The Henry Sutton Podcast

A new development causes Henry to revisit his idea to broadcast the Melbourne Cup to Ballarat. His new role as a teacher causes some disquiet at the School of Mines - and a journey to London results in a meeting and world-first experiment with Nikola Tesla.

Henry Sutton died in 1912, aged 57 - but at the time he was working on an invention which brought together nearly all the ideas, innovations and theories he'd had since a teenager. His biographer Lorayne Branch points out the exact moment when he is written out of history, and updates the mission to restore his name and reputation.

Henry returns from London inspired by his meeting with Nikola Tesla, and sets to work on a wireless system that results in trouble with Australia's largest government department and a surprise call to the US Navy. Meanwhile, Henry pursues ideas in two new industries that are dawning - the motorcar and the bicycle.

Alexander Graham Bell gets the credit for the telephone, and Thomas Edison the light bulb - but it was Henry who designed the modern handset, and the process for mass manufacturing light bulbs. Also revealed: the Sutton battery that changed the world - and could have made Henry Sutton very rich... except for one major reason.

The Suttons move to the goldfields of Ballarat and pitch their tent at Bakery Hill, not long before the battle of the Eureka Stockade. Nine months later young Henry is born, homeschooled in the family's music store workshop before discovering the local library... He starts in the footsteps of Leonardo Da Vinci, and by the time he is 14, conceives of television 40 years ahead of John Logie Baird and invents the first electric motor. Sound credit: Eureka Stockade, starring Chips Rafferty (1948)

A 15 year journey to find the real story of the man who proposed a television broadcast in 1885; the same man who devised and installed the world's first telephone network, and who - maybe - transmitted an MMS image with his friend Nikola Tesla in 1892.

This is the story of a meeting with Henry Sutton's great-grand daughter Lorayne Branch in 2009, and the hunt to uncover the facts and the truth about a man who made discoveries and innovations that paved the way for modern technology.