Qualla: Royal Dublin Society https://qualla.com/royal-dublin-society en-us © 2026 Bendyline Wed, 08 Jul 2026 02:40:12 GMT Qualla serial false Qualla support@bendyline.com yes https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/7/x/royal-dublin-society-wp/hero-small.webp Qualla: Royal Dublin Society https://qualla.com/royal-dublin-society Royal Dublin Society: Introduction https://qualla.com/royal-dublin-society/ Photo credit Smirkybec, CC BY-SA 4.0. Twenty-five June 1731 - a Dublin drawing room, fourteen men, a single resolution: that Ireland should learn how to do things better. The new Dublin Society had no premises, no royal charter, and no obvious authority over anything. What it had was a programme that read like the agenda of an Enlightenment in miniature - husbandry, manufactures, useful arts, and within a week, sciences. Almost three centuries later, the Royal Dublin Society still meets behind the Georgian gates of its Ballsbridge campus, where Bruce Springsteen has played eleven times, where Leinster Rugby thunders on Saturday afternoons, and where the Dublin Horse Show still rolls onto the lawns each August.

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]]> Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/7/x/royal-dublin-society-wp/gc7x-royal-dublin-society-intro.mp3 0:06 1 full Royal Dublin Society: The Practical Enlightenment https://qualla.com/royal-dublin-society/ Photo credit Culnacreann, CC BY-SA 3.0. The early Society did not theorise; it published manuals. In its first eighteen months it reprinted Jethro Tull on tillage, papers on improving flax by changing the soil, instructions for draining boggy land. Then bee management, hop cultivation, wool production, demonstrations o...

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]]> Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/7/x/royal-dublin-society-wp/gc7x-royal-dublin-society-the-practical-enlightenment.mp3 0:06 2 full Royal Dublin Society: James Hoban Goes to Washington https://qualla.com/royal-dublin-society/ Photo credit Culnacreann, CC BY-SA 3.0. The Society's drawing schools opened in 1750 with an annual £500 grant from the British government and one provocative rule: tuition was free. Cabinetmakers' apprentices and goldsmiths' sons drew alongside the children of merchants. Among the students who passed through in the 17...

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]]> Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/7/x/royal-dublin-society-wp/gc7x-royal-dublin-society-james-hoban-goes-to-washington.mp3 0:06 3 full Royal Dublin Society: Radium and the Dublin Method https://qualla.com/royal-dublin-society/ Photo credit Culnacreann, CC BY-SA 3.0. In 1903 the RDS imported radium into Ireland for the first time. Two of its members, the geologist and physicist John Joly and the surgeon Walter Stevenson, used the new element to develop a needle-implant technique for cancer treatment - inserting hollow needles loaded with rado...

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]]> Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/7/x/royal-dublin-society-wp/gc7x-royal-dublin-society-radium-and-the-dublin-method.mp3 0:06 4 full Royal Dublin Society: The Horse Show https://qualla.com/royal-dublin-society/ Photo credit Culnacreann, CC BY-SA 3.0. The first Dublin Horse Show was held in 1864. By the late nineteenth century it had become one of the great events of the European equestrian calendar - a five-day spectacle of show jumping, breed showing, and Anglo-Irish social ritual. In 1982 the RDS hosted the World Show Jumpi...

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]]> Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/7/x/royal-dublin-society-wp/gc7x-royal-dublin-society-the-horse-show.mp3 0:06 5 full Royal Dublin Society: Ballsbridge Now https://qualla.com/royal-dublin-society/ Photo credit Culnacreann, CC BY-SA 3.0. The Society moved to Ballsbridge in 1879 - then a fifteen-acre site, since expanded to forty. The RDS Arena now seats 18,250 for Leinster Rugby matches, expanded in 2007 and 2008. The Simmonscourt Pavilion holds about seven thousand for concerts and hosted Eurovision in 1981 and ...

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]]> Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/7/x/royal-dublin-society-wp/gc7x-royal-dublin-society-ballsbridge-now.mp3 0:06 6 full