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

• The Victa Mower, a revolutionary two-stroke petrol lawnmower with rotary blades was much easier to use than its older push/pull cousins. It was invented in 1952 by Mervyn Victor Richardson, a salesman from Sydney.
  
  
• The u-beaut "ute", with a front including the comforts of a car, and a rear like a truck, was designed in 1933 at the Ford Motor Company in Geelong, Victoria.
  
  
• The world's first Plastic Banknotes were invented in Australia in 1988. They last longer and are harder to counterfeit than paper money.
  
  
• 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 Surf Lifesaving Reel was first demonstrated at Bondi Beach in 1906. It was designed by Lyster Ormsby.
  
  
• 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.
  
  
• In 1929, Alfred Traeger invented the Pedal Wireless - a pedal-operated generator which was connected to a wireless
  
  
• John McGarvie Smith donated his secret discovery of an anthrax vaccine to the NSW Government in 1918.
  
  
• Penicillin was trialled successfully on humans by Howard Florey, and went into production in 1941 to help victims of World War II.
  
  
• Bruce Macdonald at the Australian Institute of Marine Science developed the world's first underwater computer in 1993
  
  

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.