From the archives of Bob Montgomery, motoring historian
THE IRISH ROAD IMPROVEMENT ASSOCIATION: When John Brown imported the first car, a Serpollet steamer, into Ireland in March 1896, it was not insignificant that he soon after founded the Irish Roads Improvement Association.
Irish roads at the end of the 19th century had not been designed for motor vehicles. In truth they were in an appalling state and unfit for most of the traffic that had to use them.
Although Brown's purpose was to make them suitable for the motorised traffic which he foresaw using them, his efforts were to benefit all users.
A typical Irish road of the time consisted of a rough graded stone as a top surface. This pot-holed easily and was also swept to the edges of the road by passing vehicles. With rain the surface turned to a sticky mess, while in dry conditions the ever-present dust made any journey a most uncomfortable experience.
What John Brown and the Irish Roads Improvement Association did was to bring a scientific approach to the building and maintenance of Irish roads. After an initial conference of interested parties hosted at the Goodbody residence at Clara, the Irish Roads Congress was held in 1910 and again in 1911. The congresses were held in the theatre of the RDS in Leinster House on Kildare Street, Dublin, and were opened by the Lord Lieutenant, the Earl of Aberdeen. Some 450 members from all parts of Ireland attended each of the congresses, which were held over a three-day period.
Papers were presented by experts of the day but notable among them were papers on "The Road User's Point-of-View" by RJ Mecredy and "The Viagraph" by John Brown - an engineer, Brown invented the Viagraph to graphically indicate a road surface's true condition. Also notable were papers presented by Rees Jeffreys on speed limits and the dust nuisance.
Despite the best efforts of the Irish Roads Improvement Association, change came slowly and improvements such as steam-rolling were very slow to get under way. Indeed, in the 1910s a motorist's map of steam-rolled Irish roads was a best-seller.
Motorists had to wait until the 1920s for many roads to have a "sealed" surface and even then maintenance was somewhat haphazard. Some things at least, it seems, never change!
WOMEN RACING DRIVERS: The first recorded woman racing driver was a certain Mme Labrousse of Paris, who took part in a race from Paris to Spa in Belgium on July 1st and 2nd 1899. The pioneering Mme Labrousse recorded a good result in the event, coming fifth in the class for cars carrying three persons.
Not long afterwards, a Miss Wemblyn drove her 6 hp Daimler to victory over three other competitors in a special women's race at Ranelagh in London on July 14th 1900.
The earliest drive by a woman in a serious event in Ireland appears to have been the very fine victory achieved by Fay Taylour in an Adler Trumpf in the inaugural running of the famous Leinster Trophy Race at the Skerries circuit in 1934.
Fay thus became the first name on a trophy which was in subsequent years to be won by many of the greatest names in motor sport - F1 stars Senna and Hakkinan, for example - and which continues to be competed for each year, making it Ireland's longest-running motor race.