The Irish are world renowned for their warmth and humour. When it comes to engineering feats, though, they seem to be incredibly modest people, writes civil environmental engineer Justin Waples.

There is an old saying that 'necessity is the mother of all invention'. And I think when we reflect on Ireland’s history – and the physical and emotional hardships the Irish have endured over millennia – it is no wonder that the country consistently punches above its weight in the field of engineering.

Irish engineers: Very creative and amazing visionaries

There is something I find very intriguing about Irish engineers; they are, on the whole, very creative and amazing visionaries. I’m not Irish, though; I’m an outsider. I’m an Australian expat engineer, sharing a little perspective from my office in San Francisco. 

The Californian city is located in a region riddled with a seismic fault zone and has had its fair share of quakes, so I think Irish engineer Robert Mallet – known as 'the father of seismology' – is a fitting prodigy to start the discussion.

Robert Mallet (1810-1881), Wikipedia Creative Commons.

Though, just before we take a deeper look at Mallet, let’s begin to consider what may have contributed to shaping these Irish engineers and their amazing legacies.

I’m not a sociologist, so the hypothesis I present here may be on shaky ground. However, some psychologists suggest that experiencing hardships in youth can contribute to accelerated development in maturity and enhanced problem-solving abilities.

Children that grow up in environments of deprivation also tend to be more focused on where they want to go in life; and have an uncanny ability to think outside the box. On the flip side though, children who grow up enduring such environmental stresses can also be more prone to depression and other issues.

For engineers like Robert Mallet, his struggles, and toils of growing up in Ireland during the eve of the Great Famine, may have contributed to his tenacious mindset. That, together with his unyielding curiosity of the world around him, may have helped him realise many of his future engineering accomplishments.

Thirst for scientific understanding and engineering research

Joining his father in the family’s thriving foundry business in the early 1830s, after graduating from Trinity College Dublin, Mallet may have fared better than many of his fellow Irish at the time. His engineering abilities led him to quickly becoming a partner in the foundry company; and the ensuing healthy dose of practical problem solving together with his thirst for scientific understanding and engineering research, stood him well later in his career.

Mallet had a craving for wanting to understand the world around him and, using applied engineering, he developed several key scientific advancements, initially in the field of metallurgy while working at the family’s foundry, and later in the field of seismology.

Mallet also made a number of other notable civil engineering contributions in Ireland, such as raising the roof of the St George’s Church in Dublin, for which he was awarded the prestigious Walter Premium from the Institution of Civil Engineers. Around the same time, Mallet developed a burgeoning interest towards geology and seismology. It is this work in seismology for which he is perhaps best known.

St George’s Church, Dublin, circa 1966. Image: RTE archives.

While Ireland was in the grips of the Great Famine, Mallet presented a key paper 'On the dynamics of earthquakes' to the Royal Irish Academy, in which he proposed that earthquakes were caused by ground “waves of elastic compression”.

Mallet took his studies further and conducted arguably some of the first seismic experiments ever undertaken. He exploded gunpowder cartridges on Killiney beach to quantify shock waves in the sand using a seismoscope.

Co-invented the seismoscope

Mallet was attributed to having co-invented the seismoscope with Thomas Romney Robinson, a phenomenal Irish astronomer and physicist. The seismoscope was an early instrument used for producing qualitative measurements of the motion produced by earthquakes.

Mallet continued to conduct seismic experiments on Dublin’s Dalkey island and further abroad, to contribute to the body of knowledge in the young field of seismology.

In 1854, Mallet with the help of his son, published a global seismicity map. Of key mention here, their map noted the coincidence of volcanoes with seismic activity. To add, Mallet proposed the term 'seismology' to refer to the study of earthquakes.

Robert Mallet’s 1854 Seismicity Map. Image: Wikimedia Creative Commons.

But how might the Irish sense of adventure have contributed to Mallet’s seismic engineering contributions that led to him being called the father of seismology?

In 1858, shortly after the great Basilicata earthquake (later known as the great Neapolitan earthquake), which devastated southern Italy, Mallet was commissioned by the Royal Society of London and Dublin’s Royal Geological Society, to spend a couple of months there doing a forensic investigation to study damage to engineered structures such as buildings; and to analyse through observation, the topographic scars that remained visible from the event.

He set off on the adventure in late January 1858 and travelled to southern Italy via a route through the European continent.

Mallet trekked about 500km through the exceptionally mountainous region of southern Italy with mules, an interpreter, and several assistants to forensically observe the devastation.

