Temporary licensed Dublin station
2BP
Launched on August 14th, 2BP was a one-off Dublin temporary licensed test broadcast station ran by the Marconi Wireless Company during the RDS Horse Show Week in 1923. Designed to showcase what was possible with the fledgling technology, the broadcasts came from a temporary studio set up in The Royal Marine Hotel in Kingstown (now called Dún Laoghaire) with public receiving apparatus set up at the RDS.
Shortly after 11am, listenrs were greeted with the words: "2BP speaking". Music concerts and news broadcasts were a feature for three days until the government shut the station down.
Shortly after 11 a.m. on Tuesday 14 August 1923, a voice, “clear and distinct”, greeted listeners: “2BP speaking”. With those words from Louis Wilson of the Marconi Company, the Royal Marine Hotel, Dún Laoghaire, booked its place in broadcasting history. Having installed a transmitting studio and aerial in its main tower, the Hotel began to relay news items, messages and songs to visitors at the Royal Dublin Society horse show. Eighteen-year-old soprano Renée Flynn recalled: “They set up a piano in a room in the Hotel, and they had a telephone, and we sang into that telephone... The people at the RDS paid fourpence or sixpence, or whatever they paid then, to go into a little room and put on headphones to hear us singing”. The Hotel also broadcast “high-class” concerts that could be received in the Wellington Hall, Ballsbridge. The ‘receiver’ at the horse show and in the Hall was referred to as a ‘wireless’ because there were no wires linking it to the transmitting station in the Hotel. Others preferred ‘radio’, as it worked by radiating electromagnetic waves.
Irish Examiner on the 100th Anniversary of the broadcasts
Further resources:- Eddie Bohan's book on the 2BP story is available at Amazon
Eddie Bohan's blog on the 2BP story
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