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‘One of the first places taken possession of by the insurgents was the Wireless school over Reis’ shop at the corner of Abbey Street and here during the night the wireless apparatus was re erected complete with aerials.

The Freeman Journal reports on events in O Connell Street April 1916

Rebel Radio was ‘conceived in sin’ and ‘broke down the walls of silence built by the enemy’. The rebels’ launch of their very own radio station in April 1916 was a real and tangible success of the Easter Rising. This group of innovators broke new ground barely a decade after the invention of radio. Their heroic actions often under intense fire from their enemy beat the odds and the British censorship blanket in Ireland.

The radio station, located opposite the rebel headquarters in the GPO, was expertly planned and executed and it became a world’s first as the Irish Republic became the first state to be declared globally by radio. It was the first instance of battlefield propaganda being broadcast to the general listener.

The proclamation signatory and executed leader Joseph Plunkett led a group of extraordinary brave rebels as the first director of Irish Broadcasting. His charges included Fergus O’Kelly, Johnny O’Connor, Liam Daly and the Hollywood star Arthur Sheilds.

To Officer in Charge, Reis's and D.B.C.

The main purpose of your post is to protect our wireless station. Its secondary purpose is to observe Lower Abbey Street and Lower O'Connell Street.

Signed. James Connolly, Commandant General.

This is the full story told for the first time…. 

Pancho or Pearse?

The newspaper columns are laden with news of revolution. The is serious military action taking place 175 miles south of Dublin. The charismatic leader was born in the late 1870s. The use of wireless to control the airwaves and to direct operations was a new by product of the new radio technology  but this was not Ireland. It was Mexico in April 1916.