One of Dublin’s architectural gems is the old Department of Industry and Commerce (now Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation) building at nos 24–28 Kildare Street, formerly the site of the Maples Hotel mentioned in James Joyce’s Portrait of the artist as a young man. After independence the Department of Industry and Commerce occupied various buildings around … Read more
Today, the sole copy of the 1743 poster, poorly printed on cheap paper and about the size of a modern A3 page, survives in Marsh’s Library in Dublin. There is an unmistakable element of showmanship to the ‘curious Experiments’, and one can easily imagine Boyle Godfrey, or one of his associates, uttering the immortal lines ‘Roll … Read more
Today, almost 270 years after Boyle Godfrey staged these experiments, they have been brought to life by a group of six students from the Grashof Gymnasium in Essen, Germany. In their final year at school, the students were set the task of researching what these experiments might have consisted of and how they might have … Read more
Boyle Godfrey was a ne’er-do-well London-born doctor and chemist who fled to Ireland sometime in 1742 to escape his creditors. He seems to have earned a living in Ireland on the fringes of both respectable science and society. His father Ambrose, a German apothecary of some distinction, Anglicised the family name to Godfrey. It is … Read more
The recent controversy surrounding the inclusion of a creationist perspective at the National Trust’s new £18.5 million Giant’s Causeway interpretive centre has prompted much public discussion in Northern Ireland and further afield. To date, the debate has been one of ‘science versus creationism’ and of whether and to what extent the Trust—or, indeed, any museum—should … Read more