1. Automobile: Henry Ford, son of an Irish immigrant, transformed the world with his low price automobile which created modern life, suburbs, highways, mobility etc, for ever.
2. Submarine: John Philip Holland from Clare invented the submarine and it was commissioned in 1900 by the US Navy.
3. Tractor: Harry Ferguson from Northern Ireland, a bicycle repair man with a genius for mechanical inventions, invented the modern tractor as well as the first four wheel drive Formula One car.
4. Tank: When Winston Churchill in 1915 issued an all points bulletin for the invention of a machine capable of withstanding rifle fire, flattening barbed wire fences and rolling over no man’s land Irishman Walter Gordon Wilson obliged by inventing the modern tank.
5. Color photography: John Joly from County Down was the first to invent the color photograph back in 1894 though it did not gain widespread acceptance until many years later.
6. Monorail: Louis Brennan from Mayo was the inventor of the monorail. He did much of the work on a monorail locomotive which was kept upright by a gyrostat. In 1903 he patented a system that he designed for military use; he successfully demonstrated the system on 10 November 1909, in Gillingham, England.
7. Nickel Zinc battery: The battery was developed by an Irish chemist, Dr. James J. Drumm (1897–1974)[2]and installed in four 2-car railway sets between 1932 and 1948 for use on the Dublin- Bray railway line. Today it is used to power cell phones.
8. Splitting the atom: Ernest Thomas Sinton Walton, a physicist from Dungarvan, Co Waterford, won the Nobel for his work with John Cockcroft. In the late 1920s/early 1930s, the two conducted "atom-smashing" experiments at Cambridge University Walton became the first person to artificially split the atom..
9. Guinness: Enough said.
10. Milk Chocolate: In the 18th Century Sir Hans Sloane from County Down encountered cocoa while he was in Jamaica, where the locals drank it mixed with water, and he is reported to have found it nauseating. However, he devised a means of mixing it with milk to make it more pleasant. When he returned to England, he brought his chocolate recipe back with him. By the 19th century, Cadburys was selling tins of Sloane's drinking chocolate.
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Switch to the desktop site to post a comment.Will Hamilton | Sep 18, 2012, 06:42 AM EDT
When it comes to Ireland, reality never sits well with the Plastic Paddies. The Ryan Report, The Murphy Report, The Ferns Report and the Indemnity Deal are not fantasies. They won't be making it into any top ten of "Irish" contributions to the world. Better to mine the achievements of the Anglo Irish Protestants and ignore the political disaster that's followed 1922.
curtisjohnson | Sep 14, 2012, 07:48 PM EDT
Willy you need to see a psychiatrist about your sick fantasies. Hopefully, your elites will be able to breed you people out in a few generations.
Will Hamilton | Sep 14, 2012, 06:09 AM EDT
The bestial behaviour began after 1922 in the oppressive slave camps run by Catholic Orders. They raped and tortured generations of children and corrupted the state. They killed children in their industrial schools and buried them in unmarked graves. They exported child rapists so they could rape more children in other countries. The child rape cover up runs all the way up to the Vatican. You don't get much more bestial than the Catholic Church. It's colonised more countries for longer that any other empire on earth.
curtisjohnson | Sep 12, 2012, 10:37 PM EDT
Most of the people you list self identified as Irish, you obsessive nutbag troll. No need for scare quotes, the british terror state and your bestial ancestors copiously documented their worldwide abominations (particularly in Ireland). The Irish diaspora who were able to escape to Europe during the centuries of penal Ireland rose to the highest levels of society in the host countries.
Will Hamilton | Sep 12, 2012, 06:19 AM EDT
Oscar Wilde, writer and playwright, a Protestant. George Bernard Shaw, writer and playwright a Protestant. Charles Stewart Parnell, politician, a Protestant. James Joyce, writer, an atheist.
