October 18

On October 18, 1922, the British Broadcasting Company Ltd. was founded as the world's first national broadcasting organization, providing experimental radio services. The BBC arose 25 years after Guglielmo Marconi made a commercial success of radio with his Wireless Telegraph & Signal Company (later Marconi Co.) in Britain. A consortium of six companies, including Marconi, GE and Western Electric, the BBC made its first radio transmission in November 1922 in London. Until the development and popularization of TV, radio was the broadcast medium on which people in the United Kingdom relied, and it united the nation. The term “BBC English” (a.k.a. Received Pronunciation, or RP) referred to the upper-class Standard English accent used in BBC broadcasts. The term – and the accent – are now outmoded.