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IT HAS BEEN 70 years since the ESB launched its Rural Electrification Scheme which promised to ‘light up the minds as well as the homes’ of people in rural Ireland.
Before that water had to be carried from a well and clothes had to be washed by hand or with a hand-powered ‘wringer washer’.
Farm work and household activity were dictated by daylight and heating and cooking depended on timber and turf.
ESB has today launched a new website of its collection of photographs and maps that reveal the significant change electricity made to Irish society.
Here’s a look at just some of the images available on the site:
Ireland was divided into 792 rural areas for the process of rural electrification, 1956-1965.
Once the poles were erected, wiring connected and transformers mounted – individual houses were then connected to the grid.
ESB has released an interactive map that lists each of these and shows exactly when each area was connected.
https://www.google.com/maps/d/u/0/viewer?mid=zqZFjM97Ybmw.kdcL63IOv0Ck
The website also features photographs of inside the offices of ESB. The company made history on 17 June 1964 when Ireland’s largest computer installation went into operation.
The site also features a collection of administrative records, maps, photographs, film and artefacts during the social transformation of the country.
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Ok there’s a few errors here. Barack Obama was born in Honolulu, Hawaii. But stood in Chicago for election. Michael Jackson was born in Gary, Indiana. Joan Cusack was born in New York but raised in Evanston, Illinois and her brother, John, was born and raised in Evanston, Illinois. Seriously, who does your research for these articles? Hillary Clinton was born in Chicago though if you want to to run with that.
Can’t argue much of that! Although Evanston is more a less Chicago, just a suburb of Chicago, but that aside. BILL MURRAY!!! was also from there. Billy fecking Murray, how could you leave that man off any list. Wouldn’t wish Gary, Indiana on my worst enemy, horrendous place.
You could have give us Home Alone, Kenan & Kel, Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, Married with Children, Al Capone, Steve Carell, Cindy Crawford, Walt Disney or Michael Flatley but you decided to give us the Cusacks :(
They could even have said Kanye West.
@Eugene Molloy: If it has not clicked yet, I think the Cusack connection is about the Irishness of it all…….
@William Kavanagh: The Irishness of Deep Dish pizza, Chewing gum, House music and Jackson must be at a stretch then, probably like the Tom Cruise connection
Smashing Pumpkins
Goose Island beer!
@The Magnificent Wat a band. Siamese Dream still in my top 5 albums of all time.
@Eugene Molloy: Cusack…. I said Cusack…. And Cruise is Irish, the church of scientology ordered it and held a shotgun to my head while typing this.
@Jonny. Absolutely rockin!
Michael Jackson was born in Gary Indiana
Micheal Jackson is from Gary Indiana
Deep dish pizzas are just wrong.
and Fall Out Boy guys.
And radioactive man
They can hold on to the deep-pan pizza. It’s like a mix of pizza and apple tart. Brutal!
Wrigleys did not invent chewing gum. They weren’t even the first manufacturers in the States.
Michael Jackson is not from Chicago. Barack Obama is also not from Chicago. Do you people do any research before you vomit this stuff all over your screen?
How on earth did BILL MURRAY!!! not get on that list, from a suburb of Chicago but Chicago all the same. Chicago Bulls of the 90′s were pretty spectacular too and not to mention The Blues Brothers, The Chicago Outfit, run by non other them Al Capone. Someone half asleep doing this one!
The blues brothers
The Blues Brothers! Shiiiit! They still owe you money fool!
Broad shoulders and excellent chop houses
Dion O’Bannon
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