- ‘Humane hanging’ was invented in 1866 by Samuel Haughton, a TCD geology professor.
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Leinster House, where acetylene was discovered in 1836.
Acetylene was first discovered in Leinster House in 1836 by Edmund Davy. Davy, professor of chemistry for the Royal Dublin Society, which had its headquarters there until 1922, was also a cousin of Sir Humphrey ‘safety lamp’ Davy.
- The first successful radiation therapy for cancer was pioneered here in 1914, again from Leinster House. (It used radon gas in place of radium, and was invented by a TCD geo-physicist, Professor John Joly.)
- The founder of the science of seismology was a Dublin engineer, Robert Mallet (his company also made the railings that you can still see around Trinity College Dublin).
- The hypodermic syringe was invented at Dublin’s Meath Hospital, in 1843 by Francis Rynd.
- The Royal College of Physicians in Kildare Street has Napoleon Bonaparte’s toothbrush!
- Sudocrem was invented by a Dublin pharmacist Thomas Smith in the 1930s.
- The tallest windmill tower in Europe is in Thomas Street (though now without its wings!)
- The definitive dissection of an elephant’s anatomy was done in Essex Street in 1681, by Allen Mullen
- Some sophisticated Dublin sums helped to land a man on the Moon! (To hit their lunar target, Apollo astronauts used quaternion algebra, invented in Dublin in 1843 by Sir William Rowan Hamilton.)
Want to hear more ingenious stories? Join us for one of our great, entertaining ingenious Dublin walking tours. And check out our Atlas of Ingenious Ireland.
