Aussie Inventions

[red750]

Did you know the refrigerator was an Aussie invention?

 

Read the story here.

[old man emu]

Looks like the fridge, or refrigeration was attempted by several people who produced small prototypes, but it was Harrison who was able to produce machines that could produce commercial quantities of ice.

 

 https://www.thefreelibrary.com/Shipboard+refrigeration+and+the+beginnings+of+the+frozen+meat+trade.-a0146789200

[Jerry_Atrick]

Why has Australia not benefited as much as others from some of these inventions:

https://www.australiangeographic.com.au/topics/history-culture/2010/06/australian-inventions-that-changed-the-world/

 

Absolute travesty! There is a downside to capitalism.

[pmccarthy]

There are so many myths about Australian inventions that I read this expecting to criticise. But they are all genuine, and I agree with Jerry.

[old man emu]

2 hours ago, Jerry_Atrick said:

Why has Australia not benefited as much as others from some of these inventions:

https://www.australiangeographic.com.au/topics/history-culture/2010/06/australian-inventions-that-changed-the-world/

Pretty simply: Supply and Demand. Australia's population is too small to create the demand for the products of our inventors. So they have to go overseas to the big markets and that means patenting things, quite often in the USA, where the international corporations have the finances to develop markets for the products.

 

[Jerry_Atrick]

Yeah - but we don't have to sell our ownership of it..

[old man emu]

10 minutes ago, Jerry_Atrick said:

Yeah - but we don't have to sell our ownership of it..

You'll notice that most of those inventions were made by employees of organisations. Very few of our inventions were made by a bloke tinkering in his shed. Therefore the invention was legally the property of the employer, and as such became a commodity to sell off if the company could not finance its production.

[onetrack]

Here's a young bloke who has come up with a clever invention - adding electric motive power to your current set of wheels. Whether he can commercialise it is another thing altogether.

 

He's won the James Dyson Award prize, worth $8,800 - and he's using the money to develop a "fully functional kit".

 

https://www.perthnow.com.au/news/transport/aussie-invention-could-turn-petrol-cars-into-hybrids-c-11885821

[Bruce Tuncks]

It's a good idea to get those short trips done electrically. I may buy a kit myself if they are priced ok.

[onetrack]

Re Australian inventions of note - few people know that the Atomic Absorption Spectrometer was invented by a CSIRO scientist. You may say, "A What spectrometer?", or "So what?" - but the AAS is one of the most incredible devices ever invented and it plays a major part in nearly every field of molecular examination of elements today - from mining, to agriculture, to health to biochemistry, to food analysis, to metallurgy, to environmental measuring.

We would be a lot less advanced in chemical measurements, worldwide, today, if it were not for the invention and perfection of the AAS by Alan Walsh and his co-workers.

 

What is even more amazing is that the Americans shrugged when it was invented, and they did not fully understand its potential, until it was extensively explained to them. Here's the full story, straight from the inventors mouth.

 

https://csiropedia.csiro.au/atomic-absorption-spectroscopy

 

Edited September 13, 2023 by onetrack

[pmccarthy]

I was told that the first working example was developed at Zinc Corporation in Broken Hill. I think they funded the CSIRO work.

[Old Koreelah]

Don’t tell the guvmint; they’d make even more cuts to CSIRO funding.

[old man emu]

8 minutes ago, Old Koreelah said:

Don’t tell the guvmint; they make even more cuts to CSIRO funding.

Yes, the Luddites we have governing our country make the Amish look like the ultimate technological innovators.

 

CSIRO holds more than 3,000 patents. Which means that receipts from licensing the application of those patents goes into the Government's coffers.

[Old Koreelah]

Just now, old man emu said:

Yes, the Luddites we have governing our country make the Amish look like the ultimate technological innovators.

 

CSIRO holds more than 3,000 patents. Which means that receipts from licensing the application of those patents goes into the Government's coffers.

That money should be directed at recruiting and training more talented scientists; we sure need them.

