Lightning Arrestor

This is reported to be a Lightning arrester used to stop lightning designed and patented by Charles Todd, the superintendent of electric telegraph from 1855. It is designed to prevent strikes breaking communication along telegraph lines. Lightning arresters provided protection against the high charges of static electricity that often built up on long stretches of line. New techniques were introduced as far as possible - to constantly improve the communication - however the distances between points inhibited major changes. Presented to the Art Gallery of South Australia by H. W. Marshall in 1912. It was later transferred to the History Trust of South Australia and forms part of the Historical Relics Collection.

Charles Todd was one of the most notable public servants of Australia in the nineteenth century. Superintendent of Telegraphs, Government Astronomer, Postmaster-General, meteorologist and engineer, he served his adopted state unstintingly for more than fifty years. He is best remembered for the telegraph. Having completed the Adelaide-to-Port Adelaide line, Todd then joined Adelaide and Melbourne (1858), Adelaide and Sydney (1867), and in August 1872 completed the monumental Overland Telegraph Line from Darwin to Adelaide. Accomplished in two years over country traversed by Europeans only once before, the 2,000-mile-long single wire, supported on 36,000 wooden poles, connected Australia with Britain and thereby cut communication time from months to hours. The line to Eucla was completed in 1877, joining Adelaide and Perth. Much of the history of astronomy, meteorology and telegraphs in South Australia is contained in Todd’s reports to parliament between 1856 and 1900.