Kieran’s Our City, Our Town Article,

Cork Independent, 4 July 2013

Technical Memories (Part 58) – Everybody has a book in them

I met Seán Ó Coileáin, last year during research for the Crawford Municipal Technical Institute. He attended the institute from 1934. In recent years, he has penned a memoir on his own memories of the city at that time, part of which is a memory of the Crawford tech. I publish some of his memories again this week.

“Mr Madden, who had an M.Sc (he used to give chemistry lectures through Irish at UCC), made an effort to teach us the elements of physics through Irish, but of course had to revert to English, when topics became difficult. After the lecture, we’d adjourn to the laboratory for practical work in elementary chemistry. 

We finally got around to our first brush with electricity in electrical engineering practice in the electrical laboratory, where the teacher George McIlwraith gave us a secondary cell to experiment with. We tried to electrocute a blue bottle, but only succeeded in burning a hole through the unfortunate insect. The following morning we got our first lecture on the subject and it was a revelation to me. The lecture room had rising tiers of desks, and the teacher, Johnny Higgins, was possibly the best teacher I ever met. He began with a talk on magnetism. Until then, I had thought that all that was to be known about magnetism was what I already knew – that a toy horse shoe shaped magnet could pick up pins. Until then, I’d never heard of magnetic fields, or magnetic poles, or all the other various properties of attraction or repulsion of natural and artificial magnets, and electro-magnetism and the principle of the magnetic compass. Mr Higgins made it all so interesting and I enjoyed each one of his lectures on the basics of magnetism and electricity, which opened up a whole new world to me.

He told us on the first day, that when he was a student at university, there was a big glass container in one of the lecture theatres and he couldn’t resist the temptation to let fly at it, and burst it with a well-aimed missile. At the subsequent enquiry, Johnny owner up to the deed, and he made the point that people should stand over their actions. He used also give us lectures on mechanical drawing in a small lecture room off the electrical lab. One day before he came in, we were making a terrible racket, kicking the table etc, Johnny came in and wanted to know who was creating all the racket, only to be met with a dead silence. Eventually I owned up and instead of being told off as expected, he held me up as an example to the rest for owning up, to my great embarrassment. At the end of first year, one day before the advent of the Department exams, we were all sitting at a long table at the end of the electrical lab, Johnny was pointing out the weak points to each person in the class and giving some final advice. When he came to me, he said ‘Collins, keep up the character, smile and you’ll be ok’.

In second year, we had Johnny for heat engines, theory of machines. However, the course needed to be changed when it came to electricity. We were taught about direct current (DC) generation and distribution, which had been superseded by alternating current (AC) with the advent of the ESB. Cork City was still DC and gradually being converted to AC. There were in those days, two giant rotary convertors in Caroline Street for converting AC to DC to supply the existing city DC installations.  I struggled to come to grips with AC but did get a grind of sorts one day from Johnnie Higgins. He was an outstanding teacher. He died a few months afterwards.

In first year we had classes in Irish (Lucy Duggan), woodwork (Mr Hurley), metalwork (Mr Barry), science (Mr Madden), mechanics (Mr King, Teddy Murphy, Martin Black), Drawing (Johnny Higgins), maths (Mr Good), electricity (Mr McIlwraith, Johnny Higgins, Toddy Sullivan), physical training (Mr O’Sullivan). Added to those subjects in second year were heat engines (John Higgins), theory of machines (John Higgins) and materials and structures (Mr Daly, who also taught maths, design (John Higgins) and in third year, electrical design (Mr McIlwraith).

At the end of each year the sessional exams took place. One third of marks were given for attendance (I never missed a day), one third for exam results and one third for homework. But the main thing was the exam and out of 100 marks, 34 would get you a pass. I got through all the exams in first year except mechanics and so I was allowed into second year. The following year I got first prize in Ireland for engineering science (elementary). I well remember cashing in the cheque in Kildorrey and the clerk congratulating me.  I bought a wrist watch with the prize money. I completed my three year course of the Tech in September 1938 and some months later began a job with the Post Office engineering services on Cook Street”.

To be continued…

Caption:

698a. Seán Ó Coileáin’s full course diploma document, 1938 (source: Seán Ó Coileáin)