Mystery of BBC radio's first broadcasts revealed 100 years on | Hacker News Reader

Mystery of BBC radio's first broadcasts revealed 100 years on

bbc.com

63 pointsiam-TJ20 comments

I regard it as a blessing that gives me some perspective remembering a time before both the Internet and cell phones.

But my late father remembered a time before radio. He was four when WWJ launched in Detroit. But when he was six a second station WJR came on the air and his father brought home a radio. It was a source of endless fascination to the entire family whether they were listening to their beloved Detroit Tigers, a concert or the news. Before radio there was no concept of news in real time. People had both a morning and an evening newspaper if they were news junkies. But radio could broadcast news as it happened.

Then there was television. My father was leaving a sales call in Ann Arbor and spied a crowd gathered around a storefront. As he got closer there was a TV in the window and there were the Detroit Tigers playing the Milwaukee Brewers. He told me it was radio with pictures. He couldn't afford a television but when I was born a few years later they went out and purchased a TV so that I could grow up with it just like they grew up with radio. Just like the Internet they had such high hopes for the medium, more high brow than radio but it wasn't to be.

Has there been a more powerful vehicle for projection of 'soft power' than the BBC?

100 years of programming, pulsing out the British perspective for a world that was hungry for new sources of media.

Leaked documents from the CISA recently revealed operations to shape the 'cognitive infrastructure', by planting agents into moderation and product roles in online platforms - they have nothing on Brits, who have been showing the US how it is done for decades

Leaked documents from the CISA recently revealed operations to shape the 'cognitive infrastructure'

Source?

I get what you're saying, but I'm thinking that from such a global perspective, it's more accurate to focus on the whole of English language and culture; rather than on the government institutions from places which take it as a 1st language.

This way it's possible to realize that it's a later version of what Latin once was, and even french got to be for a bit.

It's the state-of-the art in natural language expressiveness. It has a uncommon relation to writing (literal) that is somehow different from most other oral-first languages.

It's the language of trade (of commerce, of merchants), and it has an "ergonomic" (so to say) way to allow expressing complex thoughts.

I still wish to better understand what is it about english orally (spoken) and english literally (written) that's somehow different from other cultures|languages.

It is almost certainly one of the easiest languages to learn as a 2nd (i.e. not 1st) language; and I mean this is a GOOD THING.

I think you’re likely reversing cause and effect - English is so widespread because the English ruled over the majority of the world for quite awhile.

When you speak the language or starve for generations , the language has to be pretty bad to lose it’s power.

Notably, the same was true for Latin for a very long time. Pax Romana and all.

We're just a small island nation. Nobody needs to concern themselves with us. They have nothing to fear. What could we do? We're so small.

I mean the BBC did fake an entire chemical attack in Syria, complete with a fake documentary, when the British were trying to push for intervention. Then they proceeded to purge and memory-hole the entire thing when it was finally released and turned out to be worse than a low-budget film. It was full of voice dubbing doctors, repeated takes, and actors coming out of the woodwork to try to stop investigations[0]. It's called "Saving Syria's Children."

Of course, the standard Western narrative exists in its own sphere, and the only groups to challenge it are the opposition (Russians, Iranians). As a consequence, even generally rational people will immediately dismiss the opposition as being malicious/untrustworthy and will as a result ignore the arguments being presented. Even though the arguments are not originally Russian/Iranian.

The outcome is we now have Western news sources being wholly unchallenged (and vice versa) and BBC continuing to be considered reliable since anyone who would question them is, as a consequence of the culture that has been established, suddenly unreliable.

[0] https://bbcpanoramasavingsyriaschildren.wordpress.com/identi...

Read about Nudge, TNI etc. BBC is being used for psyops and to manipulate people into making "correct" choices, including when it comes to voting.

It's a nasty organisation and anyone with a brain avoids consuming it.

