Famous Australian Ideas and Innovations

You're going to be very surprised at some of the great inventions Australians have been responsible for...

Heck, Aussie are even responsible for turning dishwater and beer into electricity, AND running cars on nothing but water!

This page presents a variety of those for your perusal - please REFRESH to see a different selection of ten Aussie innovations.

To find out more, can I suggest you visit
The Power House Museum and Questacon

• Developed by Dr Saul Weiner, Redback Spider Antivenom was released in 1956.
  
  
• It wasn't the first Australian rotary clothesline with a winding mechanism which allowed the frame to be raised and lowered, but the Hills Clothes Hoist (developed by Lance Hill in Adelaide in 1945) was certainly the most successful.
  
  
• George Nicholas and Henry Woolf Smith produced a high-grade aspirin product in Melbourne called Aspro in 1915. It later took over the international market.
  
  
• A Sydney inventor, Gordon Withnall, invented the Super Sopper in 1974 to soak up water from wet sportsgrounds.
  
  
• The Wine Cask - a modern version of the traditional European wine 'bladder' (a leather pouch which collapses as the wine is poured, keeping air out) - was developed by Thomas Angove in 1965.
  
  
• Reverend John Flynn founded the world's first Aerial Medical Service, the Flying Doctor Service, in 1928
  
  
• The Sydney GPO had the world's first mechanised Letter Sorting Machine in 1930. It was developed by an engineer with the Postmaster General's Department.
  
  
• The Wiltshire Staysharp Knife - a knife sheath which sharpens the knife each time it was withdrawn - was invented in 1965.
  
  
• In 1956 Jack Grant of QANTAS invented the inflatable aircraft escape slide which could also be used as a raft on water. Such slides are now standard safety equipment worldwide.
  
  
• The world's first pregnancy using In-vitro Fertilisation (IVF) technology was reported from Monash Medical Centre in 1973. The first frozen embryo baby was born in Melbourne in 1984.
  
  

Hit REFRESH to reload the page to see another random selection of more Aussie ideas :)

Written by coais

About Stephen Spry

Stephen Spry is a freelance web designer and Internet publisher. He has been working online, full-time, since 1995 after an 18-year career as a high school Careers Adviser. Stephen operates several websites and web directories in a variety of niches. His main web design business can be found here » Come On Aussie.