The extent of the physical destruction and loss of life in the region shocked Mallet, as it would anybody. As he wrote in his lengthy report titled 'The Great Neopolitan Earthquake of 1857: The First Principles of Observational Seismology'; to observe the devastation with his own eyes, and to hear first-hand accounts from the villages of the terrors “required some hour’s familiarity with such scenes before the mind assumed sufficient composure and capability of abstracting the attention, to pursue the immediate object of my inquiry".

Mallet’s foresight to commission two French photographers to record extensively the devastation, produced some of the earliest stereoscopic earthquake images ever recorded.

Stereoscopic image, ruined Polla village, Italy. Image: Alphonse Bernoud (1820-1889).

“Of towns situated within three or four miles of each other, one is found totally destroyed, the other is scarcely injured. It seems inexplicable at first sight, that both should have been almost equally near, to the same subverting agency from beneath;” he wrote. This phenomenon observed by Mallet more than 150 years ago has also been witnessed in our contemporary times.

Mallet’s significant scientific work in Italy included efforts to calculate the earthquake’s epicentre (location on ground centre) and hypocentre (depth below ground surface).

Robert Mallet’s sketch explaining transverse forces and object trajectory.

Aside from his work on seismic engineering principles, he also made many other notable contributions to materials engineering throughout his career, resulting in him obtaining several patents, including a patent for a method of protecting metals from corrosion.

One of his more notable contributions outside of seismology was the development of the modulus of resilience, to assess a material’s ability to withstand an applied energy.

Suitability of materials in public and residential buildings

Initially used in reference to metals and in a report to the British Admiralty regarding the construction of its ships and cannons, Mallet’s modulus of resilience was also used in assessing the suitability of materials in public and residential buildings. In Mallet’s report of the Great Neapolitan Earthquake, he referred to this engineering property of material, to explain why such a multitude of churches and dwellings collapsed.

The United Kingdom’s Institute of Civil Engineers accepted the modulus of resilience in its Manual of Civil Engineering in 1867, and a lot more than 100 years later was still being referred to by civil and mechanical engineers.

Over the course of his vast engineering career, Mallet contributed a library’s worth of engineering and scientific material. He was a staunch advocate for the advancement of engineering knowledge.

Unexpectedly, in the depths of the 1871 winter Mallet’s eyesight began to suffer; eventually losing almost all of his sight. With the aid of an assistant however, he toiled on for several more years with theoretical engineering pursuits. He passed away in London in November 1881, as hurricane-force winds battered the city with unprecedented strength.

Perhaps it is a fitting coincidence that Mallet died during one of the hottest and windiest Novembers on record. He was certainly an extraordinary force of nature in the world of engineering.

Trinity College, iron railing from Mallet Foundry, Google Maps.

The next time you are in Dublin and walk past Trinity College, spare a thought for Robert Mallet. A former Trinity student, and remarkable Irish engineer whose family name is forged on the railing on Nassau Street.

Mallet is among a significant number of the world’s most exceptional engineers who were born and educated in Ireland. Why does the country produce so many engineers of such amazing abilities and vitality?

In Part 2 of this series, we will explore this question further and take a look at Michael O’Shaughnessy (1864-1934), an engineer from Co Limerick. After moving abroad and developing a solid reputation as a hydraulic engineer in Hawaii, O’Shaughnessy’s later role as the city engineer for San Francisco was pivotal in the reconstruction of key infrastructure after the Great San Francisco Earthquake of 1906. His amazing infrastructure legacy for the city of San Francisco continues to this day.

References

1) British Geological Survey, Earthquake Seismology Observation Methods, accessed June 12, 2023, http://www.earthquakes.bgs.ac.uk/hazard/haz_guide/observation.html

2) Cox, R; Robert Mallet: Engineer and Scientist, Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies. https://www.dias.ie/2010/10/20/geophysicsmalletbook/#chapter12

3) Daintith, J & Gjertsen D; (2003) A Dictionary of Scientists; Robert Mallet (1810-1881) civil engineer and scientist, Oxford University Press, UK.

4) Leaney, E & Byrne, P; (2012) Mallet, Robert, Dictionary of Irish Biography, Royal Irish Academy

5) Mallet, R; (1857) Great Neapolitan Earthquake of 1857, Royal Society, Great Britain.

6) McAslan, A; (2010) The Concept of Resilience: Understanding its Origins, Meaning and Utility, Torrens Resilience Institute, Australia