Foundation of BBC

The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) is a British public service broadcaster, headquartered at Broadcasting House in the City of Westminster, London. It is the largest broadcaster in the world, with a staff of 23,000 staff. It is responsible to provide public service broadcasting in the UK.

The original company, the British Broadcasting Company, was founded on October 18, 1922. It was founded by a group of six telecommunication companies to broadcast experimental radio services. Its staff was of four, and it was funded by a license fee at a rate set by parliament. The first broadcast came from London on November 14, and listening to it quickly became part of the daily life. John Reith, a Scottish broadcast executive, became the general manager in December of that year. In 1927, he was employed as the Director-General of the BBC, under a Royal Charter. His concept of broadcasting as a way of educating the masses marked for a long time the BBC and similar organizations around the world.

The BBC was officially established on January 1, 1927; with Reith as the Director-General and George Villiers as the chairman. It was recognized as a broadcasting monopoly operated by a board of governors and director general. The BBC became the world’s first public service broadcasting organization, with headquarters in London, where advertising on radio was banned.

John Reith had a mission to educate and improve the audience, and under his leadership the BBC developed a reputation for having serious and important programs. He also insisted that all radio announcers should wear dinner jackets while being on the air. Since the 1930’s, the BBC introduced more sports and light entertainment on the radio, for acquiring a bigger audience.

In 1936, the BBC began the world’s first regular television service. This was halted during World War II, and all of BBC’s efforts were concentrated on radio broadcasting. The BBC television service was established on November 2, 1936, but was suspended because of the outbreak of World War II, in 1939.

Today, the BBC has expanded with new channels; World Service radio is complemented by a BBC World television service, while a satellite channel UK Gold helped it exploit its valuable archives. It has been expanding in both radio and television, and has become an important factor in news and entertainment.

Discovery of Penicillin

Penicillin is a group of antibiotics derived from Penicillium fungi. Penicillin antibiotics are historically significant because they are the first drugs that were effective against many previously serious deseases, such as syphilis and infections. They are still widely used today, though many types of bacteria are now resistant and are less needed. It is said that penicillin heralded the dawn of the antibiotic age; because before its discovery, there was no treatment for diseases such as pneumonia, gonorrhea, or rheumatic fever.

Penicillin was discovered by the Scottish scientist and Nobel laureate Alexander Fleming, in 1928. He began to sort through petri dishes with colonies of Staphylococcus, bacteria that caused boils, sore throats, and abscesses. In one dish he noticed something unusual: it was dotted with colonies, save for one area where a blob of mold was growing. The zone around the mold (penicillium notatum) was clear, as if the mold had secreted something that inhibited bacterial growth.

He later detected that the mold possessed properties that could kill a wide range of harmful bacteria cells without harming human blood cells. He determined this by isolating pure penicillin from the mold juice. It proved to be very unstable, and they were only able to prepare solutions of crude material to work with.

In June 1929, Fleming published his findings in the British Journal of Experimental Pathology, with only a passing reference to penicillin’s potential therapeutic benefits. This was of practical benefit to bacteriologists, and kept interest in penicillin going. Other scientists, including Harold Raistrick, Professor of Biochemistry at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, tried to purify penicillin but failed.

The chemical structure of penicillin was determined by the British chemist Dorothy Crowfoot Hodgkin in 1945.  Ever since, penicillin has become the most widely used antibiotic, and it is still used for many bacterial infections. A team of Oxford research scientists devised a method of mass-producing this drug. In this same year, the Australian scientists Howard Florey and Ernst Boris Chain shared the Nobel Prize in Medicine with Fleming for their work.

Time Magazine

Time is an American news magazine, and it was created in 1923 by Briton Hadden and Henry Luce, making it the first weekly news magazine in the United States. It was published as a news magazine that summarized and organized the news so that the “busy men” could stay informed, this being described by the Time magazine itself. The first issue of Time was published on March 3, 1923. Its cover featured the retired Speaker of the United States House of Representatives, Joseph G. Cannon.

Hadden and Luce had already worked together for the Yale Daily News, and had considered calling this magazine Facts. Hadden was known for being carefree, he liked to tease Luce and saw Time as something important but also fun. This is a reason for some critics, mentioning it as “too light for serious news and more suited to its heave coverage of celebrities, the entertainment industry, and pop culture”.

After Hadden’s death in 1929, Luce became the dominant man at Time, and a major figure in the history of 20^th-century media. Roy Edward Larsen was hired to play a small role in the development of Time Inc. He then became the general manager of Time, and an influential and important figure after Luce. After Time magazine began publishing its weekly issues in March 1923, Roy Larsen was able to increase the circulation by utilizing U.S. radio and movie theaters around the world.

On March 6, 1931, Larsen arranged a 30-minute radio program, The March of Time, which would be broadcasted over CBS. Each week, it presented an adaptation of the week’s news for the radio listeners; and Time was brought “to the attention of millions previously unaware of its existence”, which led to an increased circulation of the magazine during the 1930’s. Between 1931 and 1937, the radio program was broadcasted by CBS radio, and between 1937 and 1945 it was broadcasted over NBC radio.

Time magazine is now the world’s largest weekly news magazine, and has a domestic audience of 20 million and a global audience of 25 million.