, has revolutionised what he can do.

But the creations, many built out of supermarket cardboard boxes, vary from those that use technology to one that simply relies on gravity – an obstacle track for racing marbles downhill.

The rock band – six inch high marionettes dressed in outfits made by his wife Jane, jig around and play along to music that changes every time it runs.

“They’re a cover band, with rock music, all the things I love,” he says. “Each time they play a different song.”

He has also linked up wooden models of musicians, designed to be operated by hand and made by a company called Timberkits, into a jazz band.

Another of his ‘mini-theatres’ acts out a deep space battle from Star Wars. He uses the name Munrap Automata – Parnum spelt backwards.

Then there is an air quality monitor that reacts to different pollutants, and a squash mixing machine which started life making gin and tonics but is now adapted for schools.

When Covid put a stop to people’s normal lives, John immersed himself in a lockdown project, making a ‘waste pipe’ organ that plays a selection of tunes.

The instrument is made from different lengths of waste pipe – his version of a fairground organ – and again run by a miniature computer.

“Underneath it are valves – the computer operates those and air will go into the pipes,” he explains.

Then he tips sand on to a flat plate on another machine and switches it on. The sand moves into different patterns as the sound is changed, showing the resonance of the plate.

It is based on Chladni’s plate, invented by an 18th century German scientist known known as the father of acoustics.

Meanwhile, LEGO bricks are grouped into different colours by a sorting machine where a colour sensor prompts a computer to move a chute.

Supercomputer Deep Thought, from The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, is another creation, where you can discover the meaning of life by putting a coin in the slot to generate a print-out.

And showing how he can inspire youngsters, grandson Charlie, now aged 11, has designed his own robot which his grandad helped him to make.

Building and maintaining the machines is not without challenges, but John takes it in his stride.

“With most things I do you hit problems. Engineering is all about problem solving. There are always small things that need fixing,” he says.

If you would like John to visit your school (within a 20 mile radius of Bury St Edmunds) as a STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) ambassador, email him at johnparnum@yahoo.com

For more information go to the STEM website www.stem.org.uk