Time to tune in to RTE archives

Earliest broadcasts available on the web

- LARISSA NOLAN

IRISH radio's earliest broadcasts are now available online, thanks to the RTE Archives.

The broadcaster yesterday published more than 5,300 radio recordings from as far back as 1927, spanning to the 1970s.

The recordings were collated as part of a three-year project, which involved creating digital film from fragile acetate discs.

Acetate disc was the earliest sound recording format, used in production, recording and broadcast on Radio Eireann, which began in 1926.

Brid Dooley, head of the RTE Archive, said: "It will take audiences back to the sounds and voices as the new Irish state was emerging, many decades before television came along."

Highlights show how, a century on, many of our key issues remain the same, such as housing, refugees and technology.

Republican revolutionary Maud Gonne was 79 when she gave an interview to Dr Eileen Dixon.

Maud told of witnessing evictions in her youth and her involvement in the Land War.

She said: "There were balls and parties every night and it was all such fun. But it took me a long time to discover a war was in progress the Land War.

"I only discovered when I accidentally saw some evictions.

"And then I didn't want to go to anymore, as I would have to dance and eat with the evictors.