Table Of ContentThey Made Australia
Inventions & Innovations: Australian
ideas changing the world
by Stuart Bremer
ISBN 978 086427 294 2
Published in electronic format by
Trocadero Publishing
GPO Box 1546
Sydney NSW 2001
Australia
ABN 28003214748
[email protected]
www.trocadero.com.au
Created and produced in Australia
Copyright © 2013 S and L Brodie
The information in this eBook was
current at the time of writing
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THEY MADE AUSTRALIA
Other books in this series
Women Who Made Australian History *
Other Trocadero series
AUSTRALIAN TIMELINES THE NATIONAL IDENTITY
The Governors 1788–1850 Faiths, Religions, Beliefs in Modern Australia
Immigration Since 1788 Australian Origins
Prime Ministers and Their Governments Volume 1: Afghanistan to Italy
Volume 2: Japan to Zimbabwe
The Constitution:
The Document that Created the Nation Immigrants Who Changed Australia
Exploration and Settlement in Colonial Australia LINKING THE NATION
The Commonwealth of Australia: Australia’s Airlines:
Evolving into a Nation How the Skies Were Conquered
Gold: Instant Wealth and Long-term Prosperity Australia’s Railways:
Convicts: The Story of the Penal Settlements How the Land Was Conquered
that Created Australia DEFENDING AUSTRALIA
The States: Their Place in Federal Australia World War I: The Australian Experience
About the Money: Australia’s Economic History World War II: The Australian Experience
Australia at the Time of Federation The Cold War: Australia in Korea, Malaya, Vietnam
Bushrangers: Australia’s Wild Colonial Boys The Anzac Spirit: Australia’s Military Legend
AUSTRALIA YEAR BY YEAR ASIA-PACIFIC TIMELINES
1788 to 1809: From First Fleet to Rum Rebellion European Colonialism in the Asia-Pacific
1810 to 1845: From the Macquarie Era Shogunate Japan: 800 Years of Military Control
to Ending Transportation
Imperial China *
AUSTRALIAN DECADES
ASIA-PACIFIC RELATIONS
The 1950s: Building a New Australia
Australia’s Pacific Neighbours
The 1960s: Reshaping Australian Society
Australia’s Asian Neighbours
The 1970s: It’s Time for Change
Japan: The Story of the Nation
GLOBAL INFLUENCES
China: The Story of the Nation
The Industrial Revolution and India: The Story of the Nation
its Impact on Australia
Indonesia: The Story of the Nation
AUSTRALIAN SOCIETY
Influencing Australia
AUSTRALIAN INFRASTRUCTURE
How Communications United Australia * Please check www.trocadero.com.au for publication date
Grain stripper-harvester 2 Utility 13 Interscan 24
Secret ballot 2 Owen gun 14 Bionic ear 24
Refrigeration 3 Shepherd castor 14 Synroc 25
Coastal defence torpedo 3 Hills hoist 15 Dual flush toilet 26
Stump-jump plough 4 Holden car 15 Baby safety capsule 26
Mechanical wool clippers 4 Xerographic tones 16 Wave-piercing catamaran 26
Sunshine harvester 5 Victa mower 17 Polymer banknotes 27
Coolgardie safe 6 Solar hot water 17 Polilight forensic lamp 28
Principles of flight 7 Atomic absorption Spray-on skin 28
spectrophotometer 18
Froth flotation 8 Wi-fi, LAN 29
Sugar cane harvester 19
Mitchell thrust bearing 8 Portable retinal camera 29
Flight data recorder 19
Humespun pipe 9 Programmable
Ultrasound scanner 20 turning bed 30
Rotary hoe 10
Bogie exchange 21 Bionic Vision 30
Automatic totalisator 10
Inflatable escape slide 21 Quantum bit 31
Aspro 11
Sirotherm 22 National Broadband
Pedal wireless 12
Network 31
Self-twist yarn spinner 22
Artificial heart
pacemaker 13 Orbital engine 23 Index 32
For links to websites of interest, please go to www.trocadero.com.au/inventions
Edited by Lynn Brodie
ISBN 978 086427 294 2
Copyright © 2013 S and L Brodie
All rights reserved
Published by Trocadero Publishing
GPO Box 1546 Sydney NSW 2001 Australia
www.trocadero.com.au
2
Ridley’s machine was pushed through the
fields by a team of horses, stripping just the
G
rain heads off the wheat and leaving the stalks.
The crop was collected in a bin on the
stripper-harvester
harvester rather than being left for workers
John Bull, John Ridley 1843 to collect.
