Irish inventions

[Chris S]

Potato bread - it was just a way of using up left-over potatoes. It's now sold to gullible American tourists as a gourmet delicacy.

 

[T.M.H.N.E.T]

Potato bread - it was just a way of using up left-over potatoes. It's now sold to gullible American tourists as a gourmet delicacy.

Known as Fadge locally.. It's a mighty fine way of using up left over spuds, especially in a full Ulster (just the 6 counties) fry..... It's also one of those creations that only your granny can make properly, even though the "recipe" has been handed down since 1657 or something

The Ferguson 3point hydraulic linkage as used on the TE20 little grey tractor. It revolutionised farm mechanisation.

Learned to drive by sitting on my grandas knee on his TE20 that still runs to this day (diesel variant) A few years later after his death(1993 when I was 5), I was unleashed and allowed to drive it solo. Firstly just tractor, then trailers then implements.

Good times and memories.

 

[classic33]

The Cream Cracker was invented by Joseph Haughton in his home in Dublin and first manufactured by William Jacob in his bakery in Dublin.

 

[Dogtrousers]

quaternions were invented by Sir William Rowan Hamilton

He was a very eminent Irish mathematician & physicist who decided that the everyday imaginary numbers we did at school just weren't imaginary enough so he came up with quaternions which are even more imaginary. Apparently when he suddenly realised the secret ingredient needed to make them work whilst on an evening walk he carved it into the stone of a canal bridge in Dublin.

After googling, found that the commemorative plaque on the bridge says this

Here as he walked by
on the 16th of October 1843
Sir William Rowan Hamilton
in a flash of genius discovered
the fundamental formula for
quaternion multiplication
i² = j² = k² = ijk = −1
& cut it on a stone of this bridge

I've read that the Mad Hatter's tea party was a satire on Quaternions. I can't remember the detailed reasons why the author thought this was the case.

Lewis Carroll was a mathematician but a very conservative one, and didn't have any truck with these fancy new ideas.

 

[classic33]

For those who have tattoo's, raise a glass to tattoo artist Samuel O’Reilly who patented the rotary tattoo machine in 1891.

 

[Profpointy]

I've read that the Mad Hatter's tea party was a satire on Quaternions. I can't remember the detailed reasons why the author thought this was the case.

Lewis Carroll was a mathematician but a very conservative one, and didn't have any truck with these fancy new ideas.

That got me googling, and I came up with this which echoes your story https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20427391-600-alices-adventures-in-algebra-wonderland-solved/

Now that said, I am a little skeptical of the claim that any half competent mathematician like Dodgeson would have difficulty with quaternions as a concept, given they make reasonable sense (at a superficial level) even to a gentleman amateur like me. He may still have been making fun of them in "Alice" of course.