[HN Gopher] Mystery of BBC radio's first broadcasts revealed 100...
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Mystery of BBC radio's first broadcasts revealed 100 years on
Author : iam-TJ
Score : 51 points
Date : 2022-11-14 11:39 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.bbc.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.bbc.com)
| Supernaut wrote:
| 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.
| iam-TJ wrote:
| 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 :)
| teh_klev wrote:
| 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.
| iam-TJ wrote:
| 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".
| [deleted]
| james-bcn wrote:
| 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".
| teh_klev wrote:
| And this is why editorialising the title is discouraged, and
| especially so in this case because the article isn't really
| directly about that.
| iam-TJ wrote:
| 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."
| 2b3a51 wrote:
| 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.
| hunglee2 wrote:
| 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
| someotherperson wrote:
| 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...
| jvm___ wrote:
| 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.
| nolongerbanntd wrote:
| 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.
| lazide wrote:
| 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.
| traceroute66 wrote:
| > 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.
| themikesanto wrote:
| _Leaked documents from the CISA recently revealed operations to
| shape the 'cognitive infrastructure'_
|
| Source?
| imdsm wrote:
| 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.
| [deleted]
| varispeed wrote:
| 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.
| pessimizer wrote:
| > 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
| rmason wrote:
| 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.
| helsinkiandrew wrote:
| Some interesting background about the start of the BBC here:
|
| https://www.sciencemuseum.org.uk/objects-and-stories/2lo-cal...
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