The word transmission has its origin in the word ‘transfer.’ For example: The power from the automobile engine is transferred via the transmission, the drive-train and then to the wheels causing the vehicle to move. The power was transmitted or transferred from one place to another. In 1949, when I was a young teenager, I purchased my first car. The car was an old 1934 Ford Coup with a rumble seat in the back. For those who do not know what a rumble seat is, it is a compartment in the back of early coups, like the trunk of current cars, only the lid opened from the top. When it was opened, it exposed a seat that a couple of people could climb into and ride as passengers, in the open, of course. All of the early cars were very unlike models of our day. They were all prototypes in a sense, meaning that they were experimental or transitional in nature. None of them were very sophisticated, mechanically. This little Ford, for example, had mechanical brakes, unlike the current hydraulic brakes. When you had to stop you pushed really hard on the brake pedal. The pressure from the driver’s foot was transmitted via a wire cable stretched to the wheel brake pads. How well this process slowed and eventually stopped the vehicle depended on how badly stretched out the cables were and worn the brake shoes were. Brakes had to be readjusted often, unlike today where brakes are seldom even thought about until they start to squeak; the noise is a warning to us that the brake shoes are wearing out.
The early transmissions were also ‘iffy.’ Using the clutch and the gear shift, the driver could change from one size gear to a different sized gear in the transmission and thus vary the power and/or speed of a vehicle. It was very common to hear drivers raking their car’s gears. They were not smooth, like the fluid operated hydraulic transmissions of today. Why did the gears rake? Because the clutch in early cars were also dependant on early and unreliable mechanisms to put the transmission gears in a neutral position in order to change gears. If the transmission wasn’t in the neutral position when the driver shifted, the spinning gears would not mesh smoothly and would therefore cause that terrible noise. Only a vintage person like myself can really appreciate the advancement in the quality of the cars of today in comparison to the cars of my youth.
I started out this thought with transmissions in relationship to cars because when a person hears the word ‘transmission,’ they usually think of a car. In reality, there is a transmitting process going on in almost all aspects of a person’s life. For example, radio stations have what is referred to as transmission towers. The voice of the radio station’s announcer or the music they play is heard on individual radios for many miles away from the station depending on the transmitting power of the station.
Individuals, too, have varying abilities to transmit their own voices. Some have such vocal power as to be heard at long distances such as opera singers. Others of us need a microphone to transmit our voices equally as far. The capability to transmit our voice is only one aspect of the communication process. Being able to transmit sound may be the least important aspect of communication. What we want to be able to transmit is our knowledge, our emotions, our spirit, and that takes a great deal more skill than only sending out sound. I wrote some time ago about the power of prayer. Prayer is a spiritual transmission that apparently has such power that even when a ‘sigh or thought prayer’ is sent aloft to the Father of us all, it reaches its destination. Some of our emotions are transmitted without making a sound; they can simply be facial expressions of our mouth, eyes, etc. The sound of our voice, the various intonations, loudness, etc., can express our feelings. Our ability to communicate is dependant upon how we come across or how well we are able to transmit our feelings and emotions to others.
Communication, or more particularly transmitting ourselves to others, is an every day, all day effort by nearly every human being who has ever lived on this planet. Some of us rake our gears, so to speak, because we haven’t learned the mechanics of communicating very well. Those who have advanced from the elementary level to a more advanced level are those who are usually more successful in all walks of life. Good communicators can transmit with skill and accuracy their very thoughts and feelings so that very little is mistranslated or misunderstood. May we be blessed to want to faithfully transmit our love to the Father of us all, every day. If we do, we may be blessed in our other transmissions as well.