A D V E N T U R E S in C Y B E R S O U N DHenry Sutton : 1856 - 1914
In 1885, Australian Henry Sutton improved on Paul Nipkow's disk devising what he called his Telephane system - the first real television proposal which involved scanning, synchronising, a light sensitive cell and a control valve (vacuum tube) but no vision signal amplifiers.
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Henry Sutton (b. Sept 3, 1856, d. 1914, Ballarat), grew up in the Victorian goldfield town of Ballarat where his father Richard had settled in 1853. "Seeking amusment in his tent at night he set about constructing a concertina, a device invented in England by Charles Wheatstone, the 'father' of the telegraph" This was the beginnings of Sutton's Music Emplorium which traded in Melbourne for over the next 100 years. By the time Henry Sutton was 14...
"he had read every book on science and engineering in the library of the Mechanics Institute ...and before reaching 25 had invented a new type of lead storage battery, a torpedo, a colour printing process, telegraph facsimile and a method of using gas and water pipes for signalling. And working in the isolation of Ballarat far from the company of other scientists and technicians, completely ignorant of Thomas Edison's work, Sutton invented a carbon filement lamp. Sadly Edison had invented the same device just 16 days earlier".A brief account of Alexander Graham Bell's telephone in the Scientific American was sufficient to enable Sutton to devise 20 different types of telephone, and to install probably "Australia's first telephone line" between the music emplorium and the warehouse. "Shortly thereafter Bell visited Ballarat, where he was truly astonished by Sutton's achievements". Later and from Wither's History of Ballarat of 1887...
"Mr Sutton has designed but not yet constructed, an apparatus by which he hopes to be able to see here in Ballarat, by the aid of electicity, the race for the Melbourne Cup".  Henry Sutton's Telephane System of 1885 The Telegraphic Journal and Electrical Review, November 7, 1890 Download a larger version of this image
The diagram refers specifically to the use of a Nipkow Disk (patented in 1884) for scanning so Sutton was obviously aware of Paul Nipkow's work but he predated by three decades the development of mechanically scanned systems by John Logie Baird. As we now know, Baird's system was rendered obsolete by fully electronic systems, and Sutton's version would have been no more successful. But Baird in the 1920's may well have been influenced by Sutton's publication in 1890. If Baird can be described as the "father of Television" then Sutton would have to be one of the grandfathers. (Australian) Amateur Radio, Feb. 1996, pp12/13 Another little known Australian innovation was the telephane - the forerunner of the television. It was invented by Henry Sutton in Ballarat, Victoria in 1885, three years before the birth of Scotsman John Logie Baird, who made use of Sutton's patent just before World War II. Sutton devised it to transmit the running of the Melbourne Cup horse-race in Melbourne, to the town of Ballarat. It did not have a screen, and the viewer had to look into a hole at the end of a long tube. Sutton's method of signal transfer involved the use of telegraph lines, which could not handle the amount of data required for high resolution pictures. Had the radio been invented before this, Sutton's telephane could perhaps have been more successful.
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