The city of Belfast can boast a number of scientific, engineering and medical achievements and advances worthy of mention

The Stage Coach

The first stage coach from Belfast to Dublin was in the year 1752, and the journey took three days, but the roads were so bad that it could not go beyond Newry during the winter months. Then in 1788, a coach was able to go to Dublin from Newry in twenty-six hours. The speed was so marvellous that it was called "The Newry Flying Coach" and the fare was 1s. 3d. a mile. However, as many people were afraid of such terrific speed, a post chaise could be hired at the curious price of 1s. 7½d. a mile and the whole journey was performed in two days and a half. A mail coach ran from Belfast to Carrickfergus in the year 1811, and it held three or four inside passengers, and took two or three hours for the journey. It was a favourite amusement for the Belfast Academy boys to stand at St. Ann's Church gate and cheer the "Royal Oak” as it passed.

Air Travel

The first attempt in Belfast to travel through the air was made by a man named Livingstone, in the year 1825. He tried to make a balloon ascent for three successive days, and, on the evening of the third day, was successful. He went from the Infantry Barracks in Pinkerton's Row, to Fort William. There was intense excitement. His flight was eagerly followed by large crowds of people, and he was carried back to town amid great scenes of triumph.

The Pneumatic Tyre

The pneumatic tyre is also the invention of a Belfast man. When the first bicycle was made in the year 1819, it was called a "dandy horse" and nowadays one can easily imagine that the honour and glory of riding such a machine existed more in the imagination than in reality. However, when John Boyd Dunlop invented the pneumatic tyre bicycle riding became a pleasure. The first one was tried in 1867, a solid tyre, but it was not a success. It was tried with variations again and again, but did not fulfil the desired idea. Mr. Dunlop took it up and worked until he produced the famous pneumatic tyre which is now in almost universal use for wheeled conveyances.

The Portable Defibrillator

Frank Pantridge invented the portable defibrillator. The first model operated from car batteries and weighed 70 kg. Descendants of that clumsy contraption—created in 1965 when Frank was a consultant physician at the Royal Victoria Infirmary in Belfast and produced with technician Alfred Mawhinney and senior house officer John Geddes—are now used a countless number of times daily throughout the world saving a vast number of lives annually. Frank installed the "portable" defibrillator in an ambulance, thus creating pre-hospital coronary care. Frank's concepts were rapidly adopted in the United States and elsewhere. An exception was the United Kingdom, although an editorial in the Lancet in 1967 stated that Pantridge and Geddes had revolutionised emergency medicine. The portable defibrillator was a response to the epidemic proportions that coronary heart disease had reached by the 1950s. In the early 1960s hospital care units appeared in North America.

Astronomy

Astronomers at Queen’s have a proud history of making exciting discoveries. The identification of three new planets outside our own solar system in 2007 by Queen’s astronomers was listed as one of the top ten scientific discoveries by Time magazine.

Cancer Research

The Centre for Cancer Research and Cell Biology (CCRCB) has been established as a research centre bringing together 40 high quality team leaders and over 300 researchers and newly appointed staff from the Schools of Biomedical Sciences, Medicine & Dentistry, Chemistry & Chemical Engineering, Pharmacy and Mathematics & Physics and provides a foundation model for future research in life sciences at Queen's University Belfast (QUB)

Milk of Magnesia

Sir James Murray invented Milk of Magnesia in the early years of the 19th century, but his name is not as widely known as other innovators from the province. Now a blue plaque bearing his name has been erected in the city centre, near where his old premises once stood on Bridge Street. A chemical compound of magnesium, Milk of Magnesia is used as an antacid or as a mineral supplement to maintain the body's magnesium balance. Dr James Hawthorne of the Ulster History Circle says Sir James was a "real character".  "He was a surgeon, an apothecary to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, and he was knighted, presumably for his contribution to the alimentary canal," he says.