Today, the sole copy of the 1743 poster, poorly printed on cheap paper and about the size of a modern A3 page, survives in Marsh’s Library in Dublin. There is an unmistakable element of showmanship to the ‘curious Experiments’, and one can easily imagine Boyle Godfrey, or one of his associates, uttering the immortal lines ‘Roll … Read more
Today, almost 270 years after Boyle Godfrey staged these experiments, they have been brought to life by a group of six students from the Grashof Gymnasium in Essen, Germany. In their final year at school, the students were set the task of researching what these experiments might have consisted of and how they might have … Read more
Boyle Godfrey was a ne’er-do-well London-born doctor and chemist who fled to Ireland sometime in 1742 to escape his creditors. He seems to have earned a living in Ireland on the fringes of both respectable science and society. His father Ambrose, a German apothecary of some distinction, Anglicised the family name to Godfrey. It is … Read more