Will Hamilton | Sep 12, 2012, 06:06 AM EDT
John Field, a Protestant. Robert Boyle a Protestant whose father came to Ireland as part of the Tudor Plantations. These are the kind of people the Plastic Paddies cling to when they're not going on about "the 800 years of oppression".
connemaragirl | Sep 12, 2012, 03:19 AM EDT
I've always felt that Ireland has the best tasting chocolate period and I've tasted some good chocolate but not like Ireland.
krisdaly | Sep 10, 2012, 10:24 PM EDT
You forgot to mention John Field the Irish music composer who invented the Nocturne. This Nocturne was a form of music that was then adopted by many famous composers including Frederick Chopin, who made the Nocturne musical form famous in the world of Western Classical music.
curtisjohnson | Sep 10, 2012, 10:09 PM EDT
If you want a real example of "all inclusive," notice how the english begin to refer to everything as "british" when done or discovered by the Scottish or Welsh. Of course, many of people who were descended from the anglo population in Ireland self identified as being Irish and had been there for generations - this makes no difference to racist supremacists wackos like big Willy.
curtisjohnson | Sep 10, 2012, 10:02 PM EDT
There's an ethnic distinction between Norman and english which exist to the present between the british ruling class and commoners. Anglo trolls like Willy know deep down that their own elite is breeding them out through the mass immigration/cheap labor project (thank goodness) and need to endlessly troll Irish websites to engage in grotesque triumphalism that they have nothing to do with.
curtisjohnson | Sep 10, 2012, 09:46 PM EDT
@Willy How about all the 12 year old girls you anglo-beasts kidnapped, tortured, raped, and bred to death in the Carribean - the Church of England was knee deep in these abominations - down to their own branding of slaves.
TayandCake | Sep 10, 2012, 07:50 PM EDT
Will Hamilton loves greasy moobs
Seanmor | Sep 10, 2012, 05:54 PM EDT
The 17th scientist century ROBERT BOYLE belongs in the list of important contributors to society. The Waterford native gave his name to Boyle's Law, having discvovered the "invere relationship that exists between pressure and volume of gas". I leave it up to you scientists to adquately explain Boyle's Law to us amatuers.
murphy666 | Sep 10, 2012, 04:40 PM EDT
Will Hamilton, here's an example of a true "broad mental reservation": You are hiding Anne Frank in your attic. The Gestapo comes to your door and asks if you know where she is. You answer, "No." This is not a lie because the Gestapo is not entitled to that information. It is a broad mental reservation. Your example is specious because, presumably, the person interrogating the Catholic cleric has a legal/moral right to ascertain the truth.
Will Hamilton | Sep 10, 2012, 01:04 PM EDT
William Rowan Hamilton, an Anglo Irish Protestant who attended Trinity College.
seanomelb | Sep 10, 2012, 06:51 AM EDT
Old old old Dubnorth BTW without the mathematics of Rowan Hamilton there would be no space flights a true genius.
Dubnorth | Sep 09, 2012, 09:32 PM EDT
You forgot the most important invention. Copper wire, without which all electrical devices would not work, without which electricity could not be delivered to that outlet in the wall.. Copper wire was invented in Ireland.... It was two Cavan guys fighting over a penny.
seanomelb | Sep 09, 2012, 08:44 PM EDT
Hamilton the gutter snipe deserves our silence and ignoring him will be an honour.
Searlit | Sep 09, 2012, 03:00 PM EDT
If you hate Irish people so much, why do you even bother to read a newsletter directed to an Irish audience?
Will Hamilton | Sep 09, 2012, 10:55 AM EDT
Irish Inventions: Mental Reservation. This is credited to one Desmond Connell designated as a "Cardinal" by Vatican operations in Ireland. This involves the concept the a Roman cleric can lie about child rape but not be lying while not actually telling the truth. It may not go down as one of the greatest inventions of all time but they liked it in Rome.
