Radio

On the eve of the First World War, the Earth’s atmosphere was cracking with the noise of communication - not just the dots and dashes of Morse code messages, but brief bursts of talking and music. Our own sounds were starting to be carried for the first time by radio. And for the tiny handful of people who had the equipment to pluck these faint murmurings out of the ether it was like witnessing a new kind of magic, as an excited young reporter explained in the London Standard on 28 December 1912:

“Mysterious music and voices in the air have puzzled hundreds of persons in England his Christmastide. From the silence of the night there have been wafted scraps of melody and tantalising fragments of conversation… Instead of regular beats upon the eardrum there have come harmonic chords and short, unmistakable records of the human voice.”

In these early days, listening to radio was an even uncannier experience than listening to a gramophone. It had been strange enough to hear someone’s voice coming from a disc; for it to come out of thin air seemed, well, incredible. Not just out of the air, either, but from somewhere tens, hundreds, perhaps thousands of miles away. All these disembodied voices were whizzing about, invisibly, in all directions - over the horizon and across oceans, through solid buildings and into living rooms - all at the speed of light.

By 1930s the novelty, and the magic to, had ebbed away. Radio has become a normal, taken-for-granted, enjoyable part of everyday life. ……. Millions sat by their fireside and listened to the news, shopping tips, cookery advice, a thriller or their favourite comedy show. Yet although radio had woven itself so intimately into the fabric of daily life that it was now barely noticed as anything special - perhaps precisely because of this - its influence was stronger than ever. ~ Page 282/283