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The Zen
of
Listening
ost of us know that feeling, driving alone at night on a road or
highway, surrounded by darkness,listening to the radio. Before so
many of us installed tape decks and CD players in our cars or
trucks, it was the voices and music on the radio that provided that lifeline
we needed, pulling us out of the solitary night and toward our destination.
We clung to it to stay afloat, sometimes letting our thoughts drift off, sometimes belting out some song at the top of our lungs (and even adding, in the
supposed privacy of our cars, dramatic facial expressions and gestures we
would never display before others), sometimes talking back to Dls or newscasters. Relief and pleasure came, too, from not having to work at making
conversation, from not being obliged to talk back, and even from not having to pay complete attention.' we were taken out of ourselves through
radio, yet paradoxically hurled into our innermost thoughts. (Television, by
contrast, just doesn't do this.) we felt, simultaneously, an affirmation of the
self-so wonderfirlly narcissistic-and a loss of self-such a joyful escape
from scrutiny of the self-and the mixing of the two was often euphoric. Especially thrilling, back before the rise of FM, when 50,000-watt AM stations
like wsBK or wr\BC could be heard for hundreds of miles, was cruising
through ohio or connecticut or Texas and hearing stations several states
away.
There we were alone, yet through this device we were tied by the most
gossamer connections to an imagined community of people we sensed
loved the same music we did, and to a D| who often spoke to us in the most
intimate, confidential, and inclusive tones. (cousin Brucie of wABC in New
York addressed us as "cousins"; we were all part of the same cool family.)
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geographic, temporal, and cognitive levels, inflating people's desire to seek out,
build on, and make more concrete the notion of the nation. For it wasn't just
that this technology made imagined communities more tangible because people now listened to a common voice and a shared event at truly the exact moment as others around the region, or the country. Listeners themselves insisted
that this technology enhance their ability to imagine their fellow citizens,
i
'
I
well
as
as
their ability to be transported to "national" events and to other parts of
the countlpCertainly advertisers and the nefivorks, seeking to maximize profits by having as big an audience as possible, pushed radio to be "national" and
promoted it ideologically as a nation-building technology. The sheer geographic scope that these new, simultaneous experiences now encompassed-
when 40 million people, for example, tuned in to exactly the same
thing-outstripped anything the newspaper had been able to do in terms of
nation building on
a psychic, imaginative level.
But before we get too carried away by this vision of ogg !at11o,n under the
microphone, we must remember that people also used radio to tune in on dif-ferente, and to use that difference to imagine a pecking order within the na-
often-but not always-on top. What survives as radio's
historical record-the personal papers, press accounts, recorded shows-fa-
-+tion, where they were
vors network history, often erasing the fact that radio was also always a local
medium with independent stations. In other words, while it has become a
commonplace to assert that radio built national unity in the 1930s and beyond, we must remember that what radio really did (and still does today) was
allowlisteners to experience at the same time multiple identities-national, regional, local-some of them completely allied with the countryt prevailing
cultural and political ideologies, others of them suspicious of or at odds with
official culture.
There was also a new cognitive dimension to these imaginings that make
radio's role in constructing imagined communities-including those that are
oppositional to or uneasy with "the 1nfi6n"-1111ch more powerfirl than what
print can do. This has to do in part with the act of listening itself, with the
knowledge that you and other listeners are experiencing that very moment of
your lives in exactly the same way. Hearing the president address you and others as "my fellow Americans," or Walter Winchell call out to "Mr. and Mrs.
America and all the ships at seai'tied utterly diverse and unknown people together as an audience, even as subgroups of this audience resisted and cast
themselves against such nationalist hailings.
In the very early years of radio, characterized by "DXing" (ham radio code
for distance signaling), when listeners tried to tune in stations from as far away
as possible, people didn't have to imagine their compatriots several states
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sponses' desires, and imaginings of preliterate
cultures deserves reconsidera_
tion.
Most of us probably think as much about an the
different ways we,ve come
to listen to radio as we do about how and when
we breathe_. nudio
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how to feel during different modes of ristening.
