Marconiphone – 1930 Irish Times

This last ad features the Marconiphone Model 55 portable set and speaker residential radio. Guglielmo Marconi invented the radio through a series of experiments from 1890-1905, which culminated in the first ever transatlantic radio transmission between St. John’s, Newfoundland, and Clifden, Ireland. In 1922, the Marconi Company started the Marconiphone department to manufacture and sell radios which normal people could use in their homes. Though the radio in this advertisement is branded with the name of Marconi, the Marconiphone company had actually been sold to the Gramophone company by 1930.

After its invention, radio quickly became an important form of communication, mainly for military communications during the first World War. In fact, being a radio operator for overseas communication provided job opportunities for young men in Ireland during the first World War, and training facilities like the Irish School of Wireless in Dublin popped up. During the 1916 Easter Rising, the Irish School of Wireless became the site of the first Irish radio transmission when the building was occupied by rebel forces and a message from James Connolly was broadcast in morse code, which read:

Irish Republic declared today in Dublin. Irish troops have captured city and are in full possession. Enemy cannot move in city.

During the War of Independence and the Civil War, radio was illegal in Ireland for fear of various propaganda threats. However, in 1926, 2RN became the first legal radio station in the Irish Free State. This would later become RTÈ, making the radio station the oldest continuously operating public radio service in Europe.

Getting radio into every house had its challenges. At a time when many rural Irish homes had little to no electricity, people in the countryside often used “wet batteries” to power radios. These batteries were rechargeable and local garages offered the charging service. On top of this, the radio had the unique challenge of fitting into the comfortable space of the living room in a way which mechanized kitchen appliances didn’t. This meant that radios had to disguise their wires and metal equipment beneath a more appealing exterior that people would be more willing to keep in their homes. In this ad for the Model 55 Marconiphone, we can see that the design for the radios was often evocative of furniture styles.

Radios offered a new form of entertainment, which was transformative for life at the time. Those in remote places who had a radio could now listen to the new radio programming live. People would spend evenings around the radio in their neighbor’s house if they had no radio of their own. Until television became a staple in households, the radio became a way for people to hear the news, weather, matches that were on, and music played live in the studio. The live broadcast of the 1932 World Eucharistic Congress in Dublin was widely listened to and became the largest radio broadcast event in Irish history at the time, proving that radio even revolutionised the way which people could worship.

By Mazie Smallidge, researched and written for #OpentheArchive, June 2025.