IMechE President Phil Peel visits Ireland

IMechE President Phil Peel and his wife Gillian visited Dublin on 17 April where they were hosted by the Joint Committees of the Republic of Ireland Region of the IMechE and the Mechanical and Manufacturing Division of Engineers Ireland.

Accompanying the President on the visit was Ms Farah Baksh, Global Relationship Manager.

Phil Peel used the visit to visit the CA Parsons No. 5 Generator in Trinity College Dublin which was Engineering Heritage Award recipient number 1 awarded in 1984.

This was one of the first commercial machines based on the 1884 patent by Charles A Parsons for a steam turbine and used a dynamo as load which had  an output of 65 Amps and 100 Volts at a speed of 12,000rpm. The turbine generator was presented to Trinity in 1911. 

The turbine generator was shown to Phil by Trinity’s Garrett Lyons, Adjunct Associate Professor of Mechanical Engineering and Professor Stephen Spence, Head of Department of Mechanical, Manufacturing and Biomedical Engineering. The Department is located in the aptly named Parsons Building. Phil mentioned that as 137th President he was proud to have unveiled the 137th plaque in Malaysia earlier in his presidency.

Not to be outdone by cutting edge 19^th century technology, Trinity was proud to show the visitors an example of state of the art 9^th century technology in the Book of Kells which dates from around 800AD. The Book of Kells, one of Ireland’s main tourist attractions, is a highly ornate manuscript of the four Christian Gospels using Celtic and Saxon artforms. It is located in a special display room under the Long Room Library of Trinity College. A different page is open on display each day.

In the evening the President presented his address to an audience in the lecture theatre of Engineers Ireland’s Headquarters in Clyde Road, Dublin and to the audience who had logged in online.

Among those present were the President of Engineers Ireland, John Power and the Director General of Engineers Ireland, Damien Owens. The Chair of the Republic of Ireland Region and Engineers Ireland Mechanical and Manufacturing Division, Prof Dermot Brabazon provided a vote of thanks at the end of the address in Clyde Road.

The following day the President’s party departed Dublin by train to visit the Norther Ireland Branch.