Within three years more than 100 Ridley
The grain stripper-harvester was one of Stripper-Harvesters were in use in South
the first inventions of colonial Australia. Its Australia. Each could do the work of five
development was prompted by a shortage of labourers. The concept quickly spread across
harvest workers during the 1840s. The Corn the world.
Exchange Committee was formed to address Bull’s contribution was finally recognised
the problem, and offered a reward of £40 in 1883 when the South Australian Parliament
[about $8000 today] to anyone who invented made a payment to him of £250 [about
a viable harvesting machine. $38000 today].
In 1843 there were 17000hectares of
wheat ready for harvesting around Christmas
S
in South Australia. A frustrated farmer, John ecret ballot
Bull, was desperate to encourage greater
1856
productivity from his labourers. While John Bull (top)
John Ridley (above)
instructing them in how to harvest the wheat
by brushing it through their hands, he hit When the colonies of Victoria and South
on an idea. Australia conducted elections in 1856, they
Bull quickly designed a machine with a introduced a radical new
comb and cutters that would chop the heads system of voting. Until
off the wheat. In 1844 he demonstrated his 1838 VOTE this time the usual
New South Wales Yes
concept to the Committee, but it refused to No method was for those
colonial post office
back him. introduces world’s eligible to vote to
first pre-paid
At much the same time, an Adelaide mill gather in a large
postagesystem.
owner and copper miner, John Ridley, built room or hall. There
a prototype harvester similar to Bull’s. He was was a show of hands
immediately accused of pirating Bull’s design. when candidates’ names
Harvesting grain on
Queensland’s Darling were called out.
Downs in the 19th century
The new system was the secret ballot. It
involved each voter going into a booth where
they recorded their vote on a piece of paper.
The paper was then placed in a secure box,
which was not opened until voting had
finished. It was subsequently adopted by all
Australian colonies.
The secret ballot was adopted by Britain
in 1872 for all parliamentary and municipal
elections. The USA, where it is still often
referred to as the Australian ballot, adopted
the process after 1884.
3
restrictions were placed on the equipment
by insurers, who were fearful of fire. This,
R
efrigeration combined with the inexperience of the crew
in handling the meat, meant the venture
James Harrison 1856
failed. Harrison was bankrupted.
His work was taken over by French
In the 1840s fresh produce such as meat immigrant Eugene Nicolle. He substituted
and dairy products could be transported only liquid ammonia for ether. Gradually the
short distances before it spoiled. Ice was technology advanced to the point where
available, but it was imported from cold refrigerated meat shipments to Britain were James Harrison
climates by ship, making it very expensive. technically and financially viable.
Refrigeration was the great invention that
made export of Australian dairy and meat
C
products possible. oastal defence
James Harrison was publisher of the
torpedo
Geelong Advertisernewspaper in Victoria.
While using ether to clean printing Louis Brennan 1874 1858
equipment, he discovered it made the metal The evolution of
Australian Rules
cold. Intrigued, he circulated ether through Unlike most inventors, Irish immigrant
football begins with a
a coil and immersed it in Louis Brennan was showered game at Richmond
Paddock, adjacent to
water, which immediately with money when he
the Melbourne Cricket
froze. Harrison had created invented a guided torpedo Ground, on 31July.
artificial ice. By 1857 he was for military use. It was intended as a
way of keeping
producing 3tonnes each day In 1874, at the age of 22,
cricketers fit through
in an ice factory on the banks he created a device with two the winter months.
of the Barwon River. wires attached — one for
By 1860, in financial steering and one for speed.
trouble, the Advertiserwas no The explosive-packed
longer able to support his torpedo could be controlled
experiments. He moved to from on board a ship and
Melbourne as editor of the Age recovered if it failed.
newspaper. Harrison built Victoria’s colonial
Louis Brennan
another iceworks that government gave him £700
The refrigerated room on
produced 10tonnes per day, but the ship Strathleven [about $100000 today} to
he had trouble selling the output. develop his idea. In 1877 the
At the 1873 International A version of Brennan’s British defence authorities had
coastal defence torpedo
Exhibition he displayed
a box of foodstuffs that
had been frozen for
97days. When opened
it was as fresh as the day
it was packed, winning him a
gold medal for his invention.
Harrison’s next move was to ship a
cargo of refrigerated meat to Britain. Severe
4
the device tested by the Royal Engineers in over obstructions. It won first prize at the
England. Their enthusiastic reaction led to 1876 Moonta Agricultural Show.
