Ireland is more than the just the place where Guinness comes from. It’s the home of innovations that have changed the world, as illustrated by the following infographic from accommodation booking engine GoIreland.com.
From submarines to rubber soles, and bombs to colour photography, 10 top innovations have come from Irish minds.
For example, engineer John Phillip Holand of Co Clare is the brain behind the submarine. In 1875, his first submarine designs were submitted for consideration by the U.S. Navy, but turned down as unworkable. He eventually developed the first submarine the U.S. Navy formally commissioned, as well as the first Royal Navy submarine, the Holland 1.
A few years later, in 1894, physicist John Joly from Bracknagh, Co Offaly, devised one of the first colour photographic processes, the Joly Colour process. It was the first successful process for producing colour images from a single photographic plate.
In the following century, Ernest Thomas Sinton Walton, a physicist from Dungarvan, Co Waterford, became a Nobel laureate for his work with John Cockcroft. In the late 1920s/early 1930s, the two conducted “atom-smashing” experiments at Cambridge University and thus Walton became the first person to artificially split the atom. Welcome to the nuclear age.
Here’s a look at other Irish innovations:
