Noel Desmond Gray

Noel Desmond Gray (G I R E) (December 26 1920 - November 1999) worked as a Australian radio and television engineer (3) During WW2 he was trained in RADAR and became a senior RADAR Artificer. (3) Based upon his ambition and background in medicine and electronics he founded (3) the Australian medical electronics company Telectronics. This has been acknowledged as the first successful High-Technology company in Australia. (15)

Early life

Gray was born to Hilda Alice Gray and Joseph Albert Gray on Boxing Day 1920 in Crookwell, New South Wales, Australia. He was the great grandson of George H Hedger who was widely regarded as the original for the Banjo Patterson poem "The Man From Snowy River".{1} Gray grew up for a time on his grandfather's farm 'Middle View' because everywhere you looked you viewed the Snowey(sic) River near Dalgety, New South Wales on the Snowy River. His grandfather had visited New York with his mother Caroline Hedger when she travelled there by sailing ship to sell some property she inherited from her mother.

He attended Sydney Technical School and after passing the intermediate certificate he was employed as a wirer for radio manufacturers AWA Australia and then Kreisler Australasia.

World War II

During World War 2 he was trained at the Army School of Radio Physics, whereupon he became a radar technician and Senior Radar Artificer. He also attended No. 6 OCTU. (Officer Cadet Training Unit) but was discharged with the rank of sergeant. He helped to install the radar defences on Rottnest Island for Western Australia and was a radar artificer at Exmouth Gulf.[1] He worked on the first US designed RADAR unit and converted it to an early defence RADAR (3) that he used during the Coral Sea Battle to direct bombers from Amberly to and from the battle. (3) He volunteered for a secret mission by US submarine to listen to Japanese radio and RADAR signals on an island in Japanese held territory. (this is secret but was stated by Noel Gray when alive) He ended his war service at LHQ Melbourne. There is no way of verifying by way of refference to secret events during WW2 and I think it is insulting to suggest that one is needed.

Post War Education

After the War his passes in the University Entrance Exam and Leaving Certificates gained him entry to the University of Sydney in medicine and in 1948 he began to study to become a doctor. After passing the first year of the degree he became interested in the electrical workings of the human body and was given laboratory space to perform his own experiments by his mentor. His mentor was the late Professor of Physiology, Frank Cotton (3) who gained public notoriety in 1949 when he selected a rowing eight by experiment on his rowing ergometers in his lab at Sydney University (3) and the University won the New South Wales championship for the first time in 40 years after a short training period on the water. Gray made the cardiac rate monitor (3) called a "cardio-chronomiter" by Professor Cotton for these experiments. His classmates included Dr Lou Bernstein who was to become a senior cardiologist at the Royal Prince Alfred Hospital in Sydney and who co-wrote a paper on Telectronics early commercially available Artificial pacemakers (P4 and P5) and trans-veneous leads. Also Professor Sir Gustaff Nossal was a classmate.

He did not complete his studies and married Beth Simes in 1950 and after working on the RADAR for Sydney's Kingsford Smith airport for the Department of Civil Aviation and the Metropolitan Water Sewerage & Drainage Board he returned to work for the Phillips(sic) subsidiary Kreisler in 1952. Initially he was employed as the sole design engineer on a secret project for the Long Range Weapons Establishment.(3) He then designed and developed printed circuit boards (though he never claimed to have invented them) that were used in a production run of 24 mantle radios and a number of patents were taken out on his work. (3) The radio was the Kriesler Duplex which was double fronted. Innovations to printed circuit technology included, Double-sided copper laminated phenolic resin sheet, point to point connection between both sides of a double-sided PCB, electroplating copper laminate to improve solder flow, photo-etch system for PC boards using photosensitive flux film technology, a system of flow soldering PC boards using a standing wave in a molton solder bath to eliminate hand soldering. He also experimented in resign encapsulation of various electronic devices including making an implantable pacemaker using torch batteries and a simple flip-flop circuit in the 50's he made the P1 pacemaker. (Recollections of his former Kriesler engineers and collegues) Following a world study tour in 1956 and a long visit to Phillips NV in Holland where he introduced the printed circuit technology to Phillips (Suported by collegues and physical evidence ie PCBs) he returned home, joined the Management Committee and chose to be National Service Manager. (3) Philips wanted him to stay and develop his ideas on medical electronics for them but he resigned in 1959 to have a go himself. (3) To help fund his plan he started a specialist TV repair business (6) and was a founder of ESA later TESA. (Television Electronics Services Association) (3)

He developed an ambition to start a medical electronics business at University working with Professor Cotton and although media stories have credited others with starting it he began his long term plans and after leaving Kreisler in 1959. To help finance his ambitions he began trading as Television Electronic Services in 1961 and changed the name to Telectronics in 1962. (3)

Media Stories

• "Heart of the Industry" Australian Geographic, "In 1958 two American engineers produced the first implantable pacemaker and two years later (1960), Keith Jeffcoat (then a technical journalist with Electronics Australia) and Geoff Wickham began research into pacemakers, forming a company called Telectronics." (11)
• "Life-saver that was born over a noodle shop" The Age Newspaper article of June 2 1986, "Mr Trainor is the genial but imaginative founder and chairman of Telectronics".
• "Keeping Pace" The Bulletin Brian Hoad, "In 1963 when Wickham was first drawn into this "esoteric" area of engineering, pacemakers were unreliable........Wickham was acting as "unpaid honorary advised" on biological engineering to the Royal Prince Alfred Hospital, Sydney. In collaboration with a leading heart surgeon of the day and backed with a grant from the National Heart Foundation he setup a research program in developing cardiac pacemakers at Telectronics"

These stories and others contributed to his lack of recognition. However he was widely known and respected within the medical profession when he was working as a director of Telectronics and in the electronics industry both here and in Holland.