Richard Bowyer Smith Brennan’s being put on a salary to conduct Smith took out a provisional patent for
five years of intensive research. the stump-jump plough in 1877. Lack of
The British paid him £110000 [about success selling his idea, however, meant he
A$15million today] for the design, which could not afford to renew the registration
caused controversy in the British parliament. the following year. Others began to
Even so, Brennan was appointed supervisor manufacture similar designs; some even
of the factory making the torpedoes. claimed credit for inventing it.
Clarence Smith further refined his brother’s
work. Supported by the Adelaide firm of
S
tump-jump plough Harris Scarfe, he established a small factory
at Ardrossan in 1880. In later years Clarence
Richard Bowyer Smith 1876
was credited as the inventor, which was
hotly disputed by Richard.
Farmers working in the mallee country of The stump-jump plough caused a
north-western Victoria and South Australia revolution in Australian agriculture. Without
constantly suffered damage to their ploughs. it, large areas of Australia might never have
Mallee trees were relatively easy to clear, but been cultivated.
the roots they left behind were heavy and
tough, requiring a huge effort to shift them.
M
echanical
wool clippers
Frederick Wolseley 1877
From the 1830s Australia’s economy was
heavily dependent on wool. Removing the
wool from sheep was a back-breaking task
using large manual clippers. For decades
A stump-jump plough
being used in the Shearers use manual clippers in Tom
mallee country Roberts’ painting Shearing the Rams
After one of his plough shares was broken
on a root, farmer Richard Smith opted to
continue rather than repair it. He was
surprised when the broken share did not
catch on submerged roots. Instead, it eased
itself over them.
With his brother Clarence, Smith
developed a new type of plough. Instead of
the usual rigid bolts holding the shares in
place, he suspended them on a single link.
This enabled the shares to tip back and ride
5
wool growers sought to mechanise the machines on his property, Dunlop, in 1888.
shearing process. It took some time for Wolseley employees
Frederick York Wolseley, son of an to talk the shearers into using them. Dunlop
aristocratic British family, arrived in Victoria became the first station to have its entire
in 1854. He worked as a jackaroo on sheep flock sheared mechanically.
stations for a time before buying interests in Although the use of Wolseley shears grew
several of them. steadily, in 1889 the deteriorating economy
Financed by his brother, Garnet Viscount made it difficult to raise finance. Wolseley
Wolseley, he went to work developing a returned to England, where he established a
mechanical shearing device. By 1872 he had factory at Birmingham to make shearing
a working prototype in Robert Savage’s machines for export to Australia.
Frederick Wolseley
Melbourne engineering workshop.
In 1876 Wolseley began trials at his
Eurola station. After a visit to England he
An early Sunshine harvester
1889
On 20August Arthur
Arnot, an employee of
the Union Electric
Company, is granted a
patent for the world’s
first electric drill. He
intends it for use in
mines to break rocks
and excavate coal.
For mechanical sheep shearing, the clippers are
driven by a shaft above the shearers’ heads
S
unshine harvester
Hugh V McKay 1885
further refined his prototype. George Gray,
HughV McKay
the man who hand-forged the parts, was the Hugh McKay was the fifth of twelve
first person to shear a sheep mechanically. children in a poor farming family at
In 1885 Wolseley arranged public Drummartin, Victoria. The job on the farm
demonstrations. In the first of these an that he hated most was winnowing. This
experienced shearer was able to beat the involved a machine that blasted air to separate
machine with manual clippers. However, the wheat grain from the chaff.
when the mechanical clippers were run over At the age of 17 he came up with the idea
the shorn sheep, they yielded a further of integrating the winnowing process with
kilogram of wool. the work done by existing stripper-harvesters.
A major breakthrough was grazier Samuel His tradesman brother Nathaniel helped
McCaughey’s installation of 40 Wolseley him build a frame and set the bearings.
6
than 3000 workers. The site included a
model town with houses and other facilities
for McKay’s employees.
In the 1920s the firm merged with the
Canadian Massey Harris company. In the
1950s McKay’s descendants sold out to the
new Massey Ferguson conglomerate. On his
death in 1926, HVMcKay left an estate of
£1.4million [about $100million today].
