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Tag Archives | guided tour

Dublin’s weird ‘witch’ bottle

This is a fascinating bottle with a weird story.  We learned about it on a tour of historic Aungier St with Dublin City’s architects, archaeologists and conservation officers. It’s a pottery bottle, from about 1600, intact and sealed.  But x-rays reveal that there is a lot of “stuff” in it, including old nails.  This leads […]

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The Botanic Gardens Podcast Tour : Red

The Botanic Gardens Podcast Tour : Red What links the alphabet with Dublin’s National Botanic Gardens and an ingenious Cherokee chief? Find out on this audio guided tour of the Botanic Gardens in Glasnevin — the ‘alphabet tree’ is just one of the many fascinating stories  featured on our Red tour of the historic gardens. Other […]

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The Botanic Gardens Podcast Tour : Yellow

The Botanic Gardens Ingenious Ireland Podcast tour: Yellow Do you want to know who lives in one of the fanciest houses in Glasnevin? And hear how early botanical gardens were the pharmacy shops of their day? Come on this audio guided tour and we will bring on a fascinating walk around Ireland’s National Botanic Gardens in […]

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Halloween: Samuel Haughton’s ‘humane hanging’

One of Ireland’s more unusual contributions to civilisation was calculating the humane hangman’s drop.  In the good old days, public executions were a popular spectacle, and indeed, the word ‘gala’ comes from gallows.    Now, hanging was originally a prelude to drawing and quartering — or, for women, being burned at the stake —  and never […]

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New digital walking tours of Ingenious Dublin

Press release Tuesday October 16th 2102: on Hamilton Day, the day quaternions were invented in Dublin in 1843 As hundreds of geeks gather in Dublin for the WebSummit… two new city walking tours are launched to celebrate Ireland’s many great inventions and scientific discoveries. Did you know. . . that Dublin algebra helped to land […]

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How statistics helped to make Guinness good!

An important statistical technique was invented at Guinness’s Dublin brewery, as part of quality control in 1908.  By helping to improve the product, it helped to make Guinness an international brand.  An extract from our new book, Ingenious Dublin, for Arthur’s Day 2012. If you wanted to know the average height of the Irish population […]

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A song, a walk and a good equation: podcast tour 1

Do you enjoy a song, a walk and a good algebra equation? Then you’ll enjoy our podcast walking tour.  It features a lovely stroll by Dublin’s Royal Canal, tracing the steps of Ireland’s greatest scientist Sir William Rowan Hamilton, on the day he invented a new type of algebra.  Click to download the podcast here. […]

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What inventions should be in our new tour?

From the stethoscope and the hypodermic syringe to Sudocrem… there are lots of ingenious inventions associated with Dublin and Ireland.  There are also some tasty ones — like milk chocolate and flavoured crisps — and rather a lot of boozy ones too (think: whiskey,  Bailey’s Irish cream, Irish coffee and draught Guinness in a can). […]

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The Ryder Cup . . . and us!

The Irish Times business and technology editor, John Collins, puts together a really useful list of apps and other online resources every week in his weblog column. This week’s column includes Nokia’s new Ryder Cup app . . . and our new tours! Nice to be in such good company. And as John says, even […]

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The geeks guide to Dublin likes our tour!

The Euroscientist.com sent a reporter on a geeks guide to Dublin.  He was scouting for things to do in Dublin for the hordes of scientists who will descend in 2012, when the City of Science and the Euroscience Open Forum will both take place in Dublin.  And happily he really liked our geology walking tour!

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