Significant inventions do not necessarily result in great profit for the inventors. James Harrison, of Geelong, Victoria, was such a case, who, in the course of his work as a newspaper editor and publisher, had noted how cleaning the typefaces of the press with ether, resulted in a great cooling effect. His invention of commercial refrigeration that followed went largely unnoticed, and cost him dearly. 

Born the son of a Scottish fisherman, at Dumbarton, in 1816, he became apprenticed to a Glasgow printer. Following this, he travelled, firstly on a collier to London in 1835, where he gained work as a compositor for Tegg & Co., at Cheapside, but he was soon attracted to Australia. He travelled in steerage to Sydney, in 1837, where he published The Literary News, edited by William a’Beckett. During 1838, he became involved with the production of The Monitor prior to moving to Melbourne in 1839, where he found employment with John Pascoe Fawkner, the publisher of the Port Phillip Patriot. Fawkner despatched him to Geelong in 1840, with some old printing machinery, to found the Geelong Advertiser newspaper there. 

By 1841, he was the proprietor and was prospering. The discovery of gold at