Wither the RTE Museum and Paddy Clarke?

DublinWriter

Years ago in the early 80's when I was a kid I remember the local summer project bringing us out to Pimlico to visit Paddy Clarke's RTE museum.

Paddy Clarke was a retired RTE engineer and the basement of his house was the RTE museum. I remember being impressed as a kid by his collection, these days I'd probably wet myself at some of the exhibits. I still have the catalog of the museum from the early 80's and it included the original German-manufactured "O' Donnel Abù" tuning signal generator from the 1930's, numerous TV cameras from the 1960's and a mock of of the RTE news studio complete with a life-size dummy of veteran RTE newsreader Charles Mitchel.

Paddy brought us around the exhibits as patiently as he could. We were promised we'd win 'a prize' if we answered a question correctly after the tour. The question turned out to be 'Who invented television?'. I answered first, shouting "John Logie Baird, sir!" and got to have my picture taken standing next to the Charles Mitchel dummy by Paddy Clarke on a Polariod. I nervously put my arm around the dummy and Paddy said "Don't be flippant!".

Once the Polaroid was developed he put a sticker with Charles Mitchel's autograph on it from a roll of pre-signed stickers that he probably had Charles Mitchel sign many years before.

These days I know the real inventor of television was the American Filo Farnsworth and I pine for the day that we'll have a proper museum of radio and television in this country. If we can have a professionally run and staffed museum of print design in Collins Barracks, then by no stretch of the imagination should we have a fully-resourced museum of broadcast media.

I'm not dismissing Paddy's efforts, on the contrary, much of RTE's history would have been lost but for him, but I'm sure he did what he did out of love and was poorly sponsored in his efforts.

I was fortunate enough to visit the Cork City Gaol exhibition a number of years back which incorporates a museum of broadcasting and has only very little of Paddy Clarke's original collection.

Firstly, I'm wondering what became of Mr.Paddy Clarke and his Dublin based museum? Secondly, I'm thinking is it time for us to start a lobbying campaign to get a museum of Irish broadcast history established? Surely it merits enough interest in terms of the sociological impact that the medium had throughout the 20th century.

Foggy43

Wasn't there something on RTE 1 recently about a chap who has museum dealing mostly with radio in Ireland. I think was on a site used before Donnybrook.
It was either the 6.01 news or Nationwide that covered it. About the same time RTE Radio 1 on MW ceased.

Edit: Found the broadcast. Not the chap you mentioned, I'm afraid. http://www.rte.ie/news/2008/0326/nationwide.html

watty

No Farnsworth did not invent it. He was just one successful developer.

Many people demonstrated electronic TV before Baird's throwback to Victorian SteamPunk (1898 technology). As early as 1905 electronic camera and picture tube both using CRT (invented some years earlier) was proposed.

L1011

The radio museum is in an old Martello tower that I'm not sure has any broadcasting history to it, and is mostly just receivers. Still an interesting visit though.

The print museum isn't in Collins Barracks its in, erm, the other one. Thats in D4.... can't remember. Its also quite interesting but my god it was empty the day I was there - me and the staff was all that was there.