A Salute to the Men who put 2RN on the Air, (Part One) The Irish Eckersley, TJ Monaghan

 

Peter Eckersley was a famous name associated with the early days of radio in the United Kingdom. A sometimes eccentric extrovert, he was initially involved with the first broadcasting station, 2MT, before moving onto 2LO and then the amalgamation of radio stations that became the BBC. He was a controversial character but there is little doubt that without him the success of the BBC would have been stalled. In Ireland we had an engineer who was described as the ‘Irish Eckersley’[1]. He was a powerful Civil Servant who held sway over his domain unchallenged for over a quarter of a century, he controlled all engineering decisions over radio broadcasting, telephone and aeronautical communications. Yet very little is known or remembered of Thomas Joseph Monaghan, ‘The Irish Eckersley’.

 

T.J. Monaghan, as he was known, was born on April 10th 1887 near Granard, Co. Longford, son of John Monaghan, a local farmer and Mary Carrigy. The family moved to Britain where he was educated at Xaverian College boarding school at Mayfield, Sussex. In 1902 he began attending South-western Polytechnic. Founded in 1895, one of the principal aims of the South-Western Polytechnic Institute was the provision of education for the poorer inhabitants of London. An emphasis was placed on instruction in handicraft, trade and business, together with access to recreational facilities, sought to improve the career prospects and their physical, social and moral conditions. This initiative initially took the form of day and evening classes for men and women over fifteen years of age, with the Institute offering well-equipped laboratories for the study of subjects such as mechanical and electrical engineering, mathematics, physics, chemistry and metallurgy, in the hope of attracting male students keen to learn a trade and enter industry. Practical training was additionally available in carpentry, brickwork and advanced cookery; whilst classes in economics and commerce offered training in shorthand and typewriting for lady secretaries together with examinations for appointments in the civil service and the post office. Students were also afforded the opportunity to attend lectures in literary arts and to receive instruction in languages. He left the College with a Batchelor of Science degree in Engineering, passing with first class honours.

 

 

Following his graduation, he received practical training variously at the Royal Small Arms factory at Enfield, Yarrow & Co. at Poplar, and Simpson-Worthington at Newark until 1909. In 1910, Monaghan then joined the General Post Office (GPO) as an assistant engineer at their H.Q. in London. The General Post Office in St. Martin's Le Grand, later known as GPO East, was the main post office for London between 1829 and 1910, and during that period was the headquarters of the General Post Office of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, and was England's first purpose-built post office. It was demolished in 1912. It was the UK's second purpose-built post office after Dublin's GPO, which was completed in 1818 to a design by Francis Johnston, and still in use.

 

He was transferred to Belfast in 1910, spending two years there, then moving to Dublin and then to Cork in 1919, during which time he was in charge of works and maintenance of telegraphs, telephones, and wireless. At the beginning of the War of Independence in 1919, he was transferred back to the London HQ of the GPO on special wireless work and in 1921 he was appointed as officer-in-charge of the Leafield Wireless Station in Oxfordshire responsible for plant erection and the running of what was then one of the principal wireless stations in the world. Leafield was a powerful wireless station with a 250 KW arc transmitter that was to be part of an Imperial Wireless Chain that would connect the empire. Officially opened by the then British Postmaster General E G Kellaway, it initially connected with a similar station at Abu Zabal in Egypt.

 

 Following the end of the War of Independence and the creation of the Irish Free State he returned to Ireland in 1923 and became a staff engineer at Department of Posts & Telegraphs in Dublin responsible under the engineer-in-chief for a variety of aspects of the work of the department, including the initiation of the Irish broadcasting service. His first big project was all the technical aspects of the arrival of radio in Ireland and the launch of 2RN. He was seconded from the Department to 2RN and in tandem with the building of the transmitting apparatus was on the committee that appointed key personnel including the station director. That was the inspired appointment of Seamus Clandillon but Monaghan had his input on all aspects of the arrival of State sponsored radio in Ireland.

He was the man charged with putting 2RN on the air along with fellow radio engineer William Beatty. They purchased a 1.5kilowatt Marconi transmitter and installed it in a wooden hut on the grounds of McKee Barracks near the Phoenix Park. Aerials were erected and by mid November 1925, the first test transmissions from the station began. The station officially went on the air at 7.45pm on January 1^st 1926. A year later he was involved with installing the transmitter for the second Irish station 6CK in Cork. 6CK was based in the former Women’s Gaol in the city.