[old man emu]

The problem restricting unfettered research was well expressed by Alan Walsh, the inventor of AAS, when he said, "First, it should be noted that this work originated in a laboratory where scientists were encouraged to study a subject at a basic level and were not expected to have a specific goal for every set of investigations. I think this is a tremendously important point. Increasingly we find young scientists being channelled into increasingly narrow areas of activities aimed only at targets with good prospects of success. They are being given less and less room to manoeuvre. Their work is being largely confined to answering questions, ignoring the many lessons that have shown that much successful research has its origin in asking the right question."

[Old Koreelah]

Applied science has it’s place, but pure research got us to where we are today. It was usually done by dogged individuals with boundless curiosity, sometimes supported by wealthy benefactor or a government grant.

 

Today, the bean-counters are in control. They want everything documented, often to a rediculous degree and are stiffling any lateral insights. One example: yesterday I finally got around to updating my Working With Children Check. Filled in all the documentation online and took it to the Registry with all my ID. As I don’t like using my middle name, I’d left it off the form. But no, a queue of people had to wait while my whole application was redone to include the middle name, a totally unnecessary excercise, because my name is already unique; nobody else on the planet uses that name!

[nomadpete]

We generally do very well in the research arena in spite of the shoestring budgets. But not all Australian inventions are world class. I think we invented the 'Tall Poppy' syndrome.

[old man emu]

But for something like a WWC check, you very unique name is important. Just try googling your name without your middle name and see how many people come up. That application will be run through the fingerprint database and other criminal records databases to see if the name is associated with any offences that preclude the issue of a WWC clearance. How would you feel if a name with just the first and surname the same as yours came up as a nasty? First off, your application would be suspended pending further enquiries.

 

Think yourself lucky to have that further identifier. I only have a first name and a surname. If I google my name I find that there is a person of the same name who is Dean of the Faculty of Agriculture at Sydney University. Which is ironic since I barely scrapped through with a Bachelor's Degree from that faculty.

[Old Koreelah]

OME I appreciate the necessity of the full name on a Crim check, but my main beef is banks and every other insitution also which insist I use my middle name, even when I challenge them to find anyone else on the planet with my name.

Instead of using a bit of common sense, they are just following orders (the Nuremburg Defence).

[Bruce Tuncks]

I too have have an unusual name, plus a middle name, and I thought the same as old K. But one day when I said this at the local ( Gawler ) bank, the teller-lady told me that there was another customer at that branch with the exact same name, including middle name! Wow, thought I.

[Bruce Tuncks]

And , one day years ago, I was building my old sk jabiru with the wireless on as usual. I was engrossed and missed changing the channel when they started reading out the death notices, when they said a name ( complete with middle name ) of a guy I knew well but hadn't seen around for a few weeks. Well they just had the same name, and it was not my old mate after all.

[old man emu]

3 hours ago, Old Koreelah said:

my main beef is banks and every other insitution also which insist I use my middle name

I wonder how I have got away with not having a middle name. The only time it was a problem was when I made my oath of Office to become a constable. I had to pause while each other else rattled off their accumulation of names.

[facthunter]

I don't have a middle name either, nor does my Brother. .   Can't recall any problem over it. Nev

[octave]

7 minutes ago, facthunter said:

I don't have a middle name either, nor does my Brother. .   Can't recall any problem over it.

 

Same here. 

[onetrack]

I've managed to survive for 74 years with no middle name. My parents weren't prepared enough to provide a middle name, so I never got one.

Unfortunately, there are many people with my name, my surname is the 14th most common name in the South and West of the U.K., and my first name is reasonably common as well.

 

I think I've found at least 14 people in my State with my name. One of the greatest surprises to me was many years ago, I called at the home of a Bobcat/Excavation contractor who had the same surname as me, for a business matter (I didn't know the gent previously) - and as I was talking to him, one of his young sons ran out of the house, and the mother called him back in - by my name!

 

It sounds like Old K ran into an overly officious public servant.