Ireland is known across the globe for a lot of things: gingers, Guinness, bad tempers and potato blight to name but a few.
What is underrated about Ireland is our creativity and ingenuity, our ability to spot something that needs making and our drive to go ahead and bring that idea to fruition.
Here are 10 Irish inventions you probably didn’t know were Irish.
1. The Beaufort Scale
This famous method of measuring wind speed was devised by an Irish Royal Navy officer, Francis Beaufort (hence the name). Created in 1805, the scale was officially adopted during the voyage of the HMS Beagle, led by Captain Robert Fitzroy. This invention came about as a result of ambiguity and subjectivity in the measurement of wind speeds. Beaufort’s scale provided a standardised method.
2. The Hypodermic Syringe
Although syringes date back to the Romans, the first hypodermic syringe was created in 1844 by an Irish Physician Francis Rynd. He invented the hollow syringe and used it to make the first recorded subcutaneous injections, specifically a sedative to treat neuralgia. The same syringes are still used today, over 150 years later. So, next time you’re getting a blood test, remember that it was an Irish man that made it possible/is to blame.
3. The nickel-zinc battery
Despite being first patented by Thomas Edison in 1901, it was Dr James Drumm, an Irish chemist that developed and installed the battery in four two-car Drumm railcar sets sometime between 1932 and 1948. These batteries were then used on the Dublin to Bray railway line. These batteries were suggested as an alternative to silver-zinc batteries in military use also.
4. Sudocrem
Dublin-based Irish pharmacist Thomas Smith invented the household favourite that is Sudocrem in 1931. Originally marketed as “Smith’s Cream”, it was not available in the UK until the 1970s. Since then, it has gone on to become the leading baby cream in Ireland and the UK.
5. Chocolate milk
Surprisingly, chocolate milk was created in Ireland in 1680 by Irishman Hans Sloane. This invention is probably the most unusual, seeing as chocolate milk isn’t something we’d usually associate with being Irish, but there we have it.
6. The electron as a concept
It was an Anglo-Irish physicist by the name of George Johnstone Stoney who introduced the term electron as the “fundamental unit quantity of electricity. He introduced the concept between 1874 and 1881, with the word coming at the later date of 1891. Stoney is known to have published about 75 scientific papers in his lifetime.
7. Tattoo machines
The electric pen, invented by American Thomas Alva Edison, was a method of tattoo called stencilling, where the tattoo would fade not long after application. It was Samuel O’Reilly, in 1891, who saw that there was a way to make tattoo’s permanent, by introducing them to the skin. It was originally supposed to be a duplicating service, but as O’Reilly’s idea was better, it took over.
8. McDonald’s
Yeah, that’s right! The fast-food mega power may have been invented in America, but its creators were of Irish descent. Richard and James McDonald franchised the first McDonald’s restaurant in 1953, but their father, Patrick J. McDonald was from Ireland, from where he emigrated in 1877 as a baby.
9. The portable defibrillator
Professor Frank Pantridge pioneered the portable defibrillator, a serious breakthrough in medicine, in the 1960s. Invented in Belfast, the portable defibrillator is arguably the most important tool used in modern Ambulances. Before this creation, defibrillators were not available outside of hospitals.
10. WiFi
Finally, we come to the most unexpected Irish invention. Irish-Australian engineer John O’Sullivan discovered the modern marvel by complete accident! WiFi was developed as a by-product in a CSIRO research project, “a failed experiment to detect exploding mini black holes the size of an atomic particle”. In 1996, he obtained patents for a method later used in WiFi to unsmear the signal.
Archaic to Arcade 