The TechArchives project collects stories about Ireland’s long and convoluted relationship with information technology and preserves them in a unique series of digital archives.
We record the recollections of computing and online service pioneers and publish them as testimonies on this web site. We also store these accounts, along with other digital files of historic significance, in a secure repository that future generations will be able to consult.
If you participated in, or witnessed, the implementation of computer systems, the development of software or the introduction of network services in 20th century Ireland, we would like to add your experiences to the archives. Please make contact via the email address below.
Each of the TechArchives timelines tracks people, projects and events in a key category of hardware, software or information service during its formative years. Follow these links to discover their stories.
Forty years ago: A pub session like no other
Steve Jobs employed a novel audio-visual routine in January 1984, when he launched the Apple Macintosh at a packed auditorium in California. The computer introduced itself with a series of pictorial screenshots and a text-to-speech function that delivered the commentary.
Brian Kelly, the managing director of Apple’s sales subsidiary in Ireland, did not use any fancy presentation methods when he unveiled the system two days later in the upstairs room of a Dublin pub. He lifted a Mac out of its carrying case and declared ‘Here it is’.
IBM’s Personal Computer was the juggernaut of the IT world in 1984 and the Macintosh was Apple’s response to its success. Not only was the Apple machine radically different in design with a graphical user interface, icons on the screen and a mouse that controlled everything. The company also rammed home the message that its corporate culture was completely unlike IBM’s.
It was somehow fitting, then, that Macintosh made its public debut in Scruffy Murphys.
The first model in the new family was limited in processing power and storage capacity and the only applications on display at the launch were Apple’s own MacPaint and MacWrite software. But the public interest in the Macintosh was enormous. And the resellers who attended the event were soon swamped with requests for demonstrations.
Sales picked up when Apple enhanced the hardware and when software developers shipped products that utilised the Mac’s capabilities, most notably for desktop publishing.
Read how Apple Computer launched the Macintosh in the anniversaries section
Newest testimonies
Eóin Meehan
ICS Computing programmer 1980-1981 / Online Computing programmer 1982-1983
Eóin Meehan
Cognotec systems manager 1985-1988 / EuroKom systems and network manager 1988-89 / Printech MIS manager 1989-1992 / Trinity Group systems and networking consultant 1992-1996
Anna Browne
Symantec tools development manager 1992-98 / Vistatec engineering services manager 2000-09
Ronan O’Boyle
W3 Services co-founder 1994-96 / Into White client manager 1997-99
Henry McLoughlin
Web Educational Support Tools co-founder 1995-96