For this blog post, I thought I would take a brief look at the history of radio.
There is some debate about who first invented the radio – the two main contenders are Nikola Tesla and Guglielmo Marconi. In 1893, Tesla first demonstrated the wireless radio in St. Louis. However, Marconi was the first wireless telegraphy patent in England in 1896, and in 1901 was the first person to transmit signals across the Atlantic Ocean.
Originally, the main use of radio was to contact ships at sea from land and morse code was typically used due to radio signals not being very clear at the time. It was invaluable in the First World War and was used to deliver messages to armed forces.
Between the wars, civilians started to purchase radios for their own use, and in 1922 the BBC began broadcasting (Fun fact – I sampled a part of their broadcast in a song I made a few years ago!) and by 1926 started to gain in popularity, partly in reaction to the newspaper strike that same year. Radio at this time was primarily broadcasting the news and serial dramas.
After the Second World War, where it again proved itself invaluable, there was a shift towards playing popular music and the idea of the Top 40 began to rear its head. The target demographic for popular music programmes was generally young teens to adults in their mid-30s.
In the 1960’s, pirate radio began to emerge in Britain. Due to the BBC refusing to play certain records, a new generation of youngsters decided to take matters into their own hands. There were many stations, the most famous of which was Radio Caroline, that broadcasted off boats in international waters to avoid authorities. At the height of their reign they were broadcasting American Rock n’ Roll records to over 10 million listeners a day!
Right now radio is a very diverse landscape, with all types of programming ranging from traditional top 40 countdowns to phone in radio stations where listeners can talk to presenters live on air.
And what about the future of radio? Well, as discussed in my previous article, that remains to be seen.
Bibliography
- Wood, J., n.d. History of the Radio: A Complete Radio Timeline. [online] Techwholesale.com. Available at: <https://www.techwholesale.com/history-of-the-radio.html> [Accessed 4 February 2022].
- Kiger, P., 2020. How Pirate Radio Rocked the 1960s Airwaves and Still Exists Today. [online] HowStuffWorks. Available at: <https://history.howstuffworks.com/historical-events/pirate-radio.htm> [Accessed 4 February 2022].