Edward Hope Kirkby They are buried together at Waverley Cemetery. So ended a life of invention largely unrecognised as biographers of George Taylor and Archibald Shaw claimed all the credit for them for Kirkby’s endeavours. Edward Hope Kirkby was a jeweler watchmaker in Williamstown who eventually became a manufacturing electrician making systems of fire protection, in 1908 he invented and patented the first automatic sprinkler alarm. He is first recorded as experimenting with X-ray in September 1896 This is only 9 months after Roentgen presented his discovery of X-rays. He is reported as experimenting with the medical staff at Williamstown Hospital later that
Multiple discovery Multiple discovery The concept of multiple discovery (also known as simultaneous invention) is the hypothesis that most scientific discoveries and inventions are made independently and more or less simultaneously by multiple scientists and inventors. The concept of multiple discovery opposes a traditional view—the "heroic theory" of invention and discovery. When Nobel laureates are announced annually—especially in physics, chemistry, physiology, medicine, and economics—increasingly, in the given field, rather than just a single laureate, there are two, or the maximally permissible three, who often have independently made the same discovery. Historians and sociologists have remarked on the occurrence, in science, of "multiple