The Landed Gentry and Aristocracy of Country Wicklow - Review by Carlow Nationalist, Wednesday November 16th 2005
“Fortgranite calling!” – Carlow Nationalist, Wednesday November 16th 2005
by William Paterson
Ireland’s first amateur radio transmitter was built by a Colonel Meade Dennis at his Fortgranite home near Baltinglass and who went on to establish contact with a radio amateur in Australia.
It was all done with a chip of crystal (lead sulphide) he found on his farm, a very high aerial, a few twists of wire, a cat’s whisker and a great deal of ingenuity.
The story of the transmitter and the Dennis family is just one of the fascinating passages in a beautifully illustrated book due to be published in December.
Entitled ‘The Landed Gentry & Aristocracy of County Wicklow’, the book abounds in rare photographs and records the family histories of nine of the most prominent landowning families in County Wicklow.
Inevitably, the Viscounts Powerscourt and their neighbours, the Earls of Meath and Wicklow are included.
The author mentions that among the other illustrious Wicklow characters are “the epic lives of the three Erskine Childers, the general who commanded the artillery at El Alamein (North Africa WW2), the girl who inspired Mary Shelley to write, the clergyman who taught the Bronte’s father to read and the Baltinglass soldier who made radio contact with Australia”.
The pages also cover the botanical genius who helped create Kilmacurragh gardens, the Glendalough man who ‘took on the Zulus’, the Madame of Humewood whose father surrendered Paris to the Germans and the playboy who became devoted to the Dublin pubs in the 1950s.
Turtle Bunbury, the author of ‘Landed Gentry’, was educated in Dublin and Scotland and then became a freelance correspondent with the South China Morning Post and Business News Indochina.
You will be able to find his book in Eason’s in December. It is expected to cost a fairly modest Eu 40. The ISBN code is 0953848574
Footnote: Annie Jameson, the mother of radio pioneer Guglielmo Marconi, was Irish. It was natural for Marconi to visit Ireland where he delivered a lecture on radio at the Royal Dublin Society, a lecture which Meade Dennis attended.
Inspired, Dennis returned to Fortgranite and began experimenting with the electrical characteristics of crystals he found on his estate. Piers Dennis, the Colonel’s grandson recalls the Fortgranite of his childhood with a lawn full of haphazard aerials and the Morse Code tap-tap-tap sounds emanating from his grandfather’s study.
Colonel Dennis went on to develop an early form of echo-sounder for submarine detection. Unfortunately for his descendents, he failed to patent his invention
If a young son in your family would like to build a crystal radio receiver similar in concept to the transmitter and receiver upon which Colonel Dennis’ was constructed they can find out how to on the web at http://www.techlib.com/electronics/crystal/html