ThoughtGallery.org > Film Screening: “John Philip Holland: Inventor of the Modern Submarine”

Film Screening: “John Philip Holland: Inventor of the Modern Submarine”

Join us at the AIHS for a screening of: “JOHN P. HOLLAND – The Man who Sank the Lusitania” by Macdara Vallely followed by a Q&A session with Mr. Vallely and Gerard Brady, the film’s editor.

This is the story of John P. Holland, an inventor, a visionary and a man of peace, who in 1878 joined forces with the Irish Republican Brotherhood in New York City and invented the world’s first modern submarine.

Holland’s achievement is remarkable.  He was a man without any formal third level education.  He was born into a poor and struggling family in the Clare Gaeltacht during the darkest years of the Great Hunger.  Yet he was able to transcend these humble beginnings and solve a problem which for centuries had confounded military and scientific geniuses such as Da Vinci and Alexander the Great.

Many of the features of what we have come to recognise as the modern submarine were Holland inventions: Internal ballast, torpedoes, electrical propulsion. His designs were, in fact, so revolutionary that by the 1950’s, that US Naval designers were unable to improve upon the hull design of his earliest prototype and incorporated into the world’s first nuclear powered submarine.

American Irish Historical Society
991 5th Avenue
New York, NY 10028











When: Thu., Jan. 18, 2018 at 6:30 pm

Join us at the AIHS for a screening of: “JOHN P. HOLLAND – The Man who Sank the Lusitania” by Macdara Vallely followed by a Q&A session with Mr. Vallely and Gerard Brady, the film’s editor.

This is the story of John P. Holland, an inventor, a visionary and a man of peace, who in 1878 joined forces with the Irish Republican Brotherhood in New York City and invented the world’s first modern submarine.

Holland’s achievement is remarkable.  He was a man without any formal third level education.  He was born into a poor and struggling family in the Clare Gaeltacht during the darkest years of the Great Hunger.  Yet he was able to transcend these humble beginnings and solve a problem which for centuries had confounded military and scientific geniuses such as Da Vinci and Alexander the Great.

Many of the features of what we have come to recognise as the modern submarine were Holland inventions: Internal ballast, torpedoes, electrical propulsion. His designs were, in fact, so revolutionary that by the 1950’s, that US Naval designers were unable to improve upon the hull design of his earliest prototype and incorporated into the world’s first nuclear powered submarine.

American Irish Historical Society
991 5th Avenue
New York, NY 10028

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