History of Radio

EVANS LIBRARY PRESENTS

A History of Radio

__________

May 1 - August 31, 2005

Old-time radio (OTR) is as popular as ever. Fans familiar with Edward R. Murrow, Jack Benny, Brylcreem, The Lone Ranger, or Dorothy Thompson can now take a step back in time by visiting “A History of Radio”, a first-floor Evans Library summertime display. In conjunction with WFIT’s 30th anniversary, this display offers a variety of available books, journal articles, government documents, and Internet site resources as well as a sampling of vintage radios and original sound bites of broadcasts from the early years of radio.

click on radio for sound bite

"We interrupt this program to bring you this special report..."

From numerous individuals who laid claim to being the "inventor" of radio to popular radio shows that entertained listeners with world news, music, drama, comedy, and adventure, radio, since its inception, has always kept it's audience up-to-date and stirred their imagination with the latest in news and entertainment.

Radio, though primitive in it's capabilities, was a reality in the late 1800's. However, it didn't make a significant mark on the world until the 1920's and '30's. The 1930's is considered by many as the "Golden Age of Radio". A lot was happening around the United States and the world and people tuned in to keep in touch.

"If you were listening to radio in 1931, you probably had a lot on your mind besides music. Sixteen percent of the country was unemployed, and the Great Depression was showing no signs of letting up. President Herbert Hoover was being blamed with increasing frequency, which may be one reason Alka Seltzer was invented that year...1931 was the year that the great inventor Thomas Edison died. It was also the year that the Empire State Building was formally opened, and organized crime figure Al Capone was sentenced to 11 years in prison for income tax evasion.

Source: http://www.old-time.com/halper/halper31.html

Imaginations were key in tuning in to radio. Both children and adults oftentimes scheduled schoolwork and household duties around their favorite programs. Whether envisioning flying through the sky over Metropolis as Superman or sighing for the loves of Helen Trent, young and old, male and female, listened anxiously each week for the familiar voice or jingle sounding the start of their favorite shows.

NARR: Kellog's "Pep," the super-delicious cereal, presents the adventures of Superman. Faster than a speeding bullet --

FX: (SOUND OF BULLET)

NARR: More powerful than a Locomotive --

FX: (TRAIN)

NARR: Able to leap tall buildings at a single bound --

FX: (WIND)

MAN: Look! Up in the sky! It's a bird! It's a plane! It's Superman! (WIND)

NARR: And now, Superman - a being no larger than an ordinary man but possessed of powers and abilities never before realized on Earth: able to leap into the air an eighth of a mile at a single bound, hurtle a 20-story building with ease, race a high-powered bullet to its target, lift tremendous weights and rend solid steel in his bare hands as though it were paper. Superman—a strange visitor from a distant planet: champion of the oppressed, physical marvel extraordinary who has sworn to devote his existence on Earth to helping those in need!

Some of the more popular radio shows included:

Fibber McGee & Molly

Ellery Queen

The Romance of Helen Trent

Captain Midnight

Mercury Theatre on the Air

The Lone Ranger

The Shadow

Don McNeil's Breakfast Club

Amos 'n' Andy

Inner Sanctum

Lights Out

The Adventures of Superman

Abbott and Costello

"1920 was when the first commercial stations with regularly scheduled broadcasts were heard. Although commercial radio stations were broadcasting at the time, commercials (as we know them) were not allowed. The first commercial was broadcast in 1922." In an effort to get the audience to patronize a store, company, or purchase a particular product, many advertisers employed the use of premiums. These were little toys or badges, games, or puzzles that were placed inside cereal boxes or could be sent away for and were guaranteed to grab the imaginations of any young boy or girl.

Source: http://www.old-time.com/commercials/index.html

click on radio for sound bite

"You are listening to WFIT Radio, Melbourne."

News and information complemented the entertainment side of radio programming.

Edward R. Murrow, Dorothy Thompson and others led the way for other broadcast journalists, setting the standards for broadcast journalism in the years that followed. These were the news gatherers out in the field, reporting first-hand, stories that gripped listeners back home with excitement, with wonder, with anguish.

