Hills Hoist

[1] For decades, beginning in 1945, the devices were mainly manufactured in Adelaide, South Australia, based on prior product designs purchased by Lance Hill from the Australian inventor Gerhard "Pop" Kaesler and related expired patents.

[2] As early as 1895, Colin Stewart and Allan Harley of Sun Foundry in Adelaide applied for a patent for an "Improved rotary and tilting clothes drying rack".

[5] In 1925, he patented an all-metal rotary clothes hoist with its enclosed crown wheel-and-pinion winding mechanism and began selling them the following year.

[6][7][n 1] Prolific South Australian inventor Gerhard "Pop" Kaesler also designed a modern rotary clothesline two decades before they went into commercial production in Adelaide; subsequently he sold his metre-high wooden prototype model and plans to Lance Hill.

Ling became the key figure in expanding the production and marketing of the Hills hoist, with a possessive apostrophe omitted from the outset.