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May 06, 2022 Post a Comment

20 Australian inventions that changed the world

Some of Australia's world-changing inventions: plastic money, Google maps, latex gloves and the electric drill.

Australians tin can exist an ingenious agglomeration. Here are some of the best inventions to have come out of the nation.

1. Black box flight recorder

The black box flight recorder has helped brand commercial air travel the world's safest class of travel. It was invented by Australian scientist Dr David Warren, who lost his own father to an aircraft tragedy in 1934 when theMiss Hobart crashed into the Bass Strait.

This remarkable device is virtually indestructible and records the final moments of a crashed aeroplane'due south terminal flying. While it is a box, it's non blackness – it's brilliant orangish color is chosen 'international orange', making information technology easier to find in crash-site rubble.

David Warren first had the black box thought in the 1950s when he was role of a Melbourne enquiry team exploring why the commercial jet aircraft known as the Comet had suffered a series of deadly crashes. He thought it would help investigators fix what was incorrect if they had a recording of the final conversations between crew and other sounds within the plane before it crashed.

A blackness box is at present installed on every commercial plane around the world, but information technology was in Australia that they were starting time made compulsory for all commercial flights.

2. Spray-on skin

In 1999, Perth-based plastic surgeon Professor Fiona Wood patented her spray-on skin technique. The innovation involves taking a minor patch of the victim'southward healthy peel and using information technology to grow new peel cells in a laboratory. The new skin cells are and so sprayed on the victim's damaged pare. This procedure significantly reduces recovery time and scarring.

Fiona and her spray-on skin technique played a central role in treating burns victims from the 2002 Bali bombings. Fiona and her squad are credited with saving the lives of 28 people.

RELATED: Australia'south best innovators awarded

3. Electronic pacemaker

Australian doctor Marker Lidwill and physicist Edgar Booth developed the outset bogus pacemaker in the 1920s. At present, more than than 3 one thousand thousand people worldwide rely on pacemakers to keep their hearts beating properly.

Artificial pacemakers send modest electric charges into the heart to assist it maintain a regular vanquish. Since the late 1960s, these have been implanted inside the body; the get-go of these was developed in Sydney by Lidwell and Booth. Lidwill used the invention in 1928 to revive a stillborn baby – modest pulses of electicity were sent through a needle directly into the child's heart. Afterwards ten minutes, the equipment was switched off, the heart connected to trounce and the infant made a full recovery.

4. Google Maps

Danish brothers Lars and Jens Rasmussen developed the platform for Google Maps in Sydney in the early 2000s. Forth with Australians Neil Gordon and Stephen Ma, they founded a small start-up company called Where 2 Technologies in 2003. The following year it was bought by internet giant Google, which also hired the four men, and the technology was turned into what we at present know as Google Maps.

5. Medical awarding of penicillin

In 1939, Australian scientist Howard Florey purified penicillin from a special strain of mould. The team demonstrated penicillin's ability to fight bacterial infection in mice and, later, humans. The antibiotic was mass produced and used to aid victims of World War Ii. Penicillin has been used around the earth saving many lives through the combating of infection by common bacteria. Today, it is even so widely used in combating infections, but its efficacy is at risk from the growing resistance to the antibiotic.

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half dozen. Polymer bank notes

Plastic bank notes were developed in a combined effort by the Reserve Bank of Australia and CSIRO in the 1980s. The first plastic bank note to be put into circulation was the $ten note, released in 1988 to gloat the bicentenary. In 1996, we became the commencement state to have a consummate set of plastic currency.

Traditionally, banking company notes are made from paper, fabric fibres or a combination of both. Our bank notes are made from a special polymer which, along with a series of in-built security devices, makes them almost impossible to counterfeit. They also last most 10 times longer than traditional bank notes.

RELATED: The new $5 note

7. Cochlear implant (bionic ear)

Professor Graeme Clark invented the first bionic ear Melbourne University in the 1970s – the first prototype was implanted in a person in 1978.

Cochlear implants are devices that are implanted into the head to electronically stimulate the auditory nerve. Graeme'southward motivation to advance hearing loss engineering science was spawned from his ain father's inadequate hearing. Then far, the Cochlear implant has brought hearing to more than than 180,000 deafened and partially deaf people worldwide.

eight. Electric drill

DIY-enthusiasts can thank an Aussie for this indispensible piece of equipment. In 1889, Australian electric engineer Arthur James Arnot patented the earth's beginning electric drill with his colleague William Encephalon. The invention was originally designed to drill stone and dig coal, and although it was a long style from the portable mitt-drills used today throughout the world, the underlyng technology was the aforementioned.

