April 18th is honored as World Amateur Radio Day, when we celebrate the founding of the International Amateur Radio Union (IARU). The organization was born out of a meeting in Paris on April 17, 1925. ARRL took a leadership role in its founding, with ARRL Founder Hiram Percy Maxim, then 1AW, serving as the first President of IARU.

As reported by Kenneth B. Warner, 1BHW, in the June 1925 edition of QST:

The International Amateur Radio Union, the dream of years, came into existence on April 17, 1925, when the delegates of twenty-three nations met at the Faculte des Sciences in Paris in the First International Amateur Congress. The Union has adopted a constitution, its officers have been elected and four national sections have been formed and recognized. Its objects lie along lines that will promote and co-ordinate two-way radio communication between the amateurs of the various countries of the world. Membership is by individuals, and anyone interested in the objects of the Union can become a member. In each country from which there are 25 or more members, is there to be a National Section, like divisions in the A.R.R.L., each with its National President and these National Presidents with the Executive Committee, constitute the Board of Directors of the Union. Our A.R.R.L. president, Mr. Hiram Percy Maxim, u1AW, was elected International President.

The excitement of an international body to serve the interests of all radio amateurs was thrilling to hams at the time. Warner continued…

Twenty-three nations! This Sub-Committee elected Mr. Maxim its chairman, and Mr. Jean G. Mezger, f8GO, its secretary, and started work. By its second session it has agreed unanimously that there should be a Union, that it should be an organization by individual memberships, that it should have for its chief purposes the coordination and fostering of international amateur two-way communications.

One hundred years later, amateur radio looks a lot different than it would have to the delegates in Paris – but the international goodwill, thrill of two-way contacts with other countries, and history of technological innovation continues. ARRL remains the International Secretariat of the IARU, and the work of IARU remains important to the future of this global avocation that shrinks the world.