#1020 Dialing Days

Recently I was pushing the preset button on my AM FM radio consumer interface. I was trying to tune in 94.5 Roxy, which was at 94.5 on my FM dial. And I said to myself, I wonder how this radio thing tunes in these invisible waves, from who knows where, a process I’ve always taken on faith.
And more importantly, what is dial-ish about these buttons I am pushing.
Isn’t a dial something that you turn, like the old dials on rotary phones? The first radio dial did exactly that. It helped you zero in on a given radio frequency as it repositioned a crystal to more accurately receive radio waves radiating through the air.
So how did the word dial come to refer to movement along a series of numbers. Because we still dial the phone even though we now punch in numbers. And we still find things on our radio dials even though we no longer twist anything in a circle to do so.
I suppose the original dial, the sundial, may have something to do with it. The sundial was a time revealing consumer interface that cast a shadow on given increments and measured those increments as the shadow moved around.
Funny that your watch face isn’t called a watch dial much anymore.
Interestingly, the word dial comes from the latin di-es, which is pronounced like in buenas dias and means day. Think of the phrase carpe diem, which means “seize the day.”
Preferably with a new fish.
But dia itself comes awfully close to dio, meaning God.
Dio happens to be the final three letters in radio. Coincidence?
Not to the world’s first version of televangelists, the radio evangelists of the 30s, 40s, and 50s, who used to blast the AM radio airwaves with, um, “more fire and brimstone on your radio dial. All apocalypse, all the time.”
So when you adjust your radio and wonder about how it picks up all those invisible messages from who knows where, wonder no more.
It’s every bit as unexplainable as an act of God.
America, ya gotta love it.