Famous South African Inventions

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Famous South African Inventions

Famous South African Inventions make a difference in the lives of people around the world. Proudly South African. In no particular order, these inventions had and still have a positive impact. These inventions as well as the inventors are proudly South African.

CAT scans

Also known as a CT scan is used in diagnostic medicine, The 1979 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine was awarded jointly to South African-American physicist Allan M. Cormack and British electrical engineer Godfrey N. Hounsfield for their life changing and life changing machine.

Heart transplant

Dr. Christiaan Barnard did the first successful human to human heart transplant on 3 December 1967. Although other Doctors also experimented with heart transplants this was the first successful human transplant. A young girl Denise walked across the street to buy a birthday cake when she was struck by a car. The recipient of her heart was a 53 year old man Louis. He lived for 18 days after the transplant due to pneumonia.

Dolosse

Dolosse are reinforced concrete blocks that are scattered across coastlines around the world. Before dolosse big concrete blocks were used with limited success. In 1963 East London harbour engineer Eric Mowbray Merrifield and draughtsman Aubrey Kruger came up with the design of the dolosse. The blocks, have an odd shape that allows them to interlock with time and when they are used in great numbers they protect breakwaters, groynes and harbours walls from the erosive force of the sea.

Kreepy Krauly

Ferdinand Chauvier, a refugee watched his son in 1951 struggling to sell pool cleaning products. The clients kept complaining about the quality of the products. Ferdinand was a qualified hydraulics engineer and so he designed the kreepy krauly pool assistant with astounding success.

Pratley’s Putty

In 1948 George “Monty” Pratley founded the adhesive company that would go on and file more than 350 patents worldwide. Sam Matlebe and Donald Cock was the first employees and stayed with the company until retirement. Prattle Putty was the first of its type in the world. It had also been used on one of the American space modules to land on the moon. Pratley Putty was also used in a repair of the Golden Gate Bridge spanning the San Francisco Bay. In South Africa the holes in two sunken ships were repaired with the adhesive, which sets under water.

Electric game-drive vehicles

Japie van Niekerk; a rally car driver used the frame of existing vehicles and electric Tesla batteries to create a silent safari vehicle. Cliff Barker is also heavily involved in building his prototype out of an existing diesel-powered vehicle. The concept is relatively new and have already made a huge impact on the environment as well as the experience of tourists.

Oil from coal (Sasol)

The world seems to be evolved around oil and gas. So it comes at no surprise that South Africa a country that had large deposits of coal, where looking into energy types. If this coal could be used to produce synthetic oil, petrol, and diesel fuel, it perhaps would have significant benefit to South Africa. In the 1920s, P. N. Lategan, was the driving force behind this. SASOL has operations in 33 countries and are the 7th largest coal mining company in the world.

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