Bet it Won't Work - Clever Australian Inventions

tonight on our sensory ozzy brain pal that'll make you feel proud homegrown ingenious ideas that make our world a better place from hanging up the clothes and the kids to checking out the safety of unborn babies a gun whose performance is in a class entirely returned we're saving our country with weapons of war you can say for yourselves the guns are alright but we Mazen for killing Jeff we invented the safest way to get out of an aeroplane now not to get into space but at least we had a gun many professors have asked me how many tens of thousands of symbols have you invented in the safe only 15 good times you from the earliest times Australians have been a pretty inventive mob especially in fields like aviation Lawrence Hargreaves was playing around with kites and flying machines long before the Wright brothers in more recent times Australian inventions like the inter scan landing system the inflatable escape slide and this one here the black box flight recorder have been in use right across the world now it's called the black box even though it's painted orange a bail bond bloke named Dave Warren embedded this in 1954 he thought that if every plane carried a box that recorded what the instruments and the cockpit crew said just before a crash then we might be able to prevents a lot of accidents and he was right now Dave's invention was just one of a long list of clever was the ideas what's your idea of weekend relaxation ah is a fist or do you prefer this well no matter how your fancy runs one thing is certain you have far more time for it if you own a Victor now you can't get any more practical than this it's good old Aussie ingenuity in action the Victor lawn mouse every backyard had a lawn her sorts which meant that every bloke had to push a lawnmower we knew that there were much better things to do with the weekend so the rescue came over and Victor Richardson with his rotary petrol lawnmower the old Victor motor mower now we're all together let's turn grass into long the easy Victor way Merv knew exactly what Australia needed to conquer the backyard the first model in 1952 wasn't flash an old peach can for a petrol tank and Billy cartwheels but that didn't matter the victor would be victorious Merv's ingenious two-stroke marvel made him almost an overnight millionaire but the fact is he wasn't the inventor of the petrol lawnmower what Merv did was improved the existing design of an engineering friend Merv's genius was that he also knew how to sell it now remember there had been other inventors playing around with fancy lawn mowers the Federal promise reckon he'd earned a spell zero Thomas thought that he had the answer with his electric mower he used the motor olive his wife sewing machine and believed his back brakes were over but it never took off if history had been different today we might be turning grass into lawn with a syrup it's a dream is new easy windup action along with the Victor came s other Ozzie backyard icon the Hills Hoist Lance Hill was an Adelaide man who launched this garden gizmo out of the world in the late 40s but like Merv and his Victor Lance had also picked up someone else's bright idea the famous hoist had been patented by a Melbourne blacksmith a bloke named Gilbert Tyne back in the 1920s but mr. Hill was johnny-on-the-spot he'd come along at the start of Australia's baby boom as backyards began to spread he tinkered with the old design improved it here and there and got down to business Lancel youbut every Australian needed a Hills Hoist but what Lance needed from metal tubes to build his newfangled clothes life remember this was right after the war and you couldn't get spare parts but the ever resourceful mr. Hill found the answer under Sydney Harbor their pipes have been used for a boom nest to block Japanese subs and they were now up for sale it was Australia's answer to flagpoles washing fluttered proudly from Hills Hoist right across the nation there was always something hanging off a free body massage but you had to go to the beach and almost drown to get one from the start of our century Australians were into the Sun and the surf but first you have to survive the fact is when public bathing first took off many Aussies jumped in over their heads literally local drownings were so common that in 1906 we invented the volunteer lifesavers but that didn't fix the problem dragging people out of the surf was so dangerous too many lifesavers were going down for the third time so a bloke with the unfortunate name of Lister Ormsby came up with a brainwave it was the Australian life-saving belt a harness attached to a giant reel with a rope and a half belted up the lifesaver to safely go to the rescue knowing that no matter what the surf was like he and the swimmer in trouble could be winched back to the beach believe it or not at Bondi Beach in 1907 the first person to be rescued this way was a young bloke called Charlie Smith Smitty makes it again this time facing the heaviest odds I've been against it young Charlie would survive to become such