South Africa's 40 Top Inventions

In his book What a Great Idea! Awesome South African Inventions, Mike Bruton examines the immediate and long-term impact and disruptive effect of local ingenuity

- Mike Bruton

1CAT scanner: The coinvention of the CAT scanner by South Africa’s first nuclear physicist, Alan Cormack, and Godfrey Hounsfield of EMI in England, in 1972, earned them the Nobel Prize for Medicine in 1979. This instrument, which takes 3D x-rays of the body, is used in every major hospital worldwide and is also used widely in industry.

2 Oil-from-coal technology: The Sasol oil-from-coal plant in Sasolburg, which came on stream in 1955, is the most advanced such facility in the world. In addition to producing fuel, it produces many valuable by-products, including bitumen (tar), light alcohols, solvents such as acetone, and polymers from which plastics can be made.

3 Oil-from-gas technology: The PetroSA oil-from-gas refinery established near Mossel Bay in 1992 is the most advanced and largest gas-to-liquid refinery in the world and produces some of Earth’s cleanest fuels.

4 Digital laser: Dr Sandile  Ngcobo defied the odds when he invented the world’s first digital laser in 2013 in competition with some of the largest laboratories in the world.

5 Radio tellurometer: In 1954,  South Africa’s most prolific inventor, Trevor Wadley, developed the radio tellurometer, which became the most accurate distance measuring instrument in the world for over 30 years, until it was replaced by the infrared tellurometer, also invented by a South African, Dick Holscher. Tellurometers were used worldwide for surveying but have now been replaced by GPSes.