From wireless to broadcasting
Radio began as a way to send messages without wires. On December 12, 1901, Guglielmo Marconi's station at Poldhu, in Cornwall, England, sent a signal across the Atlantic Ocean to Signal Hill in St. John's, Newfoundland, where it was picked up on an antenna held aloft by a kite.
Voices and music came next. According to some accounts, on Christmas Eve 1906 Reginald Fessenden broadcast from Brant Rock, Massachusetts, playing "O Holy Night" on the violin and reading from the Bible for ships at sea. Amateurs experimented through the 1910s, and on November 2, 1920, KDKA in Pittsburgh went on the air with the results of the presidential election. Broadcasting had arrived.
The networks
Stations soon joined together so a single program could be heard across the country. NBC's Red Network began on November 15, 1926, and its Blue Network on January 10, 1927. CBS followed on September 18, 1927, and the Mutual Broadcasting System in 1934. The Blue Network was later sold off and, in 1945, became ABC.
Radio spread into American homes faster than almost anything before it. In 1930, 40 percent of households had a radio. By 1940, 83 percent did.
The Golden Age
Through the 1930s and 1940s, the radio was the center of the living room. Families gathered in the evening for comedies like Jack Benny and Fibber McGee and Molly, mysteries like Suspense and The Shadow, westerns like The Lone Ranger, big bands, quiz shows and the news. Afternoons belonged to the soap operas, and late afternoons to the kids' adventure serials, with their secret decoders and mail-away premiums. Many shows carried their sponsor's name, like Lux Radio Theatre.
It was called the "theater of the mind." There was nothing to watch: voices, music and sound effects set the scene, and every listener's imagination built the rest.
Radio and the world
Radio also brought the world into the home, often as it happened:
- March 12, 1933: President Franklin D. Roosevelt gives his first fireside chat, on the bank holiday.
- 1937: Herbert Morrison of WLS, Chicago, records the airship Hindenburg burning at Lakehurst, New Jersey, and the recording goes on the air afterward.
- October 30, 1938: Orson Welles and the Mercury Theatre broadcast "The War of the Worlds," Martians landing in New Jersey told as breaking news.
- April 15, 1945: Edward R. Murrow describes what he saw at the Buchenwald concentration camp.
The end of an era
In the 1950s, television took over the comedies, dramas and variety shows, and radio turned to music, news and talk. On September 30, 1962, the last two network dramas, Suspense and Yours Truly, Johnny Dollar, signed off. That date is widely taken as the end of the old-time radio era.
But the shows didn't disappear. Thousands of broadcasts survived on transcription discs and tape, saved by networks, collectors and fans.
Hear it today: Radio Days
The Radio Days app brings those broadcasts back, free and with no ads: more than 36,000 episodes of 381 shows, from the 1930s to the 1960s. It plays them the way radio did, as stations. Pick a show, a star or a mood and it plays one episode after another. On This Day plays shows first heard on today's date. Under the dial, the NBC, CBS, ABC and Mutual buttons play what each network had on at this time of day, from real schedules of 1946 to 1951. Liner Notes tell the story behind each show, and the museum's own radio premiums are there too.
Radio Days works on any phone, tablet or computer, and on Roku.