From the submarine to Guinness - top ten surprising Irish inventions for St. Patrick's Day

Missiles, ejector seats and many other surprising inventions from the Emerald Isle - PHOTOS

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A tourist drinks a pint of Guinness in the Gravity bar at the Guinness Storehouse, Dublin

Photo by Julien Behal / PA Archive / PA P

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This County Down loony also invented his own motor cycle, race car and plane and in 1909 he was the first Irishman to fly. Originally a bicycle repairman he even built himself the first ever four-wheeled Formula-One car.

His name lives on in the Massey Ferguson company.

6.    The submarine

This man probably took a lot of slake for this invention&hellipan underwater boat? We’ll believe it when we see it!

As it happens back in 1881, in County Clare, John Philip Holland was the first person to successfully launch a submarine. The first of its kind, it was called the “Fenian Ram”. By 1900 the U.S. Navy was formally commissioning the production.

7.    The tank

From Blackrock, Dublin in 1911, came the world’s first armored tank.
When, the then Home Secretary in Britain, Winston Churchill commissioned the design of a vehicle “capable of resisting bullets and shrapnel, crossing trenches, flattening barbed wire, and negotiating the mud of no-man’s land” this is what our Dublin boy came up with.

The World Wars might have been very different without his invention. Though modern tanks might look entirely different to his original designs the essential “battle buggy” remains exactly the same.

8.    Guided missile

It’s strange that such a peace loving people seem to have had a good head for army equipment. From Castlebar, County Mayo, Louis Brennan invented the guided missile. This stealth torpedo was used as a costal defensive mechanism.

Brennan is also credited with inventing the first helicopter however his prototype crashed and burnt in 1925.

9.    Ejector seat

It is rather worrying that it was Irishmen who came up with the first functioning helicopter (Louis Brennan) and also the first ejector seat.

In 1945 Sir James Martin tested out his device on a dummy, a wise choice. The following year a man called Bernard Lynch became the first live tester of the County Down man’s invention.

It was soon adopted by the Royal Air force as a standard safety device.

10.    Apparatus for whiskey distilling

A Dublin chap with a very exotic name, Aeneas Coffey, came up with the world first heat-exchange device in 1830. This might not sound like that big a deal but this very efficient little piece of equipment led to huge advances in distilling, including whiskey.

SEE PHOTOS - click here - Ten surprising Irish inventions

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