Ralph Sarich
Australian businessman and inventor
Ralph Tony Sarich (born 10 December 1938) is an Australian automotive engineer, inventor, and businessman who developed the orbital engine and the orbital combustion process engine. Sarich founded the Orbital Engine Company, which developed the orbital combustion process (OCP) engine, based on the two-stroke concept.
Early life
Sarich was born on 10 December 1938 in Baskerville, Western Australia, to an Austrian and Croat family. His parents arrived in Australia before the Great Depression of the 1930s. Sarich began an apprenticeship as a fitter and turner, studying high school years 11 and 12 subjects part-time at Midland Technical School. He qualified with top achievement at the completion of his apprenticeship, during and after which he did engineering units one day per week, night classes, and by correspondence.
Career
His working career encompassed being a fitter and turner and trainee engineer with the Western Australian Government Railways between 1954 and 1963. He was a plant engineer with Thiess Brothers between 1963 and 1965, in charge of the standard gauge project before running his own business, an engineering and service station operator. Sarich was a sales engineer as well as an investor in the area of earth moving and industrial machinery before being regional general manager and an investor. As he developed the orbital engine, he became managing director of Orbital Engine Company, and chief executive officer and chairman of Orbital Engine Corporation.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Ralph Sarich” as australian businessman and inventor. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
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The subject matters to the people & ideas register because the source frames it as australian businessman and inventor. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.
The entry’s evidential value lies in the named roles, institutions and publications that can be tested against primary documentation. The source revision retrieved here is dated May 3, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q7288063. VIAF identifies the subject as 21307988. The Library of Congress control number is n90708401. 3 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1938, 1954, 1963 and 1965.
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This entry incorporates text from “Ralph Sarich” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.