Famous for the opening line, "This...is London", Edward R. Murrow was "not only known for his cogent point-of-view, but also for his clipped, slow but deliberate style of speaking...listeners felt he was speaking directly to them and not just reading something...Murrow and his 'boys', the CBS European broadcast team represented the conscience of the American people as Hitler, Stalin, and Mussolini grabbed more and more territory in their quest to dominate the world...Murrow was America abroad..."

Source: http://www.otr.com/murrow.shtml

"Good Night and...Good Luck"

Broadcast journalist, Dorothy Thompson was noted by Time magazine in 1939 as one of the two most influential women in America, the other being First Lady, Eleanor Roosevelt. "Thompson went to Europe in 1920 where she established herself as a journalist. By 1925, she headed the Berlin bureau of the New York Post and the Public Ledger. However, her negative reporting on the rise of Adolph Hitler and the Nazis led to her expulsion from Germany in 1934. She returned to America where, beginning in 1936, her thrice-weekly column "On the Record" ran in the New York Herald Tribune and more than 150 other newspapers. "On the Record," plus a monthly column she wrote for the Ladies Home Journal and her work as a lecturer and NBC radio commentator made her the most syndicated woman journalist in the country as well as one of the most famous women in pre-World War II America..."

Source: http://www2.gwu.edu/~erpapers/abouteleanor/q-and-a/glossary/thompson-dorothy.htm

"Well, it is our fate to live in a time of crisis. To live in a time when all forms and values are being challenged. In other and more easy times, it was not, perhaps, necessary for the individual to confront himself with a clear question: What is it that you really believe? What is it that you really cherish? What is it for which you might, actually, in a showdown, be willing to die?...I say, with all the reticence which such large, pathetic words evoke, that one cannot exist today as a person – one cannot exist in full consciousness – without having to have a showdown with one’s self, without having to define what it is that one lives by, without being clear in one’s mind what matters and what does not matter.” – 1939

Source: http://www.peterkurth.com/AMERICAN%20CASSANDRA.htm

Some of the 'A History of Radio' resources on display include:

Radio Engineering Handbook	Keith Henney	TK6550.H453 1959
FM Atlas and Station Directory	Bruce F. Elving	G1201.P95 E4 1984
Public Broadcasting - The 20th Anniversary	U.S. Congress, Subcommittee on Communications	Y 4.C 73/7: S.HRG.100-477
The Right to Know: Report	United States Presidential Commission on International Radio Broadcasting	PR 37.8: R11/R44
Purchasing a Broadcast Station: A Buyer's Guide	National Association for Broadcasters	CC1.7/4:B 78/2
Evolution of Naval Radio - Electronics and Contributions of the Naval Research Laboratory	Louis A. Gebhard	D 210.8:8300
Internet Streaming of Radio Broadcasts	U.S. Congress. Committee on the Judiciary. Subcommittee on Courts, the Internet, and Intellectual Property	Y 4.J 89/1:108/99
VLF Radio Engineering	Arthur D. Watt	TK6553. W36 1967
Solid State Radio Engineering	Herbert L. Krauss	TK6553 .K73 1980
Fundamentals of Radio Communications	Abraham Sheingold	TK6550 .S32
Mathematics for Electricians and Radiomen	Nelson Magor Cooke	TK153 .C63 1942
Fundamental Electromagnetic Theory	Ronold Wyeth Percival King	TK145 .K532
Radio Electronics	Samuel Seely	TK6550 .S29 1956
The Continuous Wave: Technology and American Radio,1900 - 1932	Hugh G.J. Aitken	TK6548.U6 A65 1985
AM-FM Broadcasting, Equipment, Operations, and Maintenance	Harold E. Ennes	TK6561 .E45 1974
Commercial Broadcasting Pioneer	William Peck Banning	HE8698 .B3
Radio Goes to War: The "Fourth Front"	Charles James Rolo	D798 .R6
Fundamentals of Radio Broadcasting	John Hasling	PN1991.5 .H3
On the Early History of Radio Guidance	Benjamin Franklin Miessner	TK6570.C6 M5
Music on the Air	Hazel Gertrude Kinscella	MT150 .K56
Antennas and Radio Propagation	Department of the Army Technical Manual	D101.11: TM11-666
Radio Fundamentals	War Department, 22 May 1944	D101.11:TM11-455