Tuesday, January 20, 2015

Ireland's Early Aviators - Images from the Archives

A current exhibition on-going at Dublin Airport celebrating 75 years of civil aviation in Ireland. The exhibition includes photographs depicting the development of Dublin Airport, the place of Aer Lingus and the first pilots, crew and passengers of these first flights.

An interesting link to the collections here at the James Hardiman Library include a series of images within the Ritchie-Pickow archive, which depict scenes of those very years of the first commercial flights in and out of Ireland in the 1940s and 1950s. The images show aircraft, pilots, airport buildings, cabin crew and even a scene of where mass was being said in a hanger at Dublin Airport, which the passengers in attendance. Over 300 images relate to flying and air travel in Ireland alone.

These images are a wonderful insight into the history of aviation in Ireland and a window into the social and economic impact of the growth of flying through tourism, political connections, social events, trade and financial impact that linked Ireland's early aviators.

Here are some images from Ireland's early aviators in the Ritchie-Pickow archive:







You can view an online exhibition of a selection of images from the Ritchie-Pickow archive here.

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