From the interactions between
who we are and how-and during v7ha1 s1s5-urs
learn these modes, we develop our own repertoires of listening. Think
of the different ristening modes
we might inhabit in one day alone, and how
we often actively seek out those
modes, with the pleasurable anticipation of
the waytheywilr make us feel and
where they might take us, cognitively and emotionally. rvVhen
people tune in to
NPR or Rush Limbaugh, to talk radio or the news,
whatever the ideorogical
thrust, they expect to concentrate, to fonow histories,
biographies, stories, and
debates. This is different from listening to
Benny
|ack
o, io-, and Ailen, and
certainly different from channeling into a Top 40
station in the r960s to hear
"Dock of the Bay" or..Will you Love Me Tomorrow?,,
In trying to conduct an archaeorogy of listening in
the twentieth century,
the radio historian finds herself without much
to lean on. Those of us who do
media studies, and those who study perception
and the brain, have done almost no collaborative work to understand how
watching terevision, or going
on-line, might be different_from listening to the
radio. And surviving broadcasts are not autonomous "texts" that can
be analyzed independently:
people
listened to them under a variety of circumstances.
Nonetheress, there is exciting work to draw from, especiaily more recent
research on music and emo_
tions, that helps us understand people's powerful
and intimate ties to radio.
It turns out that there probably are compelling physiological
reasons people are so nostalgic for radio. people loved-radio-and
stili do-because,
as
cognitive psychologists have shown, humans
find it useful-in fact, highry
pleasurable-to use our brains to create our
own images. what we call our
imagination is something the brain rikes to feed
by genlrating images almost
constantly: that's what imagination is, the internar
productioi of pictures, of
Autobiographical accounts from great conceptuar
images.
scientists rike
Michael Faruday,James crerk Maxwell, or Albert
Einstein describe a process in
which they did their most creative work using
visual imagery, which was later
translated into equations and theorems.u
But even those of us who aren't geniuses
often find the visual and spatial
imaging that we do quite powerful. In fact,
studies show that people tend to ,emember word sequences they have generated
much better than those that
been spoon-fed to them, because such "active
engagement,, dramaticaily
haye
im-
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somehow to historicize what listening "meant" in different eras. Sitting in the
garage with headphones on while pulling voices out of a sea of static is related
to, but different from,listening to a ball game while mowing the lawn. Listeners learn to respond to certain forms of address, to grow weary of some and
embrace others. So while cognitive psychology offers exciting new insights as
to why radio listening might be an especially rich pastime for many people, we
must also proceed with caution. For learning howwe listen and what moves us
emotionallywhen we hear it is culturally determined as well, which is why sitar
music might move an Indian to joy or sorrow and leave an American cold.
Each culture, in different eras, trains its members'perceptual apparatus in particular ways, so that what might seem "hardwired" is often actually learned."
what researchers seem to be discovering is that there are basic structures for
and internal sequences of communication within the brain that are then inflected by the culture within which one grows up.
When the radio boom first swept through America in the 1920s, the word
miracle was used repeatedly to try to conyey the revolutionary, and mystical,
properties of the device. Radio really was miraculous then, but today the word
miracle rings hollow and flat. It has been devalued and gutted as it has been
used to describe the most banal things, from mayonnaise to laundry detergent.
Yet there was a time when radio was pure magic, as hokeS naive, and inflated
as that may sound today. This wasn't simply because of its novelty. The magic
v145-apd is-in the act of listening itself, in relying on and trusting your ears
alone to produce ideas and emotions. The magic comes from entering a world
of sound, and from using that sound to make your own vision, your own
dream,your own world.
It
is this absence of imagery that is radio's greatest strength, that allows
people to bind themselves so powerfully to this device. It is this feature of
radio-its extension and magnification of the ear, of hearing-that defines its
meaning to the imaginative transformations of American life in this century.
