A high place among inventors of Irish birth belongs to Mr Louis Brennan, who was born at Castlebar seventy-eight years ago today. Mr Brennan's parents took him to Australia at the age of eleven, and in Melbourne he was apprenticed to an eminent engineer who perceived his inventive genius and encouraged him to give it play. After years of patient experiment he produced the famous Brennan torpedo, which was acquired by the British Government for £100,000. Some years later, during a holiday in the South of France, a toy bought from a street pedlar suggested to him the idea of the gyroscope, to the application of which he has since devoted his energies. His first experiments were for the utilisation of the gyroscope in connection with monorail cars, which he hoped would supersede double track railways, but since the war he has given most of his time to its application to aircraft, particularly with the idea of making it possible for an aeroplane to hover or stand still.
The Irish Times, January 29th, 1930.