Al's Kingsford Smith thanks to the Aussie life-saving wheel and a Silla one of the great antibiotics of the 20th century but when it came to saving lives a Nobel Prize winner Howard Florey can hardly be matched he may be the Australian of the century in the 1930s glory led a research team at Oxford University that came up with penicillin a medical breakthrough that saved over 50 million lives and every day when pregnant women around the world have an ultrasound to check their baby during pregnancy they're enjoying another Australian invention murmurs bionic ear the cochlear implant was also the result of outstanding local research this homegrown invention lets the profoundly deaf tune in the wonderful world of sound childless couples can now take heart with the IVF program thanks to Australian scientists and the Aussie pacemaker will kickstart any heart Australian researchers have led the world in so many medical miracles but there have been times when even the experts couldn't quite agree John Harris national president of the Variety Clubs of America presents to sister Elizabeth Kenny the annual Humanitarian Award and she is honored as the 10th annual campaign against infantile paralysis is launched sister Elizabeth Kenny was one of the most loved and controversial characters of her time in the 1930s she slipped the medical world with her treatment for polio or infant paralysis as it was known through the first half of the century polio hit Australia and mostly targeting children polio could kill but most times it left children paralyzed in the lakes from the 30s to the 50s the sight of kids in callipers was a constant reminder of this epidemic every parent's nightmare most doctors believed the best treatment was splits the affected limbs were immobilized and the children were told to simply lie there sometimes for years it was enough to break your heart but Elizabeth Kenny thought that splints were barbaric instead she used a mixture of massage exercise and heat it was a formula that she'd worked out for herself during her days as the bush nurse before World War one back then polio was so new that doctors didn't even have a name for it in the 1920s and 30s Australians flocked to sister Kenny's plants many believed she was a miracle work but to the Medical Board it was all hocus-pocus sister Kenny's work was dismissed as a fraud and finally in 1938 when a royal commission found against her Elizabeth Kenny quit Australia in disgust but it would be very different in the United States there her treatment was widely accepted sister Kenny clinics would become national landmarks she would rub shoulders with movie stars and even meet the country's most famous polio victim President Franklin Roosevelt in 1946 when Hollywood made a movie of her life than her struggle 20,000 people jammed Times Square just to catch a glimpse of the famous nurse from Queensland get back home all this fame counted for nothing I am rather sorry that's at my work hasn't was not here before when she returned in 1950 sister Kenny had to admit that as far as her treatment was concerned here the door was firmly closed sister Kenny died two years later leaving an argument over her treatment that still rages today we'll meet up and count against a troll it's 1916 the Great War is on men and boys join up back home even the boot boy has signed up to do his bit a couple of young fella see a chance for some extra cash if only they can persuade the boss that they're up to us now it's not an old movie it's an early commercial for that great Aussie invention Kiwi boot polish by the time they made this our film they had the money to pay for it 10 years after its launch in Melbourne in 1906 Kiwi had taken the boot world by storm they'd sold no less than 30 million tins of the nifty nugget polish throughout World War one Australian British and American foot soldiers were devoted to it because despite tradition spit and polish and elbow grease just wasn't enough Kiwis great claim to fame was that it could restore color to faded boots as well as waterproofing claiming and preserving the leather it was called Kiwi for the very good reason that the inventor William Ramsay named it after his wife it was him a New Zealand history's greatest invasion d-day June 6 1944 some new IDs have come from all customs hundred thirty-five thousand troops cross the notoriously rough English Channel to hit the beaches of Normandy it was one of the most important missions of World War two now d-day was not a good day to get seasick the solution was a world away for generations Aborigines had used the leaves of the cork wood tree to drug fish in Billabong so that they'd float to the surface Australia's wartime scientists found that the leaves contained a chemical called hyacinth which also stops seasickness the new drug was so important for d-day that it was actually flown to Britain in the middle of the war it was then given to every soldier as they headed off to Norman meanwhile out in the Pacific War every digger wanted to be handed one of these the Owen gun was possibly the greatest Australia