In November 1928 he replaced L.J. Kettle as the Chairman of the Trinity College Physical Laboratory. In lecture when he assumed the position, titled ‘Efficient Communications’ he said,

'It would take 100 years of constant human speech to generate enough energy to boil water for a single cup of tea.’

 

Monaghan travelled to the various wavelength conferences that saw the wavelengths of both 2RN and 6CK change regularly. The range of the two stations was limited and the Government decided that a more powerful transmitter would be purchased and installed somewhere in the centre of the country. Monaghan and his team of engineers, including John Lyons, undertook painstaking research testing various locations including Tullamore and Portlaoise before settling on Moydrum outside Athlone.

With the intended launch originally scheduled for 1933, one of the biggest events to be staged in the new Irish Free State was the 1932 Eucharistic Congress of the Catholic Church. Monaghan was put in charge of ‘broadcasting’ the entire event. Installation at Moydrum was sped up and the new transmitter was operating in time for the first blessing in June 1932 and the signal strength meant that all the island was able to tune in. Not only was Monaghan in charge of the radio broadcasting end of the event, but he also increased the capacity of the telephone system and he provided facilities for the overseas Press attending the event to keep in touch with news desks around the world.

 

Another success for Monaghan was the installation of over three hundred loudspeakers wired throughout the city to relay the ecumenical events from the Pro Cathedral, O’Connell Bridge where an altar had been erected and from the Phoenix Park where Mass was celebrated.

 

By the late 1930’s as war loomed, the Irish Government under Fianna Fail and Eamon DeValera wanted to be able to speak to the Irish diaspora abroad. Up to that point they relied on special broadcasts surrounding St Patrick's Day but a new Short Wave service would assist in the dispersing the Irish Governments neutral stance when war did break out. The short wave service achieved limited success and was eventually discontinued. When transmissions were heard abroad and listeners wrote with reception reports, it was Monaghan who would reply with QSL and conformation letters.

 

During World War Two or the Emergency as it was known in Ireland, Monaghan joined the Irish Army and the Signal Corps. He helped set up an emergency broadcasting station in Eamon de Valera’s house should the main studios or aerials be bombed and put out of action. He also, with the help of the BBC, synchronised the frequencies of the Irish stations at Cork, Dublin and Athlone in order to prevent enemy pilots identifying their location from radio broadcasts.

 

But not only was Monaghan looking after radio from his offices in Leitrim House in the offices of Dublin Castle, he was controlling the progress of telephone services in Ireland including the arrival of the automatic telephone exchanges. His remit also had him looking after aeronautical communications and as the result of Ireland’s position at the edge of Europe, closest to continental America’s, aircraft communications was a vital area especially post World War Two.

 

Monaghan represented Ireland at numerous conferences across Europe and the United States. These conferences allocated frequencies for his radio station, now known as Radio Eireann, discussed modernizing Telephone systems and formatting safe flying for the expanding aviation industry.

  

He became engineer-in-chief in 1930 and moved the family to 15 Clarinda Park North, Dun Laoghaire. Monaghan was elected MICEI in December 1929, served on council, was a vice president and served as honorary secretary, becoming president in 1942. He was also a member of the IEE and served as chairman of its Irish branch.

 

During the war he joined the Irish army signal corps and was promoted to the rank of Colonel. In 1951, he was instrumental in forming the Signals Club made up of ex members of the Signal Corps. Monaghan married Winifred in 1909, a daughter Judith was born in .. Judith met her future husband Gatt Westerhout at the radio conference in Dublin in 1955. They married a year later and her Dutch born husband carved out an extraordinary career in astronomy. They couple had 5 children two sons, Gart and Julian Westerhout; two daughters, Magda Westerhout Mobley and Brigit Molony, with her partner of 56 years passing away in 2012.

TJ Monaghan retired in April 1952. In 1958 he was appointed as Chairman of the Institute for Industrial Research and Standards and in May 1958 he joined the board of the National Board and Paper Mills, the Mills located in Granard, Co. Longford. Also appointed to that board at the time was the former Minister for Industry and Commerce, Daniel Morrissey.

T.J. Monaghan died at his home at 18 Summerhill Road, Dun Laoghaire on 10 July 1971.  

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[1] Described by Seamus Hughes, station announcer in the Irish Independent December 16^th 1925, two weeks before the official launch of 2RN on January 1^st 1926.