RCSI Heritage Collections

Through an archive mailing list the RCSI Heritage Collections receives unusual, thought provoking, amusing and sometimes really weird articles about all things archives. Edge of your seat stuff! Recently a couple of articles have got us thinking about future generations looking back at our time on this earth. Will they be able to open the discs, USB, hard drives we currently use to store our memories, photos, thoughts? Will they be able to read the emails we have saved, the drafts of stories we have written, the letters we have typed and sent? Computers have come along way and so has the software we use on them. Just take a look below at some of the hardware used over the decades! ENIAC World War II computer  Ferranti Pegasus Computer 1950s/1960s ISC colour computer 1980s Early Microsoft laptop Apple computer 1982 Tablet used by millions today Vint Cerf, co-creator of the internet, and a group of like minded compu

This year is the year of celebrating the rebellion and what those few hoped to achieve. So with this theme of rebellion in mind, who should be found amongst the early giants of Irish surgery and the history of RCSI but a rebel so rebellious he is expelled! Enter the aptly named William Lawless There is a little confusion over the exact year that Lawless was born in Dublin, some sources say it was 1772 while others say it was a little earlier in 1764. Either way we know he had completed his surgical studies and received his Letters Testimonial from RCSI on 11th June 1788. How can we be so exact? It is written in the RCSI Roll of Licentiates from that time, see below William Lawless' name is the first listed above (RCSI/Lic/01/02) In 1790 Lawless was elected a Member of the College and on 1st September he was appointed Professor of Anatomy and Physiology. Lawless was an avowed nationalist and along with his fellow surgeon, William Dease, was an active member of the Unit