5B | Museum Building: The humane hangman’s drop, and early colour photography
Colour photograph of a parrot by John Joly, c 1894Staying in the Museum Building, hear about geology professor and medical man Samuel Haughton who, in the 1860s, calculated the drop needed for a quicker, more humane form of hanging. Another TCD geology professor was John Joly(1859-1933), a pioneer of geophysics, whose many inventions included a very early form of colour photography.
Today, geologists in Trinity research a vast range of topics, from how the Irish landscape formed to the geochemistry of petroleum deposits, and from earthquakes to meteorites.