Scientific Travels in the Irish Countryside

Abstract

Ireland is one of the most popular destinations for American travelers. The market is enormous: while there are only 3.6 million Irish in the Republic of Ireland and 1.6 million in Northern Ireland, there are 40 million Americans of Irish descent. Almost every person you speak with in Ireland has a cousin in Chicago, an aunt in Boston and a brother in Los Angeles. The author has no Irish relatives at all, but went to Ireland in June 1998 and September 1999 to visit scientific sites. This article describes three of them: The collections of historical apparatus at the Universities in Maynooth and Galway, and the Great Rosse Telescope in Birr. I have added a short coda about geologic sites in Ireland.

Thomas Greenslade has taught at Kenyon College since 1964, after receiving his A. B. from Amherst College and his Ph.D. from Rutgers University. He has visited and photographed about fifty collections of early physics teaching apparatus. At the present time he is developing a large web site to display text and pictures of about 1300 pieces of apparatus that he has examined.