18th April is World Amateur Radio Day..

Long before the invention of the World Wide Web, when instant communication was a dream and a letter was actually considered a pretty speedy way to communicate (outside of the phone), there were a group of pioneers who had already discovered the glories of a word-wide communication and the joy of communicating with people all over the world instantly. What could this amazing form of communication be? Why, Amateur Radio! Amateur Radio Day reminds us of these great pioneers, their modern descendants, and how radio has been serving a worldwide community for well over 100 years.

Back in April of 1925, the International Amateur Radio Union came into existence in the incredibly cosmopolitan city of Paris. These intrepid adventurers had discovered that the short wave spectrum that amateur radio used to transmit and receive was able to unite people the world over, something that had formerly been speculated as being impossible. This group of experimental radionauts proved this theory wrong, and banded together to campaign for and protect those bandwidths that would come to serve the community of radio enthusiasts.

Since then the IARU has worked tirelessly to broaden the range of bandwidths available to radio fans, and has expanded to include members all over the world, from 25 countries at last count. Interest in Amateur Radio has only grown since those early days, with over 3,000,000 licensed operators spreading their voices across the globe today. It’s through this medium that people from different nations and cultures were able to spread ideas with great speed, long before the ability to shoot off an email or video chat was ever possible.

IARU has events all over the world to celebrate this great invention and to bring together people who still find value in being able to skip a radio across the ionosphere over thousands of miles and bring together two sides of the globe through little more than a oscillating wave of energy.

Source : Ashok Kumar Panigrahi