Here's a thread on the Proclamation
‘Poblacht na hÉireann’ means ‘Republic of Ireland’. ‘Ríocht’ means ‘kingdom’;‘pobal’ means ‘people’. By taking the word for ‘king’ (‘rí’) from ‘ríocht’ and replacing it with ‘pobal’, an invented word for ‘republic’ was devised:‘poblacht’.

Patrick Pearse is the most obvious author. Doubtless there was some input from the other Military Council members – especially James Connolly – and it’s hard to imagine that poets Thomas MacDonagh and Joseph Plunkett did not add to the content.

Christopher Brady, who printed the Proclamation, mused over this in his witness statement: ‘Although I read the manuscript I could not say in whose hand-writing it was. It certainly was not Connolly’s as I was familiar with his scrawl.

Kathleen Clarke, wife of Thomas, recalled how on ‘Tuesday of Holy Week’ (18 April), he had told her ‘that a Proclamation had been drawn up to which he was first signatory ... Some time before, Pearse had been asked to draft it..." There followed a meeting in the Wyse Power's.

Jenny and John Wyse Power had a restaurant at 21 Henry Street, just around the corner from the GPO.Their daughter recalled a different date for the meeting: ‘On Wednesday [19 April] I was asked by Bulmer Hobson to take a message to Terence MacSwiney in Cork ... Before I left home

for the afternoon train Sean MacDermott came in to ask for the use of a room for a meeting that evening ... I was gone before the meeting but my mother told me that six or seven people attended, including Pearse and Tom Clarke.

The original handwritten manuscript of the Proclamation has never been found. Christopher Brady said he gave it to James Connolly; ‘I gave the first proof to James Connolly at 9pm and he checked it with the manuscript and I never saw the manuscript after that.’

There is no copy of the Proclamation with the actual handwritten signatures of the Signatories.
Michael Molloy maintained that there was a piece of paper with the signatures of the Military Council attached to the handwritten manuscript of the Proclamation. He said...

The signatures of the Proclamation were appended on a separate piece of paper...I took this with me and put it in my pocket...I was later a prisoner in Richmond barracks [where] I destroyed it by chewing it up into small pieces and spitting it out on the floor.’

Christopher Brady was the printer of the Proclamation.The compositors were Michael Molloy and Liam O’Brien.These men were the printers of James Connolly’s newspaper the Workers’ Republic, and they also printed various ITGWU-related items.

The Proclamation was printed on a Double Crown Wharfedale, manufactured in Otley in the Yorkshire Dales, England. This was the machine that was usually used to print James Connolly’s newspaper the Workers’ Republic.

The paper used to print the Proclamation was Double Crown, poster size, 20" x 30". It was purchased specifically for the job from Saggart Paper Mill.

The larger type font is made of wood. The first ‘R’ in IRISH REPUBLIC is broken at the tail. This was ‘fixed’ in facsimile editions of the document. The font used is mostly Antique No. 8, made by Miller & Richard of Edinburgh, and the most common size is Two-line Great Primer.

Lead strips, four points in size, were used to separate each line of type. These are sometimes visible as horizontal lines of ink on Proclamations and can be quite random. In the line ‘TO THE PEOPLE OF IRELAND’, the ‘E’ in ‘THE’ was an ‘F’ that was fashioned into an ‘E’ by Brady.

The lads ran out of the letter ‘e’ and used a different type, which has been identified variously as Abbey Text or Tudor Black. In the last line of the third paragraph, a number of these incorrect ‘e’s appear. In the 1st line of the last paragraph, there is an upside down 'e'

Printer Christopher Brady recalled putting together two bundles of 1,250 each: ‘The machine was ready for first printing at about 8.30pm on Easter Sunday night and the job was finished between 12 and 1 on Easter Monday morning. We had then run off 2,500 copies.’

Michael Molloy remembered how they ran out of type; "we had the top portion of it set half way down, even to complete that half we had to treat letters with sealing wax. So we sent up a message to Connolly that we would have to print the Proclamation in two halves.

The bottom half was still in the printing machine as the British soldiers broke into Liberty Hall – they printed some off as souvenirs. There is a ‘half-Proclamation’ in Kilmainham Gaol, and every now and then they come up for auction. Generally they are of poor quality.

There may be as few as thirty Proclamations left, but no count is available for those in private hands. Ones I know of: GPO, Collins Barracks, Kilmainham, Jackie Clarke, Liberty Hall, Trinity, Leinster House. AIHS New York, and one in Providence Public Library in Rhode Island.