Will Hamilton | Sep 09, 2012, 10:38 AM EDT
Robert Mallet Protestant descendent of an English/Norman family. If you take the English Protestants out of Irish history you start to get very thin on achievements. That's unless you count colonising the world with child rapists for Rome as some sort of achievement. It's just gas that the Plastic Paddies rabidly defend a foreign Italian religion and then start getting all inclusive when it comes to claiming "Irish" contributions to the world.
hermitTalker | Sep 09, 2012, 08:01 AM EDT
BILLEO61; One of your sad and sorry lot has to dash dirty toilet water on every story that can throw more dirt at the Catholic Church. You will never be out of a job as Dirt Digger because it was founded on weak, flawed humans who were forgiven- as you were - so give it over and that is how its Founder designed it. Chase leprechauns, or unicorns or a perfect Church, which, as the saying goes "will no longer be perfect if you join it.!
sirpeter | Sep 09, 2012, 02:20 AM EDT
The Irish people don't give a sh*t what we contribute to the world.We are as we are.My only regret is we are a small country and we couldn't kill enough of our enemies...I respect the British and the American's for that...Both countries have killed a great many people and everyone is about to pay the price..Just shut the fu*k up ye stupid people.I
Seanmor | Sep 09, 2012, 01:13 AM EDT
John P. Holland's efforts to launch the submarine were largerly funded bt the Fenians in the U.S. (many of whom were Civil War veterans). The first submarine successfully launched was the Fenian Ram. M.I.T. grad. (1928) John Stack deserves mention in the above list. The son of North Cork and West Limerick parents, Stack an expert in high speed aeordynamics, played a major role in developing the X-1, the plane in which Chuck Yeager broke the sound barrier in 1947. Stack and Yeager were jointly presented the Collier Trophy in 1948 by President Harry Truman. Stack was buried in an Episcopal cemetery, but his Lowell birth and Protestand connections do not make his DNA any less Irish.
seanomelb | Sep 08, 2012, 07:17 PM EDT
Eamonn morons like Hamilton do not deserve a reply.BTW let us not forget Robert Mallet the father of seismology(he also coined the word seismology) a Dublin man-- religion irrelevant.
billie061 | Sep 08, 2012, 07:03 PM EDT
Yes Nicoletta, the catholic faith, that has physical/sexual abuse of children, abuse of women, Babies sold to the highest bidders abroad. Me thinks not one of our claims to fame in the right way.
bonjouryall | Sep 08, 2012, 05:51 PM EDT
The submarine claim to fame has been corrected previously but with no effect. The Confederate States of America built a submarine named the Hunley. It sank a Union ship before it sunk. Last I heard, it is going through restoration efforts.
mamaginnty | Sep 08, 2012, 04:12 PM EDT
Agree with Phearne.
EamonnDublin | Sep 08, 2012, 12:31 PM EDT
"Will Hamilton" - Good man yerself, Sor!! As you say, "800 years" - and you sound as though you've been around for all of that time. Shure aren't you the wonderful man yerself, Sor!! No flies on you! Well, perhaps a few around the back ...........? Éamonn, Dublin, Ireland.
Nicoletta | Sep 08, 2012, 11:24 AM EDT
The greatest contribution to the world from Ireland has been the spreading of the one, holy, apostolic and Catholic faith. Those parts of the world which were once evangelized by the Irish, will be the source of the re-evangelisation of Ireland. Deo Gratias!
Searlit | Sep 08, 2012, 11:03 AM EDT
Can we just put the Catholic v. Protestant issue to rest? They have Irish names.
Will Hamilton | Sep 08, 2012, 10:40 AM EDT
Henry Ford, an American from a family who moved to Cork as part of the English plantations. Ferguson an Ulster man of Protestant stock. Wilson, Protestant, British Navy man. John Joly, Ulster Protestant. Ernest Walton, Protestant. Arthur Guinness, Protestant. Hans Sloane, Ulster Scot Protestant. Just goes to show how dumb the Plastic Paddies are who insist that to be Irish you have to be Roman Catholic. The "800 years of English oppression" suddenly goes out the window when it comes to claiming Irish inventions.
phearne | Sep 08, 2012, 10:19 AM EDT
The Irish have always been an innovative people.The harsh difficult times in their history have forced them to be!
Silling | Sep 08, 2012, 09:53 AM EDT
Finnbar Mac Eoin from Malow County Cork invented the " Puppet Bucket ". Living in France at the time, the Brevet (Patent) was called " Seau a Bascule " (Balancing Bucket).