Some said he was talented. Others said he was a genius. One man declared he was an epochmaker. All three were right.

James Harrison , a printer's devil out of Scotland, became an epochmaker in world refrigeration, a field which ranks with the invention of the steam engine, as one of the forces, which have shaped our civilisation.

Harrison's genius took him from Geelong in far away colonial Victoria, where he had conceived and built a refrigerator, to London's sophisticated steam engineering in 1856. In 1857, he gave industry its first successful large-scale commercial ice-making machines and by 1861, there were units bearing his name from Europe to Peru, and from Argentina to Australia.

In 1840 he became the foundation editor of the Geelong Advertiser. As a collegue of John Pascoe Fawkner, he was witness to early Victorian history.

His greatest talent led to his 53 years of highly competent journalism in Victoria and England, which included 27 years with David Syme's newspapers, the Age and the Leader, during which he developed a flair for popular science, meeting as he did with John Tindall, Michael Faraday, Charles Darwin and others.

In 1872 he returned to Geelong, and at Point Henry experimented with solar salt evaporation rates, considering the possibilities of sodium carbonate manufacture.


For more information on James Harrison see Books Folder: James Harrison: Refrigeration Pioneer by Brian Roberts. Includes index.

Includes bibliographical references.