Many technological wonders that are used day in and day out were first coined here, with some people not realising they originated from Northern Ireland’s capital.
From soccer trademarks to sweet treats and more, Belfast has remained a hub of inventive creativity throughout the decades for devices that, to this day, have produced items used for all sorts of purposes, ranging from saving lives to hydrating entire cities.
We use all sorts of inventions every day, and here are some that were the work of people with connections to Northern Ireland.
5. Splitting the atom
Ernest Thomas Sinton Walton was born in Waterford, and eventually became a boarder at Methodist College. In the early 1930s, he and John Cockcroft pushed back the boundaries of physics with their atom-smashing experiments at Cambridge University, where they constructed one of the earliest particle accelerators. Within their device, nuclei of various elements like lithium could be easily torn apart by fast-moving and artificially-propelled protons. For their efforts, Walton and Cockcroft were awarded the 1951 Nobel Prize for Physics. Photo: pexels.com
6. The Pulsar
Born in Lurgan in 1943, Dame Jocelyn Bell Burnell received a degree in physics from the University of Glasgow and studied a PhD at Cambridge. In November 1967, she identified four mysterious blips in 120 metres of paper produced from a telescope that she had designed. The first was dubbed LGM (Little Green Men) and would eventually be identified as a neutron star, and three more pulsars (‘pulsating stars’) rapidly followed. She was awarded a Royal Medal from the Royal Society in 2015 and a CBE in 1999. Photo: Creative commons / wikipedia
7. The Los Angeles Aqueduct
Belfast-born William Mulholland served four years in the Merchant Navy, before emigrating to California in 1877 aged 22. This self-taught engineer, over the course of five years, would design and construct the 200-mile-long aqueduct that would kick off the dizzying cultural and economic growth of this rapidly growing city. Photo: pexels.com