He was however partially recognised in one Bulletin article in 1976

"When Wickham and Gray began working in this area in 1963 they were dissatisfied with the performance and life span of the models then available mainly from Britain, the US and Sweden".(12)

He started operating as Television Electronic Services in 1961 and Telectronics in 1962 and the company was incorporated in 1963 with three directors and he was Managing Director and Chairman. This was Australia's first successful high-tech company manufacturing Defibrillators, Cardiac Monitors and Totally Implantable Cardiac Pacemakers.

Noel Gray was the only member of the company who had worked as an electronics design engineer with a medical background at tertiary level at Telectronics. (8) (9)

As he paid the bills and was Managing Director and Chairman and the fact that he was employed as a design engineer at Kreisler and had already contributed design innovations at that company at which he worked from 1952 until 1959, he contributed design ideas at Telectronics as well.

Due to his skills he was also invited on to the Boards of Scientific and General Pty Limited and Nucleus Holdings Pty Limited and later became a shareholder and director of Ausonics an ultrasound imaging company. Nucleus became a registered shareholder of Telectronics in January 1968, and in 1969 Noel and Beth Gray converted their loans to Telectronics to shares making the Grays the largest shareholders and financial supporters. (3) The conversion of debt to equity made Telectronics more financially secure and a more acceptable risk for lenders (the banks) and this should not be overlooked in Telectronics formative years as it was difficult to raise funds and there was a credit squeeze on at the time in Australia.

Retirement

Having sold his shares first to Wickham and Nucleus for $2.36 per share in 1974 and then to Synthelabo in 1975 and 1978 for $190 and $230 respectively his percentage shareholding had fallen below what was required to sit on the board in 1978. He was forced to resign as a director of Telectronics Pty Limited and sold his remaining shareholding to Nucleus Limited in 1981 after having lent back to Telectronics a substantial part of the proceeds of sale of his other shares to Telectronics. Nucleus Holdings became registered shareholders in January 1968 after Telectronics had developed a range of Defibrillators, Cardiac Monitors and Implantable Pacemakers and was selling them through their selling agents Ramsay Surgical. (3)

During his retirement he was granted five US patents covering a Leadless Apical Cardiac Pacemaker including a method patent number US 6,144,879. Studies are encouraging. One acute study showed pacing the left ventricular apex to be the optimal place to pace a heart in children overcoming the problem of pacemaker imposed left bundle branch block caused by pacing from the right ventricular apex. (7) Noel Gray's method involves positioning and pacing a heart from the cardiac apex epicardially so that a uniform excitation pattern is achieved and a more normal apex to base pattern is returned. Improvements to cardiac function of paced hearts using this method may offer a solution to deterioration of function that current studies have identified occurs from chronic right ventricular pacing.

Vindication

A recent US animal study found;

"In the mature canine, epicardial biventricular pacing was superior to single-site ventricular pacing from the right ventricular apex (RVA) and left ventricular apex (LVA). The biventricular combination of RVA and LVA was the most beneficial pacing modality"(14)

This study supports claims disclosed in the Gray method patent US 6,144,879 that selecting or positioning pacing pacing electrodes on the apex of a heart and pacing from at least one of a plurality of electrodes positioned about the apical area of a heart delivers a more physiologically correct pattern of excitation to the ventricles.

Noel Desmond Gray died November 1999 leaving his wife Beth daughter Robyn and son Christopher.

References

1. Monaro Mercury 3 August 1912 - "Death of George H Hedger"
2. Service and Casualty Form N D Gray NX 102216
3. Telectronics the Early Years, 1963, ISBN 064615134 , N D Gray C J Gray
4. Hoad, B.; "Keeping Pace", The Bulletin, 1973 March 31
5. Haselhurst D.; "Sydney Makes the Heart Pace", The Bulletin, 1976, June 26
6. Mingay's Weekly, Nov 27, 1959
7. Acute Hemodynamic Benefit of Left Ventricular Apex Pacing in Children, Vanagt W, Prinzen F, et al., Ann Thorac Surg 2005;79:932-6.
8. University of Sydney examination records Noel d Gray 1948-50.
9. Graduate Institution of Radio Engineers
10. Letters of Caroline Hedger
11. "Heart of the Industry", Howard Whelan, Australian Geographic Vol 1 No 4 Oct/Dec 1986;89
12. "Sydney makes the heart pace" David Haselhurst, The Bulletin, June 26, 1976
13. www.st.net.au/~dunn/ausarmy/3ac2ard.htm
14. Patricio A Frias, MD, EP Lad Digest Vol 5 - Issue 9 (Sept 2005)
15. Applied Economics and Australian Business, 10th Edition, Rayomond Bennett, P 81

16 Corporate Affairs Records for Telectroics Pty Limited 17 Taxation records for Telectronics 18 Books for Telectronics