UNESCO Courier articles from February 1997

UNESCO Courier archives from February 1997

The Arab Forebears of the European Renaissance
February 1, 1997... French historian and philosopher Alain de Libera, an authority on medieval thought, talks to Rachid Sabbaghi about some unjustly neglected chapters in the history of Western philosophy. * How did you first become interested in Arab-Islamic...

Radio's Bright Future
February 1, 1997... Radio, which recently celebrated its centenary, is widely undervalued. People tend to forget how far it helped to shape ways of thinking in the twentieth century and to minimize the rote it is earmarked to play in the twenty-first. The radio age...

On the Crest of the Waves
February 1, 1997... With hindsight, the coming of wireless seems to have been inevitable, like that of most great modern inventions. It was announced almost simultaneously in two places - in Russia by Aleksandr Popov, and in Italy by Guglielmo Marconi. Initially, as...

The First Half Century (1895-1945): Milestones in Radio
February 1, 1997... 1895 * Aleksandr S. Popov (Russia) invents the lightning-recording antenna. On 7 May he presents the first receiver of electromagnetic waves to the St. Petersburg Physical and Chemical Society. * Near Bologna (Italy) Guglielmo Marconi...

The Second Half Century (1945-1995): A Continuing Struggle for Access to the Airwaves
February 1, 1997... Radio has an image problem. It lacks the maturity of the newspaper industry and the modernity of television. Unlike the newspaper, radio has to be understood immediately and unlike TV it lacks an appeal to young people attracted more to visual...

From Short Wave to Satellite
February 1, 1997... Do satellite and digital radio spell the end of short-wave radio? For almost seventy years, short-wave transmission has been the most efficient method of delivering programmes across long distances. Today, however, the development of new...

By the People, for the People: Self-Reliant Low-Cost Community Radio Stations at the Heart of Rural Development
February 1, 1997... The concept we developed was very simple: a radio built by and for the community that would be small and effective, and capable of being maintained, repaired, programmed, produced and aired by the people themselves. There would be no large...

Villages Find Their Voice: Radio Brings Empowerment to Rural Communities in the Philippines
February 1, 1997... "The 20-watt transmitter was hit by lightning and broke down in May," begins the Project Manager's report for 1994. "It has been replaced. The local technicians were advised to install a lightning arrester to forestall repetition of the accident."...

All Power to the Microphone! for Almost 70 Years, Radio Was a Formidable Weapon Wielded by Soviet Leaders
February 1, 1997... Throughout its history Russia has felt a need to link up its vast spaces, and in the early years of the twentieth century radio took over from the railways as the instrument of this grand design. At the third Pan-Russian Electrotechnical...

Energy for All
February 1, 1997... "The more experience I gather, the more I realize that Man himself is the cause of his happiness as well as his misery," said Mahatma Gandhi. We should take inspiration from the words of this great Indian sage and politician if we wish to...

Mr. Jefferson's Dream House
February 1, 1997... Monticello, the mansion built in Virginia by Thomas Jefferson, third President of the United States and principal author of the Declaration of Independence, is a jewel of American neoclassical architecture. In 1987 it was placed on UNESCO'S World...

Earthwatching Satellites
February 1, 1997... Landsat, Spot, Topex-Poseidon, ERS, Polder, Argos, NOAA, Cosmos, Sarsat, Meteosat, Himawari, GOES, Tiros, Nimbus - mysterious words that often appear in news reports - are the names of artificial satellites. The satellite era began on 4 October...