Little known Ballarat inventor celebrated in new biography

BALLARAT’S Henry Sutton made Australia’s first telephone and invented the telephone handset less than year after Alexander Graham Bell patented the device in 1876.

Mr Bell made the long journey to Ballarat to see for himself a complete telephone system installed by Mr Sutton in the family’s warehouse.

While Mr Sutton stood as an equal in his time alongside such men as Alexander Graham Bell, Nikola Tesla and Thomas Edison he was hardly noticed in Australia by his peers and the public.

Mr Sutton’s great granddaughter Lorayne Branch is about to put things rights, launching her book Henry Sutton: The Innovative Man on Saturday, 1 December.

The biography, based on previously unavailable personal papers as well as articles and letters, depicts the achievements and misfortunes of a remarkable Australian inventor and innovator.

Ms Branch said, “By age 26 Henry Sutton had won international acclaim and graced the world stage among the giants of the scientific world. It is not until you begin to document in one place his enormous body of work that you start to gain the true picture and depth of his remarkable achievements.”

By the time Mr Sutton, a student and lecturer at the Ballarat School of Mines, died aged 58 he had created the first rechargeable battery, designed and built an eight-foot-long torpedo that could travel 10 to 25 yards under water, and transmitted the Melbourne Cup to Ballarat through the Telephane, a forerunner of television.

“It is a national travesty that these achievements have slipped largely unrecognised between the pages of Australian scientific history for over a century,” said Ms Branch.

The book launch will be at Federation University’s Manufacturing and Engineering Skills Centre, 22 Grant Street Ballarat on Saturday, 1 December at 2.00pm.