51 Facts About Norman Selfe

Norman Selfe was an Australian engineer, naval architect, inventor, urban planner and outspoken advocate of technical education.

Norman Selfe introduced new refrigeration, hydraulic, electrical and transport systems.

Decades before the Sydney Harbour Bridge was built, the city came close to building a Norman Selfe-designed steel cantilever bridge across the harbour after he won the second public competition for a bridge design.

Norman Selfe was energetically involved in organisations such as the Sydney Mechanics' School of Arts and the Australian Historical Society.

Norman Selfe was acknowledged upon his death as one of the best-known people in, and greatest individual influences upon, the city of Sydney.

Norman Selfe came from a long line of inventors and engineers.

Norman Selfe's father Henry was a plumber and inventor, whose high-pressure fire-fighting hose was displayed at The Great Exhibition in London's Crystal Palace in 1851.

The Selfe family landed at Sydney's Semi-circular Quay in January 1855, when Norman was 15 years old.

Norman Selfe later recalled the success of Pluto, one of his dredges purchased by the government:.

Norman Selfe achieved international recognition in 1861 when leading British journal The Engineer published illustrations of his designs for one of the first refrigerating machines.

Norman Selfe became an international authority on refrigeration engineering; he wrote articles and eventually a definitive textbook on the subject, published in the US in 1900.

Norman Selfe left Mort's in 1877 to practise as a consulting engineer at 141 Pitt Street, gaining a reputation for versatility and originality.

Norman Selfe designed the hulls or the machinery for some 50 steam vessels, including two torpedo boats for the New South Wales government, which he claimed were the fastest boats on the harbour for 20 years, and the SS Wallaby, Sydney Harbour's first double-ended screw ferry.

Norman Selfe designed the first concrete quay wall in Sydney Harbour, and wharves for deep-sea vessels.

Norman Selfe designed the first ice-making machines in New South Wales, introduced the first lifts, patented an improved system of baling wool which increased capacity fourfold, and oversaw hydraulic and electric light installations in the city and the carriages on its railway network.

Norman Selfe planned mills, waterworks and pumping stations, including the high-level pumps at the reservoir on Crown Street.

Norman Selfe had been president of both the Australian mechanical engineers' and naval architects' institutes as well as a member of both the British equivalent organisations.

Norman Selfe was elected a full member of the English Institution of Civil Engineers and, by virtue of his writings being published in Chicago, an honorary member of an American engineering association.

Norman Selfe's obituary in the Sydney Morning Herald noted, "Mr Selfe for over twenty years was a strenuous advocate of a circular city railway that should connect up the eastern, western, and northern suburbs of the city with the marine suburbs of the harbour, and stations adjacent to the ferries".

Norman Selfe published plans and proposals elaborating on his ideas, and produced major articles with titles like "Sydney: past, present and possible" and "Sydney and its institutions, as they are, and might be from an engineer's point of view".

In 1887 Norman Selfe published proposals for a city underground railway, with stations at Wynyard, the Rocks and Circular Quay, and a loop to Woolloomooloo and the eastern suburbs.

Norman Selfe presented these schemes to the Royal Commission on City and Suburban Railways in 1890; but nothing was to come of it, largely because the 1890s depression brought public works initiatives to a standstill.

Norman Selfe's proposals included an overhead railway station at Circular Quay and major landscaping works at Belmore Park opposite Central Railway Station.

In 1908, Norman Selfe presented new proposals based upon the old design to the Royal Commission on Communication between Sydney and North Sydney.

Norman Selfe was founding vice-president of the Australian Historical Society in 1901, serving with president Andrew Houison and patron David Scott Mitchell.

Early papers delivered by Norman Selfe included "A century of Sydney Cove" and "Some notes on the Sydney windmills".

Norman Selfe was a key figure in the history of technical education in New South Wales.

Norman Selfe advocated a more utilitarian and less literary education system, to produce a skilled workforce that could realise Australia's potential as an efficient industrial state.

Norman Selfe believed an overhaul of education was needed, from kindergarten to tertiary study.

Norman Selfe saw technical education as a distinct sphere of education to be administered and delivered by people with practical industry experience, not government officials or traditional teachers.

In 1870, Norman Selfe helped found the Engineering Association of New South Wales which amalgamated into Engineers Australia in 1919.

Norman Selfe was its president from 1877 to 1879 and Engineers Australia annually awards the "Norman Selfe Medal" to a student at the Australian Maritime College.

In 1880, Norman Selfe became vice president of the School of Arts.

Norman Selfe supported the school's Working Men's College, but felt a more thorough focus on practical skills was needed.

Norman Selfe rejected the non-technical, non-practical approach of the school's model and campaigned instead for the establishment of a proper institute of technical education, where instructors would be skilled tradesmen with practical industrial experience.

Norman Selfe pushed for the expansion of technical education facilities into the suburban and regional districts.

On 1 August 1883 the New South Wales government made a proclamation which transferred control of the Technical and Working Men's College to an independent Board of Technical Education, to which Norman Selfe was appointed, and assumed financial responsibility directly.

Norman Selfe was president of the Board from January 1887 until it was disbanded in 1889.

Norman Selfe strongly opposed the government's taking control of technical education, which had been underway since the government first declared its interest in doing so at a special meeting of the Sydney Mechanics School of Arts in September 1883.

Norman Selfe did not support an alternative proposal that the University of Sydney should take over.

Norman Selfe criticised the classical liberal arts education offered at the University of Sydney as elitist.

Norman Selfe was a noted activist for the Federation of Australia being a member of the Central Federation League.

When Norman Selfe obtained a steady job after his apprenticeship, he brought his family with him from The Rocks to live at Balmain.

On 10 October 1872 at St Mary's Church, Balmain Norman Selfe married Emily Ann Booth, the daughter of John Booth, a well-known shipbuilder and Balmain's first mayor.

In 1885 Norman Selfe bought land in Ashfield and designed a grand house called Amesbury.

Around 1894, the family moved, this time to Hornsby Shire, where a new Norman Selfe-designed house, Gilligaloola, was built on 11 acres purchased by Norman Selfe ten years earlier.

On 12 May 1906, four years after the death of his first wife, Norman Selfe married Marion Bolton at St Philip's Church, Sydney.

However, other reports suggest that Norman Selfe was concealing a bitter sense of disappointment at the end of his life, most particularly over the Harbour Bridge affair.

Norman Selfe's funeral was held at St Paul's Church, Wahroonga, where he had been a churchwarden.

Norman Selfe was buried in Gore Hill cemetery in the presence of a large gathering of businessmen and representatives of the organisations he had been involved with.

Norman Selfe was survived by his two daughters from his first marriage, Rhoda and Norma, and his second wife, Marion.