In his seminal book You Can’t Win ’em All, the late Bob Norman concluded with a reflection that serves as a manifesto for New Zealand engineering: “Design has always been my life. It starts with a dream and concludes with another small step forward in our engineering legacy.”
For Norman, a legend in the annals of New Zealand public works, this heritage was built on three immutable objectives: economy, utility, and grace. Economy, because technology must offer choices and an understanding of consequences. Utility, because research equips us to understand the demands placed on our creations. And finally, that intangible quality—grace. As Norman poignantly asked, “For what profit a society if its engineers, architects and builders meet all the other needs, but fail to produce objects of delight?”
Born in 1923, Norman was a man described as an unusual mix: an engineer committed to the utility of technology, yet an environmentalist acutely aware of the planet’s limited resources. He was intelligent, direct, and uncompromising—often a thorn in the side of government ministers—but his contributions to the nation were foundational. He began his career with the Ministry of Works in 1950, part of a generation returning from World War II. “We came back after 18 months service in the Army,” Norman recalled, “and people don’t realise that they lost the services of 140,000 people who were on active service, and that was the dent in the intellectual capital that the country had been denied.”
Despite this deficit, Norman and his contemporaries rebuilt the nation. They took a narrow-gauge railway system, designed to cope with the rugged New Zealand terrain, and turned it into a world-class network. Their crowning glory was the AB steam locomotive. Designed and built by Kiwi engineers, the AB led the world for 50 years as the most efficient locomotive ever designed in terms of raw bar pull per pound of steam.
Norman’s philosophy of “grace” was practically applied in his advocacy for “incremental launching” in bridge building—extruding a bridge across a gap without scaffolding. It was a method that ensured high quality, aesthetics, and minimal environmental disruption. It was the epitome of the Kiwi engineer: a job completed ahead of schedule, below budget, and to a standard far better than ever achieved previously.
From the Earth to the Stars
While Norman was conquering the New Zealand landscape, another Kiwi was conquering the heavens. Sir William Pickering, born in Wellington in 1910, attended the same primary school as Ernest Rutherford before making his way to the California Institute of Technology (CalTech). While Norman was dealing with the Ministry of Works, Pickering was setting his career in orbit as the director of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL).
Pickering is one of New Zealand’s most famous scientific sons, yet his work often operated in the classified shadows of the Cold War. By 1965, he commanded a staff of 4,000 and a budget of $200 million, responsible for the unmanned satellites and space probes that paved the way for astronauts.
He was not alone. Douglas Mudgway, an Auckland-born contemporary of Pickering, grew up in poverty but rose to play a key role in the exploration of the universe. Mudgway was awarded NASA’s Exceptional Service Medal for his work on Viking, the first spacecraft to land safely on Mars, and later for the Galileo mission to Jupiter. Yet, as recent articles have noted, despite his involvement in the history of space exploration, Mudgway remains virtually unknown in his country of birth.
These men—Norman, Pickering, and Mudgway—represent the pinnacle of the “Workshop Economy.” They did not just manufacture for export; they exported intellect. They are examples of Kiwis making opportunities in high-value niche professions, a legacy that is increasingly relevant as Aotearoa New Zealand develops its own nascent space programmes today.
The Architecture of Protection
Innovation, however, requires more than just genius; it requires protection. The history of patents in New Zealand reveals a nation that has always taken the business of ideas seriously. The first Patent Act was passed in 1860, only six years after the establishment of Parliament. By 1861, New Zealand granted its first patent to Arthur G. Purchase and James Ninnis for a method of preparing flax fibre.
The legal framework evolved rapidly. A Trade Marks Act followed in 1866, and by 1870, a formal Patent Office was established. This was not merely bureaucratic housekeeping; it was a structural support system for a young economy. It allowed “non-tangible assets” to be listed on company balance sheets, turning bright ideas into bankable value. Today, New Zealand is a party to international conventions protecting industrial property, and while a large portion of patent applications now come from overseas subsidiaries, the framework remains a critical shield for local inventors.
This legal structure has protected a history of invention that goes back to the beginnings of the nation. From Richard Pearce’s airplane (1902) and C.W.F. Hamilton’s jet boat (1959) to the disposable syringe by Colin Murdoch and the electric fence by Bill Gallagher, New Zealanders have a knack for solving problems. Bob Riley, in his book Kiwi Ingenuity, lists around sixty such inventors. He notes that this ingenuity is not new, citing early Māori craftsmanship in canoe building as superior in workmanship and sailing power to many contemporary vessels of the time.
The Frontier Mindset
What drives this innovation? Riley proposes a concept he calls the “Frontier Mindset.” He rejects the modern obsession with “positive thinking,” calling it magical thinking. Instead, he argues that true innovation comes from people who are “creative and sceptical, critical and realistic thinkers.”