There is a cognitive basis for this. Dr. Mark Tiamo, a neurobiologist at Harvard
Medical school, emphasizes that when information comes solely through our
auditory system, our mental imaging systems have freewheeling authority to
generate whatever visuals they want. Many people seek out such sensory purity. Anyone who has camped in the woods at night, associating different night
noises with all kinds of soothing and dangerous possibilities, knows the power
of sound. And anyone who has darkened a room, closed his or her eyes, and lay
down between giant stereo speakers turned up full blast knows the cognitive
and emotional pleasure of focusing entirely on the purely auditory.', When
sound is our only source of information, our imaginations milk it for all itt
worth, creating detailed tableaux that images, of course, preempt. No wonder
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feeling similar sensations in our bodies at exactly the same time when we listen as a group.tn
In part because of this physical response, listening often imparts a sense of
emotion stronger than that imparted by looking. "Listeningi' argues one researcher on perception, "is centripetal; it pulls you into the world. Looking is
centrifugal; it separates you from the world." While sight allows us some distance and power-the power to gaze,study, dissect, to be removed, apart from
our surroundings-sound envelops us, pouring into us whether we want it to
or not, including us, involving us. Even before we are born, we can hear others.
As infants, when our eyes are still struggling to focus, we are much more
soothed, startled, or scared by sounds than by sights. As we grow up, "hearing
is the precondition for the integration of people into their environment";
through listening, we learn proper social behavior and speech."
Our ears have always been part of humans' early warning system about
danger. We can close our eyes but not our ears; darkness curtails seeing, and
thus accentuates hearing all the more. And ssund-a glass shattering, a ball
hitting abat, a door slamming-usually telegraphs change and often triggers
an emotional response to that change. Listening, without being able to see
what or who goes.with the sounds, takes us back to a way of being in the world
nearly obliterated by modern society. $g4"s,i*lSS_$_.*p_{ilgfy*_ry_q""tjd-is-,a.fleSt
ing wo1!-d, an immediate world-words, unlikg.lgr*qg9_gr-4-r9,p--eg*ghl9-g9!9_q!
rgqt"$.: q:ritteref-Ji9lg;llil*"*"ges a concentratign og.thgpl$g.
goh;,Tffil;ffi;;ii'X'tr""rit;;y, n""titrg ui tit""itr"ir, and it theiefole
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seems reglilnoted researchers in the 1930s. When the listener turns his dial,
they added, "he wants to enter the stream of life as it is actually lived."" It is especially this evanescent nature of what we hear, this absolute simultaneity of
experience, that drives us to bond together.
And let's not forget that radio performers and producers turned the use of
sound into an art. Hadley Cantril and Gordon Allport, two pioneers in radio
research, noted how radio produced "close-ups" of sound, extracting the last
ounce of emotional quality from even the "sound of silence." "When it comes
to producing eerie and uncanny effects," they added, "the radio has no rival."
They noted that even in the early 1930s, listeners would "enhance this distinctive quality of radio" by sitting in the dark and closing their eyes so that "their
fantasies are free." In no time the listener could jump from ancient Rome to a
Los Angeles police precinct, then to a haunted house, and, even bettet the
image she conjured up could be three-dimensional, wasn't confined to a movie
screen or a proscenium, didn't have a curtain framing it, and wasn't subject to
any theatrical artificiality. It was, in many ways , better than seeing. Celebrating
this new emphasis on "the listener's visual imagery, a relatively neglected func-
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woven with the ritualized routines of everyday life-reading the paper, eating meals. So even when radio was little more than an auditory escort
through the day, it became enmeshed in people's memories of the stages of
their days and their lives.
I
:
I
There is another reason people's associations with the songs on the radio
are so intimate and fond: people's relationship to music is so emotionally intense. There is a physiological reason for this too: the brain s musical networks
and emotional circuits are connected. According to Mark Tiamo, the auditory
system of the brain feeds into the limbic system, the part of the brain from
which we derive emotions and memory. The limbic system then generates a
host of associations and emotional states. Once activated in a pleasurable way,
the limbic system maywant to sustain that level of arousal. When a DJ seeks.to
create the perfect segue from one favorite song to another' he is responding to
his limbic system's signal back to the auditory system, asking for more of the
same.tt
Cognitive psychologists suspect that there is a physiological explanation
for why people like hearing the same piece of music, whether it's Eine kleine
Nachtmusikor "My Girli'over and over. The brain apparently becomes accustomed to patterns of music based on exposure to different musical traditions
and stores knowledge of certain kinds of musical sequences in groups of cells.
