The technology was creaky, the schedule limited to just two hours a day, and the prospect of sabotage lurked in the background.
But 40 years on from its "venture into the unknown", Raidio na Gaeltachta has overcome its inauspicious and chaotic beginnings to become an Irish institution.
And it almost didn't happen. Engineers worked feverishly through the night to get the studio at Casla in Connemara ready so the national Irish-language station could go to air for its maiden broadcast on Easter Sunday, April 2, 1972.
Construction work was only beginning on its two other studios, in Kerry and Donegal, and it would be another year before they were ready.
Meanwhile, extra gardai were drafted in from Clifden over fears that a dispute about the moving of a post office -- which housed the local telephone exchange -- could lead to the new station being targeted by saboteurs. Fortunately, the telephone lines were not cut by disgruntled natives, and the broadcast went ahead as planned.
More at Independent.ie.
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