sketcher, amateur photographer, lithographer, editor and chemist, was born in London and came to Port Phillip as tutor to the children of the settler Robert Duff. He worked for the Melbourne Herald in the 1850s and was one of the founders of Melbourne Punch in 1855, moving on to edit the Journal of Australasia in 1856. At the same time he practised as an analytical chemist, published pamphlets in this field and became a founding member of the Victorian Institute for the Advancement of Science (later the Royal Society of Victoria).
In December 1852 Gibbons was awarded a first-class certificate and gold medal for the 'best specimens of lithography, most of them adapted to useful purposes’ at the Victorian Industrial Society Exhibition. He sent magnified photographs of microscopic objects, together with various microscopic preparations, 'Products prepared from Coal Tar’ and 'preparations illustrative of the Composition and Adulteration of Food’ (all his own work), to the 1861 Victorian Exhibition from 5 Collins Street East, Melbourne. At the 1866 Melbourne Intercolonial Exhibition he showed a number of educational drawings and received an honourable mention for his magnified photographs of a microscopic structure. Gibbons used five of his magnified photographs to illustrate his book, Air and Water Poisoning in Melbourne (Melbourne 1869). He died at the age of ninety-two, on 23 July 1917, following a railway accident.
- Writers:
- Staff Writer
- Date written:
- 1992
- Last updated:
- 2011