Based on these stored connections, the brain will predict which notes will
come next in a sequence. When this prediction is right, the connections between the brain cells where these sequences have been stored become even
stronger. The more we listen to certain kinds of music, then, the more we learn
to like it. While the brain seems to like the surprise that comes when musical
expectations are violated-such as through syncopation, dissonance, or unusual melodies-evidence suggests that predictability produces more pleasure.
Successfirl music in a range of sryles handles this paradox by setting up our
musical expectations and then toying with them before providing a familiar
resolution."
So the inevitability in music that the brain
seems to like is both physiolog-
ical and cultural, for our culture teaches us what is inevitable and what isn t. As
the science writer Robert Jourdain notes in Music, the Brain, and Ecstasy,Ero=r
every musical style, there is a sryle of musical expectatioQ He reminds .rr,ioo,
of what we already know from everyday life: different people listen differently
at different times, some looking for a stimulant, some for a tranquilizer, some
for distraction, some for intensity and clamor." It also seems clear that most
people's musical tastes get established during adolescence. While people seek
out more complex music as they grow up, many reach a point, sometime in
adulthood, when their established mental groovings prevent them from en-
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andfocusingontheinstrumentation'Ofcourse'noteveryonelistenstomusic
people also let it simply wash over
this way, or at least not all the time: often,
them.
to bring forth certain cogmThe third way in which radio listening seems
listening' Here I'm drawing
tive and emotional modes is through associational
fromrecentmodelsofthememoryasan..associativenetwork"'inwhichconin our brains not according to some
cepts and images are linked together
to the often haphazard sengrund, chronoiogical scheme but rather according
period in our lives' When one
lory relations tliat characterized an event or
nodeinthememoryisactivated,itactivatestheothernodeswithwhichitwas
think of the song "Incense and Pepassociated at the time.r, whatever I might
(!) I can t helf but have the first few
by the Strawberry Alarm Clock
permints"
'
barshurlmeimmediatelybacktolg6T.Repeatedconstantlyontheradioasl
drovearoundwithmyboyfriend,wenttowork'orsunbathedatthebeach'the
people and places' It was this ona host of associations with past
,orrg
links in
"uok",
allowed radio to forge especially strong
ffi auditory repetition thatpersonal
popular
of
sweep
lives and the broader
our memories between our
culture.
drew from and inmodes of listening that radio cultivated
listening to varymg
informational, dimensional, and associational
/Th. different
,.rh".a
degre$Theearliestmode,pioneeredby..ham,'operatorsbutpursuedbymillistening, in which peoplelions of others during the iszor, was exploratory
how far they could listen and what
mostly men-Put o,i heudpho"es to see
are the remaining devotees of such
they could pick up. Ham operators today
listening.Asradioprogrammingbecamemoreroutinized,Americansdevel-
musical listening' the former especially
oped both concentratei and distiacted
the broadcast of
promoted by "musical appreciation' programs'
programming on FM stations
,y-pftorri.., and later by Dls and by"free-form"
music" format' so favored in
in the late 1960s and early 1970s. The"beautiful
distracted listening, which is why so
dentists, offices and elevators, insists on
opera and
many music lovers loathe it'
comedies tapped into and reDramas, plays, soap operas' and many radio
shapedstorllistening,apleasurablemodeoflisteningthatrequiresconcenand sound etrec1' While story
tration on language, io'apUy' verbal imagery'
by the 1960s, people like Jean shep'
listening was all but unavailable on radio
herdonWoRinNewYorkkeptitalive,asdoesNPRtoday.Newslisteninl
calledforsimilarconcentrationbut,especiallywiththeoutbreakofWorldWat
Edward R' Murrow' H' V
II, was much more serious and, as cultivated by
Kaltenborn,andothers,requiredtheimaginingofnationalandinternationa
maps,afocusingonthefatefulrelationshipsbetweentheindividual,thefam
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36 \
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their musical preferences when they are teenagers, they choose certain music
to express their solidaritywith their peers.'uAnd since the 1920s radio has been
the key distributor of popular music. When the pleasure of recognition is tied
to memory-to songs from one's youth, from the past-the powerfrrl delights
of repetition, nostalgia, sense of membership in a generation, and a defined
historical moment fuse to further cement people's romantic attachments to
the radio of their youth.
