TEENAGE girl power is a new force in the electronics world, as proved by a Basingstoke company's Young Innovator of the Year competition.

Telecom Design Communications, in Stroudley Road, launched its annual competition last year to celebrate its 10th anniversary with the challenge to "Make Machines Talk".

This year's theme was "Make Machines See" and managing director Jerry Sandys found himself faced with a Royal Mail bag stuffed with 150 entries from schools across Hampshire and Berkshire.

Three of the four prizes up for grabs went to girls and the roll of honour was dominated by Swanmore College of Technology in Southampton.

The first prize of a Polaroid digital camera and accessories went to 14-year-old Rebecca Stirk and was presented by Ian Montandon of OmniVision. Jennifer Dingley, 13, scooped the second prize of a Siemens M50 mobile phone, which was presented by Sophie Kipps, of Siemens Wireless Modules.

The two runners up were Michael Alder and Victoria Nugent, both 15, who each received a £50 NatWest account from Abe Tilling, the bank's associate director in Basingstoke.

The winning Southampton college also received £200 in book vouchers from Mr Sandys, who is a founder of TDC - a technical electronic components distributor - and all the winners will be offered a spell of work experience with the company.

Victoria Nugent attends Costello Technology College in Basingstoke and was the only local student to take a prize. She was a winner last year when the competition was launched.

As she returned to TDC to collect her prize, she said: "I am really happy to see familiar faces and look forward to my work experience for a second year. The competition has really encour-aged me to want to run my own small business."

"Making Machine See" challenged the students to think of a car for 2010 and come up with bright ideas as to how many cameras would be built into them.

And their ideas took Mr Sandys by surprise. He said: "Our engineers had isolated 58 uses for the cameras and one bright youngster came up with a 59th. That shows how much entrepreneurial spirit there is in these youngsters."

He added: "We have been very impressed with the amount and quality of entries received. It is exciting to see the effort and initiative that has been taken by all of these students."

Barbara Bryant, chief executive of the North Hampshire Chamber of Commerce and Industry, was a guest at the presentation. She said: "It's a genuine thrill to see a company investing so much in young people - our future workforce.

"I wish all would follow TDC as a lone star for the imagination and flair it puts into bringing out the best in young people."

TDC won the Gazette Newspapers-sponsored 2002 Business in the Community Award at Basingstoke Business Awards. Now it is going for the double and has already sent in its entry for the 2003 awards.