Abbott was born in Bendigo Australia in 1885, he was the son of a successful businessman and senator of the same name, and served in WWI before ending up in the “Inventor’s Branch” of the British Army. In the 1920s, Abbott began to patent various inventions including a nut cracking device and a plastic moulding machine while also pursuing a career as a banker ending up as director and partner of WC Close Brothers London. Abbott patented his invention the "Scalebuoy" in the early 1930s and travelled around the world marketing and promoting the product and setting up factories and distributors including in the UK, US, Germany, NZ and Australia. The product when agitated in water could do anything from preventing metal corrosion to treating kidney dysfunction. The claims of the product were never strongly substantiated with physical evidence and by the time Abbott died in 1940 many of the scalebuoy makers and distributors were already shutting down. Abbott died tragically in 1940 when he was hit by a car while walking on a footpath in Melbourne.