9. Winged keel

Ben Lexcen, an Australian yachtsman and marine architect, invented the winged keel – a nearly horizontal foil, or wing, at the base of a sailing boat keel. They are typically constitute on high-performance sail boats. The winged keel made its debut in 1983 in America's Cup on Commonwealth of australia II.

10. Permaculture

In 1972, Pecker Mollison had the epiphany which led to the evolution of permaculture, a concept that uses a natural approach to designing self-sufficient homo settlements and agronomical systems.

Today permaculture is an culling to chemical-based agronomics which tin exist harmful to humans and the environment

11. Wi-Fi technology

In 1992 John O' Sullivan and the CSIRO developed Wi-Fi technology, used by more than than a billion people around the earth today. The cadre parts of the technology came out of inquiry in the mid-1970s in the field of radio astronomy, when John and his colleagues at the CSIRO were originally looking for the faint echoes of black holes.

As a result of this work, the CSIRO has held central patents for Wi-Fi technology since the mid-1990s, bringing the organisation millions of dollars in royalties every year.

RELATED: Wi-Fi creator CSIRO wins $220m lawsuit

12. Ultrasound scanner

In 1976 Ausonics commercialised the ultrasound scanner. Studying ultrasound from 1959 onwards, the Ultrasonics Research Section of the Republic Acoustrics Laboratories Branch (later to go the Ultrasonic Institute) discovered a style to differentiate ultrasound echoes bouncing off soft tissue in the body and converting them to Telly images. This discovery forever changed pre-natal care as information technology gave expecting parents a window to the foetus without x-ray exposure. Ultrasound technology is also used in the diagnoses of medical problems of the breast, abdomen, and reproductive organs.

thirteen. Plastic spectacle lenses

In 1960 Sola Optical released the get-go scratch-resistant plastic lens for glasses. The engineering science was farther adult to create the first plastic bifocal, trifocal, and progressive-focus lenses. Plastic lenses are used throughout the world due to their many benefits including safe, their calorie-free weight, and durability.

14. Inflatable escape slide and raft

In 1965 Jack Grant, an employee of Qantas, invented the inflatable aircraft escape slide, which is at present mandatory condom equipment on all major airlines. The slides can also exist used as a flotation device if the aircraft lands on water.

RELATED: On this mean solar day: The birth of Qantas

15. Permanent-pucker vesture

In 1957, CSIRO adult a procedure called Si-Ro-Set. The technique uses chemicals to permanently alter the construction of wool fibres so they can be set with heat. This technology allowed for fashion innovations such as permanently pleated skirts.

RELATED: 100 years of CSIRO

xvi. Gardasil and Cervarix cancer vaccines

In 2006, Brisbane-based medical researchers Professor Ian Frazer and Dr Jian Zhou developed the world'due south offset anti-cancer vaccine. Known past the commercial name, Gardasil, the vaccine protects women against four strains of a virus called human being papillomavirus (HPV), known to cause three-quarters of all cervical cancers. Every bit cervical cancer is the 2d-leading crusade of cancer death in women, the vaccination has huge implications for the prevention of cancer. Since 2008, the vaccine has been canonical for use in more than 120 countries.

17. Frazier lens

In 1993, Australian inventor Jim Frazier's deep-focus lens was patented in the United States. His innovative lens allowed for both the subject and background to exist in focus at the same fourth dimension. It also has the ability to rotate without the motion of the photographic camera. The lens is now commonly used in movies and film throughout the world. Jim won an University Laurels in 1998 for his contribution.

RELATED: Innovation is the Australian way

18. Triton Workcentre

In 1976, a 27-twelvemonth-old television journalist named George Lewin appeared on ABC Idiot box's The Inventors program with his new invention, the Triton Workcentre. The day later the testify, his multi-purpose workbench which stabilises and improves the accuracy of portable ability tools had more than 1000 orders. It is estimated that ten per cent of Australian households with a garage at present have a Triton Workcentre.

19. Racecam

In 1979, Channel 7 introduced live television broadcasting from racing cars, allowing viewers to picket the race from the commuter's perspective. Today the Racecam has been adapted to fit other sporting events such every bit snow skiing, basketball and cricket.

20. Tank-bred tuna organisation

In 2008, High german-born simply South Australian-based Hagen Stehr may have saved the southern blue fin tuna from extinction. The clean-seas system fools the tuna in a tank into thinking they are swimming out of the Australian Bight and into their breeding grounds.

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