Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 December 2011
Outside Ireland the Royal Dublin Society is perhaps best known for its annual International Horse Show, but it has in its long history contributed to many other aspects of Irish life. The Dublin Society, as it was called up to 1821 when it assumed the title Royal on King George IV becoming its patron, was founded in 1731 for the purpose of ‘improving husbandry, manufactures and other useful arts and sciences’. Since that time the Society has done much to foster an understanding of the relationship of science to industry and one of the Society's important committees is known as the Committee for Science and its Industrial Applications. The Society's original library became the nucleus of the National Library for Ireland, its Botanical Gardens the National Botanical Gardens and, indeed, as one speaker said at a Dublin meeting recently, ‘there were very few scientific or cultural organisations in Ireland which did not owe their origin to the activities of the Society’.