When was the term “First World War” coined?

• May 29, 2012
• #first world war
• #great war
• #world war two

I’d always assumed that the answer to this question was ‘near the beginning of the Second World War’, and flippantly tweeted out something suggesting as much this morning.

Turns out I was wrong though. @johnb78 got back to me:

@minifig German philosopher Ernst Hackel in September 1914 was the first, according to the internets.

Here’s a lovely picture of the man himself in the sort of staged picture it’s sad we see so rarely nowadays:

And he’s right, you know:

Haeckel was the first person known to use the term “First World War”. Shortly after the start of the war Haeckel wrote:

There is no doubt that the course and character of the feared “European War”…will become the first world war in the full sense of the word. —Indianapolis Star, September 20, 1914

Now, you can quibble over the details a bit here. When you read that quote, Haeckel has really coined the term First World War, whereas really we’re interested in the coining of the term First World War. When was that coined?

The “European War” became known as “The Great War”, and it was not until 1920, in the book “The First World War 1914–1918” by Charles à Court Repington, that the term “First World War” was used as the official name for the conflict.

1920? That came as a bit of a surprise to me as well.

As an aside Lieutenant Colonel Charles à Court Repington is quite an interesting character:

After the end of World War I, Repington joined the staff of the Daily Telegraph and subsequently published numerous books. These works, including The First World War in 1920 and After the War in 1922 were bestsellers, but cost Repington friendships for his apparent willingness to report what they considered to be private conversations.

Journalists eh?

On Leaving Orange

• April 27, 2012
• #orange
• #customer service
• #ipad
• #contract

It was interesting for me to read this piece by Euen Semple on his problems trying to get Orange to make his broadband work. Euen puts the problem down to Orange’s reliance on their systems, and I would back this up with my experiences with them dealing with my iPad sim-only contract. The issue I had is that their system wasn’t even designed to deal with my situation.

When I first bought my iPad, I thought I’d try out a different company for the 3G contract. This was to see if a company other that O2 gave a good service in my area, and if my iPad wasn’t getting any service, at least my phone might be, and vice versa. Unfortunately, the signal I got from Orange was, if anything, worse than that from O2.

When I bought my iPad 3, at first I just dropped the Orange sim in it, and for a few days it worked. Then I stopped getting any service, so I called Orange to ask what was up. First they told me to restart it, which made no difference, and then they told me I might need a new sim. At that point, I thought that if I’m going to wait for a new sim, I may as well cancel my contract, and after being passed around a few people a bit, I got through to someone who could do just that.

In fact, the problem was that Orange was down in my area, but the person on the phone seemed not to be aware of that. If he had been, I might still be an Orange customer today.

After my call, they texted my O2 phone with an Orange questionnaire asking how good the service I received was. I couldn’t answer any of the questions because the number the texts came from only worked from O2 phones.

A few days later, they sent me a letter offering me a better deal, including more ‘free texts’. Which, of course, would have been no use to me at all on the iPad.

My pain was nowhere near Euen’s admittedly, but it’s another example of a company that’s clearly over-reliant on automated systems and doesn’t even understand its own products.