BBC founded

Guglielmo Marconi et al. had more or less perfected wireless radio transmission, and now the task for the companies who invested in it was to make it into something profitable. Their radio receivers could sell well only if there was enough interesting and compelling programming to tune in for. Founding those radio stations was fairly easy in the United States — in fact the RCA electrical company launched the National Broadcasting Network just for such a cause. But in Britain, the General Post Office had a monopoly on radio communication, and the handful of electronics companies from both the U.S. and U.K had to come together to launch one.

On this day, October 18, in 1922, the British Broadcasting Company, the country’s first national radio network was incorporated.

Unlike the mostly for-entertainment American radio stations, the BBC had a more edifying “public benefit” goal: not only entertain, but educate. By November of that same year, the BBC began broadcasting news reports, everything from political speeches to train robberies. By November of the following year the first weather report was broadcast by the BBC. And on a special Friday evening in 1924 radio listeners for the first time heard the now iconic Greenwich Mean Time “pips.”