A.W. Dobbie an eclectic inventive wonder – building earliest phone and phonograph – of 19th Century Adelaide
A.W. Dobbie and the Gawler Place, Adelaide, shopfront of his factory. Inset: The phonograph he built in 1878.
Alexander Williamson Dobbie was dubbed “Adelaide's Edison” for his 19th Century inventiveness as one of South Australia’s most eclectic and prolific figures as a brass founder, engineer, lecturer, mesmerist, businessman, florist and travel writer.
Dobbie arrived as a boy with his family in 1851 at Port Adelaide from Glasgow where he was born. The son of a skilled engineer, Dobbie was schooled at James Bath’s North Adelaide school until 14. He was apprenticed in 1858 to machinist and brass founder G.E. Schwan of Gawler Place, Adelaide.
Already deeply interested in scientific magazines, Dobbie spent much of his spare time grinding malachite for jewellery and, after hearing a lecture by Botanic Gardens director George Francis, began modelling fruit and flowers in wax. This gave him extra money to buy appliances including a lathe.
Whether Dobbie finished his apprenticeship is uncertain but he opened his own business in Gawler Place at 19 in 1862. Always adding products such as sewing machine sales/repairs and electroplating, the A.W. Dobbie foundry became well known for farm and home iron goods.
The business won a silver medal at the exhibition with the 1867 visit by Prince Alfred who used a Dobbie brass level to lay the foundation stone for Adelaide GPO building’s Victoria Tower. His factory also made highly-finished brass “church furniture” such as crosses and candlesticks.
From 1874, Dobbie built the first of several telescopes from instructions in English Mechanic magazine. His second – the largest privately-owned telescope in Australia – took 11 years to complete at his College Park home, with a 12.5 inches diameter reflector.
A visit to the United States during the 1876 Philadelphia Exposition enthused Dobbie about American technology and he began selling US “tools, novelties and general machinery”. Dobbie developed and made farm machinery and a patented broadcast seed sower plus patents for pumps and chaffcutters in 1877.
Absorbing principles behind Alexander Graham Bell’s telephone, Dobbie developed similar instruments (believed to be the southern hemisphere’s first) that he and telegraph superintendent general Charles Todd showed at an Adelaide Philosophical Society exhibition at Adelaide Town Hall in 1878. That year Dobbie also built a phonograph from designs in the Scientific American magazine. He also experimented with microphones.
Dobbie became wealthy with moves such as a foundry in time to fulfil a supply contract for Adelaide expanding water system. Dobbie & Co. began making its their own Standard bicycles around 1895 and later Dobbico radios. He also imported goods from pianos to cream separators.
In 1895, Dobbie showed projected stereoscopic images using red and green filters on the two oxy-hydrogen projectors. The next year he demonstrated x-ray photography with Adelaide University professor William Bragg who jointly woin the 1915 Nobel Prize with his son for his x-ray work on crystals. Dobbie also experimented with the “audiphones” allowing some deaf persons to hear by amplified sound transmitted through the teeth.
Dobbie belonged to the Methodist Church but from 1878 became interested in hypnosis and the clairvoyant. He wrote about his 1870s-80s world trips and toured India in 1893–94 and New Guinea and South Pacific islands in 1899 when he contracted malaria and never fully recovered.
