The first radio broadcast in Ireland happened on April 25th 1916 from what is now the Grand Central on O’Connell Street.
A message in Morse Code was broadcast to alert the world that the Easter Rising had begun in Ireland.
The dramatic story of the birth of Irish radio during the 1916 Rising will be re-enacted on air simultaneously by 37 radio stations nationwide on Monday, April 25 at 5.30pm, one hundred years to the original date and exact time of the declaration of the Irish Republic, Ireland’s first broadcast to the nation and the world.
In a joint initiative between RTE Radio and the Independent Broadcasters of Ireland (IBI) a highly evocative 80 second morse code themed radio experience devised by Dublin based creative agency Boys and Girls (www.boysandgirls.ie) and titled “The Sound of Sixteen” imagines the battling sounds and dangerous atmosphere of the times.
It also reprises the morse code message written by James Connolly and transmitted by Marconi operator David Burke. That first Easter Tuesday message read:” Irish Republic declared in Dublin today. Irish troops have captured city and are in full possession. Enemy cannot move in city. The whole country rising.”
The broadcast took place 190 metres from the GPO at what was then The Wireless School of Telegraphy at 10-11 Sackville Street (now O’Connell Street). The full story of the drama that unfolded around the build up to the first broadcast (and subsequently) is told at www.thesoundofsixteen.ie.
