After reading Gary's fascinating article/post about Claude Shannon, I realised that maybe some of you might be interested in hearing about AUSTRALIA'S forgotten Genius.
Henry Sutton.
"Who?" you may say. Exactly. Henry Sutton is hardly known about!
Henry Sutton was born in a tent on the Ballarat Goldfields in 1856.
He was schooled at home by his mother until age 10, then educated himself from then on.
By age 14 he had read every book on Science in the Ballarat Mechanics Institute.
Then he began writing to Scientists all around the world seeking more information.
Observations at the age of 10 of the flutter of insect wings against smoked glass led to his theory on the flight of birds which he propounded in a paper read to the Aeronautical Society of Great Britain and published in its annual report of 1878
.
Between age 14 and his death in 1912 at age 56 he invented:
- The Telephane. A forerunner to the Television, developed 3 years before John Logie Baird was even born.
- 23 different telephones (sixteen of which were patented by others. Alexander Graham Bell visited Ballarat to see a complete telephone system installed by Sutton in the family warehouse).
- The Carbon Filament Light Bulb, finally completed only 16 days after Thomas Edison's success. Just missing being the 1st to invent the Light Bulb.
- A Vacuum Pump.
- The worlds 1st portable wireless Radio.
- The Colour Printing process.
He also:
- Designed an electric continuous current dynamo with a practical ring armature as early as 1870
- Built the worlds most advanced storage battery
- Built and Drove the 1st Automobile in Australia
- was credited with being the 1st person in Australia to experiment with flight, using his 'Ornithoptor'.
He contributed papers to societies in Australia and abroad on topics including electricity, colour photography and the process of engraving by the aid of photography; his paper on his new electric storage battery received acclaim when it was read before the Royal Society of London in December 1881. He rarely applied for patents, partly because he spurned material gain and wanted to 'benefit fellow workers in science'.
In some respects his most interesting work was in the field of what has since become television: in the late 1880s to have designed and built an apparatus that would transmit video all the way to Ballarat the running of the Melbourne Cup.
"1885: Henry's invention of the Telephane was the forerunner to television 3 years before John Logie Baird was born. Around 1871 at the age of fifteen Henry invented a method so that any big event in Melbourne could be seen in Ballarat by medium of the telegraph. Henry was so sure of this that he wrote the particulars to Mr R.L.J. Ellery, Government Astronomer of Victoria, so the invention could be in the hands of someone capable of stating his claim of being the first in this direction. Some years later, in 1885, Mr R.L.J. Ellery was witness to the transmission of the images of the Telephane. In 1885 Henry transmitted the Melbourne Cup race to Ballarat through the Telephane. It was stated that it worked quite well. Henry a few years later in 1890 went to England and France and demonstrated the Telephane to the scientific community. Henry's paper on the Telephane was published in England, France and America and Scientific America republished his paper again in 1910. Henry did not patent the Telephane but Baird did use Henry's principles to invent television some 43 years later. The Telephane is considered to be Henry's magnum opus by some people."
He was also a hobby photographer, winning many prestigious Photography competitions he sent photos to in England, and he played Piano and composed music.
A truly remarkable, but forgotten, Australian