Riley leans on the Veitch Success Model, which outlines five requirements for success: Personal Effort, Community Support, Resources, Best Information, and Results. This model frames innovation as a journey to the frontier—a place where there are no reliable maps. “Life on the frontier is complicated,” Riley writes. “The failure to consult the maps that do exist is commonly seen as a mistake made by amateurs. Since frontier maps are often wrong, one can never be sure if reading someone else’s research is going to help or hinder your effort.”
To succeed on the frontier, one must be willing to accept risk. The return to normal activities is possible at any time; all one has to do is give up. But for those who succeed, the result is the integration of vision into commercial reality. Between 1992 and 1995 alone, the New Zealand Patent Office issued around 1,700 patents. Each one represented a journey to the frontier, a risk taken, and a box ticked on the Veitch Success Model.
Stamps from the Frontier: A Case Study
There is perhaps no better example of this frontier spirit—of adaptation, necessity, and eventual global success—than the story of the postage stamp vending machine.
In 1901, New Zealand launched the universal penny postage, a project of Postmaster-General Joseph Ward intended to cement the British Empire through communication. It was a massive success; two million stamps were printed, and demand was so high that special staff were employed just to cancel envelopes. But this success created a logistical nightmare. The sheer volume of transactions demanded automation.
In 1905, a prototype vending machine was trialled in Wellington, but it failed when a purchaser used a lead disc instead of a coin. The principle was sound, but the practice was flawed. Enter J.H. Brown, a photographer, and R.J. Dickie, a mail clerk. On July 8th, they demonstrated a machine that worked.
However, the machine revealed a new problem: the stamps themselves. The perforation and separation of existing stamps jammed the mechanism. The solution wasn’t just to fix the machine, but to adapt the manufacturing of the stamps to suit the machine. It was a classic Kiwi pivot. By October, Dickie was demonstrating the machine in San Francisco. By 1909, it had won a gold medal at the Seattle Exhibition.
The story didn’t stop there. In 1911, Christchurch mechanic Ernest Moss produced the world’s first postal franking machine, a perfect complement to Dickie’s invention. This sequence—Stamp > Vending Machine > Franking Machine—demonstrates the cascading nature of Kiwi innovation. Demand demonstrated a need, and the “versatility of practical men” recognized the opportunity.
Clever Kiwis and the Modern Era
In 2007, New Zealand Post celebrated this heritage with a series of stamps entitled ‘Clever Kiwis’. The series featured Colin Murdoch, Sir Bill Hamilton, the NZ Dairy Research Institute (spreadable butter), Allan Croad (mountain buggy), and Bill Gallagher. The artwork for the stamps even included drawings from the original patent specifications.
These figures are heroes who help define New Zealand’s national identity. Historian Michael King noted that New Zealanders have always derived satisfaction from seeing their own “take on the best the world had to offer and perform credibly.” It is the spirit of the Number 8 wire, but elevated to the level of high science and industrial design.
However, the frontier is moving. Today, the challenge is less about conquering distance or mechanics, and more about sustainability and stewardship.
In a recent New Zealand Listener article titled “Purer Waters,” we see the modern incarnation of the Kiwi innovator in Ngārie Scartozzi. Scartozzi founded eClean Envirotech to develop technology that removes contaminants from waterways. Her motivation is not just mechanical or commercial; it is cultural. “A sense of kaitiakitanga is driving… [me],” she explains. “As a Māori, my purpose as a kaitiaki is to nurture and do anything that I can to return them to health. That’s what drives me every day.”
Scartozzi’s work acknowledges a hard truth: humanity’s cleverness has often come at a cost to the environment. The “grace” that Bob Norman spoke of must now include ecological grace. Scartozzi demonstrates that the opportunity to pick up the ball and run with it is still there. It is an opportunity to innovate in a way that reflects an innate ‘Kiwiness’—practical, inventive, but now, deeply responsible.
Conclusion: The Workshop Economy
We have established the need for a manufacturing future, and we have looked back at the pioneers of the inventive nature of New Zealand. From the steam engines of the MoW to the deep space probes of JPL; from the first flax patents to the latest water purification technology.
The question now is: where are the next Normans, Pickerings, and Mudgways? Who will be the next to put their hand up?
The answer is that they are already here. They are the future of Aotearoa New Zealand. They are in the sheds and the garages, on the farms and in the high-tech hubs of the cities. They are the practitioners of the Workshop Economy, ready to take the next small step forward in our engineering legacy. As Bob Norman wrote, it starts with a dream. The rest is just work, economy, utility, and—if we are lucky—a little bit of grace
