Today we have RTE Radio, Today FM, NewsTalk and a plethora of local radio stations dotted around the country. Before they showed up, it was 2RN...but before that...a certain Mr. Marconi was the lone voice of Irish radio transmissions.
Tracey was telling me about a friend of hers who grew up in the Marconi House on Rosslare Strand in Co. Wexford.
The house has a history.
It was from here that Guglielmo Marconi (yes...that Marconi) sent the world's first wireless message from Europe to North America in 1901 (three years before he was given the patent for radio) which then led to a regular trans-Atlantic radio-telegraph service from Cornwall via Rosslare to Clifden Co. Galway and Glace Bay Nova Scotia in Canada.
Previous to establishing himself in Wexford, Marconi had set up the world's first wireless telegraph transmission in 1898 in Co. Antrim.
Tracey remembers her friend saying people showed up outside his house to take pictures of themselves beside the big plaque commemorating the fact (early anoraks, maybe??).
It's a giant piece of our industry's history, sitting quietly on an Irish strand looking out to the sea.
Plus, it's no coincidence that the Communicorp family of Dublin based radio stations, broadcast from a building in the city named...Marconi House.
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