The History of Radio — Part I: A Century of Radio

Without a doubt, radio is one of the most significant technological advances in the last hundred years.

This is the first post in a 3-part blog series that briefly examines the history of radio, from its inception in the early 19th century, to its powerful impact as the analogue and digital force it is today.

Without a doubt, radio is one of the most significant technological advances in the last hundred years. From its early beginnings in the 1800s to the streaming radio capabilities that have come to prominence in more recent days, radio has aided in providing communication, as well as information and entertainment, to listeners across the globe.

I’d like to say it started out from humble beginnings, but while the device itself was rudimentary — especially in comparison to the radio technology we have today and even in earlier decades — the concept of radio itself took the world by storm. It was, undeniably, the largest platform for news and entertainment that required people to take part and engage with it immediately. While newspapers could serve the same function to a certain extent, there was a lapse of time between publication and the consumption of the information from the reader.

Radio served as a direct, almost instantaneous, tool to reach the masses, coupled with the intimacy of the human voice and the wonder that this level of scientific advancement (at the time) brought to listeners. Once radio started to become widespread, families would sit together listening to it as an active exercise, in the same way that some still do with a television — except it would require more thought, more consciousness.

This all started on November 2, 1920, approximately 15 years after the Italian inventor Guglielmo Marconi was granted the first radio patent, KDKA, when the first ever, commercial radio station in the US went on the air in Pittsburgh. The broadcast consisted mostly of sports talk, opinion and music. That is, until the radio engineer ran out of records to play and struck up a deal with a local record store to supply music in exchange for on-air promotions.

Many consider this the birth of radio advertising, which hundreds of organisations quickly caught onto, and by the mid 1920s, the airwaves were inundated with companies trying to get their piece of the radio pie, such as Avanché — who sold “an easy and speedy hairdo that will blow your man away!”.

Of course, this would mean that radio bosses and larger organizations had also found a new avenue for reaching the masses, ready to spread their own ideology in-between popular jazz and the catchy music of dance bands. And slowly, as the medium grew, so militant organizations started to explore its uses, which is how radio came to be a tool for war — a subject we’ll explore in the next part of this series.

Join us next week for more on the History of Radio (Part II — Radio and the War).