invention of the Second World War it was prized by our boys in Papua New Guinea because it kept on firing anywhere wet or dry clean or dirty it didn't matter it just kept on going Evelyn Alan the young blokes from Wollongong had invented this revolutionary simple gun what was tricky was getting the army brass to fight in fact Owen ran out of patience with camera he enlisted and went off to fight the Japanese himself as luck would have us he left the gun with a local engineering company and somehow they convinced the Minister for defence that it was exactly what the diggers needed you can see for yourselves the guns are all right if we made them for killing Japs I'm quite sure the IAS will be satisfied some say that the owen gun was the greatest morale booster the australian army ever had grateful soldiers call it the diggers darling and we kept using it until the Vietnam War thanks mr. Owen that's what the boys have been waiting for - that machine gun in the but Evelyn Owen was an inventor and not a businessman he never took out a patent on his design so he didn't make a penny from his remarkable gun but this bloke was different John Pomeroy was quick to take out a patent when he invented the world's first exploding book way back in 1902 when the British adopted it to shoot down German Zeppelin's during their bombing raids in World War one Pomeroy collected 25,000 pounds in royalties and back then that was a fortune Pomeroy was actually a Kiwi but he had the good sense to move to Melbourne and so we now claim him as one of ours life in the lab can be a lonely occupation but if you want the world to pick up your bright idea you must have passion and perseverance many professors have asked me how many tens of thousands of symbols have you invented and they say only 50 and they're only pictorial little pictures and were these symbols I combined them to thousands of on thousands of minutes and here are the most simple one the maoist the eye the ear the nose nose and mouth is faced charles bliss was definitely a man with a mission and a different kind of inventor a concentration camp prisoner during World War two he believed that much of the trouble he'd seen in his native Europe came from a misunderstanding of language so when Charles came to settle in Australia in 1946 he gave up his career as a chemical engineer and he devoted himself to the creation of his universal language he slugged away year after year with more ridicule and recognition finally Charles cashed in his life savings and borrowed from friends to make his invention public the Sun shines the more shows the star shows or drinkers miss Louis's wife Claire was given the job of explaining the husband's magnificent obsession to the rest of the world and then clear growth over 6,000 letters to six towers educators in the whole world know us only a few a blessed few like beckoned Russell and Julian Huxley these few great men acknowledge the value of my work they gave me the courage to carry one the breakthrough finally came in the late 60s after 20 years of tireless work mr. bliss received a special invitation to the Toronto Centre for disabled children in Canada children who had never been able to communicate we're using blesser symbols to reach other human beings for the very first time so what are you going to do tonight tell me hmm you'd like a letter hmm what would you do with the letter if you had it carry uh-huh you give it you give it to mom and dad thank you mr. bliss from the little children students of Samantha and then I was so happy there and I stare played my under leaning towards and jokes no tricks and juggling before them and they now Bend laughing love that hello Charles bliss died in 1995 but his universal symbols live on in 33 countries amongst people who's normally speak 17 different languages and today they speak as one well Charles bliss and others tonight have shown that with most good ideas or inventions you have to back them up with plenty of perseverance and a lot of luck too often in our century good Australian brain waves have gone offshore giving fortunes and factories to someone else like this remarkable black box flight recorder now believe it or not this invention was rejected it was rejected by the Australian Department of Civil Aviation and by the our double air so guess what happened it was picked up and sold around the world by British and American companies just one in a long green and gold line of good ideas that flew the coop yeah for all the memories and images of the past 100 years be sure to get your copy of the our century book available wherever good books are sold and he relaxes to demonstrate the self-emptying ashtray simply flick the ash into the tray and it falls

Channel: wayne hope

Views: 114,683

Rating: 4.698225 out of 5

Keywords: inventions, nfsa australia, film australia, victa, victa lawnmowers

Id: wF8Stmp-ZJo

Length: 21min 20sec (1280 seconds)

Published: Tue Nov 20 2012

Reddit Comments

[u/YOURE_A_RUNT_BOY]

“You can see for yourself the guns are alright, but we made them for killing Japs”.

That was unexpected.