We can’t be a radio station and not celebrate World Telecommunications Day, right? Today we talked about the history behind the day, and also the history and fun facts about the types of telecommunication that we have! Check it out below!
History of World Telecommunications Day:
In November 2005, the World Summit on the Information Society called upon the UN General Assembly to declare 17 May as World Information Society Day to focus on the importance of ICT and the wide range of issues related to the information society raised by WSIS. The General Assembly adopted a resolution in March 2006 stipulating that World Information Society Day shall be celebrated every year on 17 May. The first World Information Society Day took place on Wednesday, 17 May 2006.
A Brief History of Radio:
During the 1860s, Scottish physicist James Clerk Maxwell predicted the existence of radio waves. And in 1886, German physicist Heinrich Rudolph Hertz demonstrated that rapid variations of electric current could be projected into space in the form of radio waves, similar to those of light and heat. In 1866, Mahlon Loomis, an American dentist, successfully demonstrated “wireless telegraphy.” Loomis was able to make a meter connected to one kite cause another one to move. This marked the first known instance of wireless aerial communication.
A Brief History of the Telephone:
Alexander Graham Bell was awarded the first U.S. patent for the invention of the telephone in 1876. Elisha Gray, 1876, designed a telephone using a water microphone in Highland Park, Illinois. Tivadar Puskás proposed the telephone switchboard exchange in 1876. That first patent by Bell was the master patent of the telephone, from which other patents for electric telephone devices and features flowed.
Here’s an info-graphic about age correlating to type of phone owned.
Age Any type of phone Smart Phone Non-Smart Phone
| Ages 18-29 | 100% | 92% | 8% |
| 30-49 | 99% | 88% | 11% |
| 50-64 | 97% | 74% | 23% |
| 65+ | 80% | 42% | 38% |
A Brief History of the Fax Machine
Fax (short for facsimile), sometimes called telecopying or telefax (the latter short for telefacsimile. Scottish inventor Alexander Bain worked on chemical mechanical fax type devices and in 1846 was able to reproduce graphic signs in laboratory experiments. He received British patent 9745 on May 27, 1843 for his “Electric Printing Telegraph.” Frederick Bakewell made several improvements on Bain’s design and demonstrated a telefax machine.
Our Word of the Day today was: Castigate.
Verb || KASS-tuh-gayt
“To subject to severe punishment, reproof, or criticism”
Castigate has a synonym in chastise. Both verbs mean to punish or to censure someone. Fittingly, both words derive from the same root: the Latin castigare, formed from the words for “pure” (castus) and “to drive” (agere). (Castus also gave us the noun caste, meaning “social class or rank.”) Another verb derived from castigare is chasten, which can also mean “to discipline by punishment” but more commonly means “to subdue or make humble” (as in “chastened by his foolish error”). Castigate is the youngest of the three verbs in English, dating from the early 17th century, while chasten dates to the early 16th century and chastise has been found in use as far back as the 14th.
We have so much technology and so many opportunities to use it, but do we always use it right? As a radio station, we have the greatest privilege to be able to use this telecommunication platform as a light for Christ. We are called to spread the good news of God, and we literally have the means to do so at our fingertips. So, my encouragement to you is to start making social media and our other forms of telecommunication places of light in this dark world. We can do it.
Thanks for listening!!
-Lilly
Driving Notes 