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John Philip Holland (1841 - 1914) was born in County Clare, Ireland and was the inventor of the first submarine used by the U.S. Navy. While he was still a kid, he began inventing under the guidance of a science teacher in Limerick. He drew up plans for both an airplane and a submarine while he was still in school - that design didn't change much over the years and eventually became the first submarine. He emigrated to the United States in 1873, starting out in Boston and then moving to New Jersey. His first prototype design was funded by the Fenian Brotherhood and his first submarine, the Fenian Ram, launched in 1881. In 1893, he won a competition sponsored by the U.S. Navy for a submarine design. Five years later, is Holland 6 took its first dive in New York on St. Patrick’s Day. That submarine would later become the property of the U.S. Navy. Cyrus Hall McCormick (February 15, 1809 - May
13, 1884) was an Irish American inventor. At the age 15, Cyrus invented
a lightweight cradle for harvesting grain. He later had an idea
to combine the steps involved in harvesting crops and developed
the first mechanical reaper. He developed his idea by inventing
a horse-drawn reaper that used back-and-forth-moving cutting blades.
Next, a revolving device pushed the cut grain onto the back of the
machine. Humphrey O'Sullivan was an Irish immigrant to the United States who received the first patent for a rubber heel for shoes on January 24, 1899. He was working in a print shop, standing on the hard floor all day long. His feet were killing him by the time he got home so he started standing on a small rubber mat. It was such a good idea that his coworkers started stealing it! Then he had an idea! Attach that rubber to the soles of his shoes and no one would steal them again! It was such a success that he got a patent for it and opened his own company! O'Sullivan Corporation is still in existence, manufacturing and distributing plastics for the automotive and manufacturing industries. Charles McBurney (1845-1913) was an Irish American medical pioneer famous in his field for his early reports about appendicitis. If you've ever known anyone who had their appendix removed, the doctor diagnosing it would have first identified the point of greatest abdominal pain. That point is called McBurney’s point and the cut they make to get the appendix out is called McBurney’s incision. John G. Frayne (1894-1990) was an Irish-American engineer and inventor who won three Academy Awards with some of his inventions. He began his career in in the Army where he helped develop wireless telephone communications and later worked at Bell Laboratories. He developed stereophonic 45 degree cutters and stereophonic sound-on-film for motion pictures and is widely recognized as an important contributor to the film industry. Charles Townes (1915-) is a Nobel Prize winning physicist (1964), inventor, and Irish American. His study of and investigation of the properties of microwaves helped him invent the maser. A maser amplifies electromagnetic waves and was the basis for the laser. Townes holds patents for both the maser and the laser. Last year, at the age of 89, Mr. Townes won the 2005 Templeton Prize. To learn more about Charles Townes and to hear in his own words about what it takes to be an inventor and scientist, click here.
Admiral Sir Francis Beaufort (1774-1857 ) was from Navan, Ireland. He began his career as a cabin boy and eventually became a famous naval commander. In 1805, he had an idea for the wind force scale that now bears his name. A famous naval commander, Sir Francis' 13-point 'Beaufort Scale' was adopted by the British navy in 1838. Robert Boyle (1627 - 1691) was one of the original modern chemists who made many important contributions in the scientific revolution of the 1600's. His most famous discovery, which examined the pressure-volume relationship in laboratory conditions, now bears his name (Boyle's Law) and was to prove fundamental to our understanding of gases and atmospheric pressure. Robert Collis (1900 - 1975) was a Dublin doctor who had an idea for feeding premature infants through a nasal tube instead of spoon feeding. His work made the survival of premature infants more possible than ever - and more affordable with his simple incubators. Sir William Rowan Hamilton (1805-1865) learned 13 languages by the time he was 13! He was a child prodigy turned mathematician and physicist when, at age 15, he began reading the work of Isaac Newton. One of his biggest contributions to science and math included the development of "Hamiltonian Mechanics" which is still used today in determining satellite tracks. The Hamiltonian operator in physics and Hamiltonian cycles in graph theory are both named for him. His other major contribution was the invention of quaternions, which he discovered in 1843. To learn more about Irish Inventing and Inventors:
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