C
oolgardie safe
Newly built harvesters await dispatch from the
Sunshine Works near Melbourne
Arthur McCormack 1892
1902
Launceston stationer
The Coolgardie Safe was a relatively simple
JABirchall creates the
Another brother, George, fashioned the notepad, backing creation that made life just a little bit easier
sheets of paper with a
ironwork. Their father financed them to the for people in remote regions.
piece of cardboard and
extent of £20 [about $3000 today] from the pasting glue along the As its name suggests, it came into
top edge.
family’s savings. widespread use on the Coolgardie goldfields
Birchall’s remains in
The prototype was first tested at the end in the 1890s. With its intense heat and
business today.
of the harvest in February 1884. Once a few shortage of water, the region was a tough
bugs were ironed out, McKay patented the place to survive.
1906
winnowing device. Arthur McCormack adopted the principle
Kiwi boot polishis first
He struggled in his efforts to licence it to used by explorers to keep water cool and
made by William
established harvester manufacturers. Finally, Ramsay and Hamilton minimise evaporation. Hessian sheets were
McKellan. It goes on to
McKay convinced Melbourne ploughmakers hung over a wooden frame and dipped into
become the world’s
McCalman & Garde to construct five largest selling polish, a galvanised iron container filled with water.
with more than 50per
machines for the 1885 harvest. The hessian slowly soaked up water along
cent of the US and
His first business, the McKay Harvester British markets today. its full length.
Company of Ballarat, collapsed in 1892 during The safe was placed on a veranda where
the economic depression. Starting again breezes could help the water evaporate,
almost immediately, by 1894 he had a factory cooling the interior of the safe. Perishable
in Yuille Street, Ballarat. foodstuffs were placed inside to retain
By the turn of the century the Sunshine freshness for a longer time.
Harvester Works, as it was now known, With many refinements, Coolgardie safes
desperately needed larger premises. Sunshine remained a feature of remote areas until the
harvesters were in huge demand around the mid-20th century. By that time refrigeration
world. In 1904 McKay took over the financially had become widespread.
troubled Braybrook Engineering Works
north of Melbourne. Operations were
transferred to the site and the area renamed
Sunshine in 1907.
Sunshine became Australia’s largest
manufacturing concern. It employed more A later design of the Coolgardie safe
7
Hargrave with his kites at Stanwell
Park in 1891
Moving to ideas of powered
flight, he designed a single-cylinder,
compressed-air motor operating
two flappers. This evolved into a
radial rotary engine, which he did
not patent. It was later successfully
adopted by French manufacturers.
He turned his attention to the
lifting power of curved surfaces,
Lawrence Hargrave
working with kites. Hargrave used
the high windswept cliffs of Stanwell Park,
P
rinciples south of Sydney, to carry out his experiments
from 1893.
of flight
On 2November the following year, using
1906
Lawrence Hargrave 1894 four linked kites, he was lifted almost
The Story of the Kelly
5metres off the ground in a 30km/h wind.
Gangis first screened
Although he never benefited personally, From this he moved on to experiments with at the Athenaeum in
Lawrence Hargrave was a major contributor gliders. His research on the lifting power of Melbourne. Although it
is a silent film ,
to the development of aviation. deep parabolic surfaces influenced designs producers Dan Barry
In 1856, at the age of six, he was left in a used by the Wright brothers, among others. and Charles Tait create
a range of live sound
British boarding school while his parents Hargrave’s greatest problem was poor
effects and have a
emigrated to New South Wales. He next saw communication skills. In London in 1899, he narrator in the theatre.
them ten years later on his arrival in Sydney. was invited to address the Aeronautical At just over one hour, it
is the world’s first
He resisted his father’s demands that he Society. It was a disaster: few in the audience
feature-length film.
follow him into the law. With a natural could grasp what he was talking about.
aptitude for engineering, Hargrave became Within a few years his enthusiasm had
an apprentice with a shipping company. He waned, and by 1909 his finances had expired.
subsequently went on expeditions in Papua On his death in 1915 he left his papers and
New Guinea’s Fly River region. models to the Munich Museum in Germany.
By the 1880s he was obsessed with the Had he been a better communicator,
The Wright Brothers’
principles of flight. After seeing an ascent Hargrave could have been one of the great
first flight at Kitty Hawk
by balloon in Sydney in 1870 he designed his aeronautical figures of the early 20th century. in the USA. They
benefited greatly from
own ‘flying machine’. Gifts of property from
Hargrave’s research.
his father gave him an income that enabled
Hargrave to pursue his interests.
Like most aviation pioneers, he was
preoccupied with copying the actions of
birds. He did, however, also study forward
motion in other animals to apply it to flight.
From this came his ornithopter, powered by
rubber bands that flapped wings. One
version flew 30metres.