Time as a vehicle of conquest of other nations is an interesting perspective.

https://www.noemamag.com/the-tyranny-of-time/

In reality, this process of switching from local time to Railway time or Greenwich Mean Time had already been taking place throughout the 1800s as a result of European colonialism, imperialism and oppression. Colonialism was not just a conquest of land, and therefore space, but also a conquest of time. From South Asia to Africa to Oceania, imperialists assaulted alternative forms of timekeeping. They saw any region without European-style clocks, watches and church bells as a land without time.

“European global expansion in commerce, transport and communication was paralleled by, and premised upon, control over the manner in which societies abroad related to time,” the Australian historian Giordano Nanni wrote in his book, “The Colonization of Time.” “The project to incorporate the globe within a matrix of hours, minutes and seconds demands recognition as one of the most significant manifestations of Europe’s universalizing will.” In short, if the East India Company was the physical embodiment of British colonialism overseas, GMT was the metaphysical embodiment.

> Has there been a more powerful vehicle for projection of 'soft power' than the BBC?

That was then and now is now.

Just like UK 'soft power' dropped off a cliff in the run-up to and post Brexit, the BBC is now only impartial when it suits them.

Case in point, their continuous failures to correctly attribute interviewees, e.g. repeated attribution failures in relation to the Tufton Street right-wing lobby groups and thinktanks.

"A mistake repeated more than once is a decision" ... as the old saying goes.

> Has there been a more powerful vehicle for projection of 'soft power' than the BBC?

Which makes it that much more stupid that they defunded and destroyed most of the world service.

> they have nothing on Brits, who have been showing the US how it is done for decades

With zero subtlety, too:

Revealed: How MI5 vets BBC staff [1985]

https://www.cambridgeclarion.org/press_cuttings/mi5.bbc.staf...

The vetting files: How the BBC kept out ‘subversives’ [2018]

https://www.bbc.com/news/stories-43754737

Interesting little-known fact:

"The BBC that began broadcasting at 6pm on 14 November 1922 was not the British Broadcasting Corporation of today. It was in fact the British Broadcasting Company and was made up of separate stations around the country operated by different companies."

Yes, that era is fascinating.

In my understanding of the complex history of wireless/radio G Marconi's own business model was point to point communication disrupting the telegraph companies with the new and remarkable feature of being able to communicate with ships at sea. Remember that Marconi was Italian-Irish and his mum happened to be a millionairess with access to the highest levels of the British establishment (this is all 1900s, so before the Irish Free State). So immense investment in long wave point to point transmission by spark transmitters turning over to thermionic valves in 1920s or so.

Broadcasting was a sideshow for him but was central to the electronics startup scene in the US and UK. You go from homemade components in the immediate post war period to manufactured radios and then to consolidated electronics combines in about 15 years.

The early period was full of mavericks and slightly quixotic people. Later into the 30s you get the David Sarnoff's and consolidation.

Some interesting background about the start of the BBC here:

https://www.sciencemuseum.org.uk/objects-and-stories/2lo-cal...

Should the title not read, "BBC marks centenary of its first radio broadcast"?

Other entities had been broadcasting for many years before the BBC's services began.

The title came from the BBC News front-page link to the article that I copy-pasted since the article's own title is so vague!

See the current (2022-11-15) Features and Analysis sub-section at

https://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment_and_arts

Being as the article is on the BBC I suppose they expect the context to be understood :)

The article's own title isn't that vague and fits well enough with the content, i.e. what is traditionally thought of as the first BBC broadcast may well have been preceded by broadcasts from the north of England.

Yes, I agree having revisited it! I'm almost sure it was much more wordy when it was first published which was why I used the shorter headline.

I've changed the submission title to the article title "Mystery of BBC radio's first broadcasts revealed 100 years on".

And this is why editorialising the title is discouraged, and especially so in this case because the article isn't really directly about that.

I don't think this is correct. The Marconi Company started broadcasting a couple of years earlier, but I don't know of any others. The BBC was one of the first, and I certainly don't think that there had been any "broadcasting for many years before".

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