Author(s): Lorayne Branch

History

I have no hesitation in claiming Henry Sutton is Australia's greatest ever inventor and, indeed, one of the greatest inventors the world has ever seen. The range of his inventions is extraordinary, including in lighting, batteries, telephony and wireless telegraphy, photography, flight, microscopy, and car engines. Yet he remains shamefully unheralded. Admired and befriended by some of the great scientists and engineers of his time, such as Nikola Tesla and Alexander Graham Bell, his achievements are largely unrecognized. This Australian inventor, working in isolation in Ballarat in the decades around the turn of the 20th century, deserves a place in the pantheon of contributors to the modern technological age.