Henry Sutton

Henry Sutton (4 September 1855, Ballarat, Victoria – 28 July 1912) was an Australian designer, engineer, and inventor credited with contributions to early developments in electricity, aviation, wireless communication, photography and telephony.

Early life

Family Henry Sutton, the second of the eleven children of Richard Henry Sutton (1831 – 1876), and Mary Sutton (1835 – 1894), née Johnson, was born in a tent on the Ballarat goldfields on 4 September 1855. and two sisters. He married Elizabeth Ellen Wyatt (1860–1901) in 1881, and Annie May Tatti (1884-), on 17 September 1902, who bore four and two sons, respectively.

Sutton trained as a draftsman at the Ballarat School of Design

Ballarat Sutton lectured at the Ballarat School of Mines from 1883 to 1886. In 1883, as a consequence of his work on batteries, Sutton was admitted as an associate of the Society of Telegraph Engineers and of Electricians.

London: 1890–1893 Sutton registered Sutton's Process Syndicate in November 1891 at an address in London to exploit his Suttontype printing process. The process was not considered particularly innovative and it was reported to be unreliable. He abandoned the business to return to Australia.

In 1892, he was introduced to Nikola Tesla by Lord Rayleigh and William Preece.

Melbourne Sutton travelled with Alexander Graham Bell from Melbourne to Ballarat on 15 August 1910 where they discussed their respective discoveries. and was buried in the Brighton Cemetery.

Inventions Printing

Sutton's Suttontype process for converting photographs into a printing surface was patented in 1887.

Wireless telegraphy Sutton discovered, and patented, a galena "detector" that had superior performance over other devices used to that time.

Sutton had also built the world's first portable radio

Other endeavours Aviation Sutton built a clockwork-driven ornithopter operating on a fixed arm and "Second Paper on the Flight of Birds".

Batteries In 1881, Sutton had developed a new rechargeable battery

Telephony After reading of Bell's 1876 announcement of the invention of the telephone, Sutton had designed about twenty different telephones within a year.

The first Australian telephone connection was made in Ballarat and Ballarat East, linking fire stations in the two towns. The exact location of one of the telephone sets can be seen in the Ballarat East Fire Station. The device once allowed communication between the two fire brigades in Ballarat so that they could more accurately locate fires from their watch towers. Sutton had also wired up Sutton's Music Stores, his family business warehouses and offices, with a telephone network two years before an official Australian telephone system. Sutton devised a method for using gas and water pipes as part of a telephone circuit.

Microscopy In 1885 after cholera outbreak on a ship in Queensland, Sutton obtained a slide and managed to photograph the cholera germ at 1000 times magnification. A letter to this effect, from Sutton, was published in The Argus on 28 December 1885.

Photography In the 1880s Sutton also devised a colour photography process but, although examples of this work exist, he did not commercialize it. According to historian Ann Moyal, the concept was never successfully demonstrated: "Sutton's 'TV system', which he called 'telephany', used all the latest technology, such as the recently-invented Kerr effect, the Nipkow disc (which Baird was to use in the 1920s) and the selenium photocell. But its weak link in the 1870s was that the signal had to be transferred by telegraph lines, as radio had yet to arrive, and these were too slow to transmit the dashing horses of the Melbourne Cup successfully."

Facsimile Sutton used his telephane system to demonstrate facsimile transmission with the help of Nicola Tesla in England.

Lifts For the benefit of his mother, who had been paralyzed by a stroke, a new hydraulic lift had been installed in the newly built Suttons Music Emporium. In 1897, a tricycle fitted with a Sutton designed and built engine was driven from Melbourne to Ballarat. Despite atrocious road conditions the trip was completed in eleven and a half hours, and the vehicle arrived in Ballarat to a crowd of thousands. and, by 1899, he had built and driven the Sutton Autocar, one of the first motor cars in Australia.

Legacy

Henry Sutton Circuit On 20 January 2004, several streets in the new Canberra suburb of Dunlop were named after "inventors, inventions, and artists"; and one of these new streets was called "Henry Sutton Circuit".

The Henry Sutton Oration In 2014, the Telecommunications Association (formerly known as the Telecommunications Society of Australia, which had its origins in the Telegraph Electrical Society, founded in Melbourne in 1874), inaugurated its annual Henry Sutton Oration.

Poetry Les Murray referred to Sutton and television in his 1990 poem "The Tube".

The Science Show Science journalist Robyn Williams has featured Sutton in episodes of his long-running radio program.