The zen of listening comes not only from the transporting qualities of auditory processing. It stems also from the unfathomable and magical nature of
t really understand how
radio worked added to its allure. Here we should turn briefly to technology.
That realm out there-first called the ether, then, less romantically, the electromagnetic spectrum-is invisible, but it isn't "the airi'even though it became
common to refer to radio waves going through the air. People are also nostalgic for the vagaries of radio transmission, for the vexing but romantic unpredictability of shortwave broadcasts from Europe during the war, for the ability
to pull in an AM station several states away. What gave AM its particular propradio propagation. The fact that most people didn
erties?
de.udes scientists and engineers sought to help people understand
radio by using the analogy of the pond and the stone. You throw a stone into a
pond-that's the radio signal-and ripples flow out in all directions-those
are the radio waves-until they hit the shore-your radio receiver. The crests
of the waves radiate in a pattern, and the distance between each crest is the
wavelength. The longer the wavelength, the lower its frequency: fewer of them
hit the shore. And the shorter the wavelength, the higher the frequency. The
height of each wave is its amplitude, the number of waves hitting the shore per
second is its frequenQTransmitters at AM stations superimpose sound on
these waves by alteriffi or modulating, the waves' amplitude; at FM stations
they modulate the frequenry. As these signals travel farther and farther from
St
their transmitter, they become attentuated, weaker.
It is about at this point in the explanation that most people's attention begins to wander. This water analogy, which has at least helped most of us understand the rudiments of radio signaling, has also perpetuated the sense thal
radio waves need a physical medium, like the air, in which to move: if they're
going to make ripples, they have to make them out of something. Hence the notion of "the etheri' that turn-of-the-century phantasm that served as such e
crucial bridging concept for everyday people (and many scientists and inven'
tors as well) as they sought to grasp how messages could travel without wiret
from one place to another.
]ames Clerk Maxwell, the scientist who predicted the existence of electro'
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miles during the day. Sky waves travel away from the earth but can be reflected
back to it by the ionosphere. When sky waves are bent back to earth, they can
"land" hundreds, even thousands of miles away from the transmitting station.
AM frequencies are not bent as dramatically by the ionosphere as shortwaves are and thus can't achieve the distances that shortwaves can. But at night
they can often go much farther than during the day, anywhere from 100 to
1,500 miles from the transmitter. This is because the lower layers of the ionosphere (called the D and E layers by radio technicians), which are approximately 45 to 75 miles above the earth's surface, act like a huge sponge during
the day, absorbing the signals that pass through them. But after the sun sets
these layers disappear, and the ones above them-anywhere from 90 to 250
miles above the earth-combine to form a dense layer that acts like a mirror to
sky waves. The reason that DXing was such an adventure, and so unpredictable, in the 1920s was that the ionosphere itself is constantly moving and
billowing, both horizontally and vertically, making the reception of some frequencies, from some locations, crystal clear one night and silent the next.'e
In other words, the special characteristics of AM propagation made radio
listening ideal for building etheric communities, because people could skip
over distances and hear so much farther than they can with FM. In the early
1920s some local stations around the country instituted "silent nights," when
they went off the air so listeners could try to pick up faraway stations. As transmitters increased in power-from 500 to 5,000 to 25,000 and then 50,000 watts
on some stations by the late l920s-obviously their more powerfiil signals
could travel farther. But stations at the lower end of the AM band, near 550
kilohertz, could cover a much broader area with less power than those higher
up the band, between I,200 and 1,500 kilohertz, which might need ten times
the power to cover the same distance.'o Other factors, like whether the signal
travels over water, especially salt water, or whether the soil around a radio station is especially conductive electrically, can also extend a station's reach.
FM-frequenry modulation-sounds better than AM in part because it's
in a portion ofthe spectrum less prone to natural interference, and because its
channel width is 200 kilohertz-twenty times the 1O-kilohertz channel width
that AM has. In fact, the discrepancy is even worse, because the AM channel
has only a S-kilohertz information capacity. With so much more frequency
space, there's more room in which to encode more information, so FM has a
rich sound resolution AM simply can't achieve. FM, because it operates on
higher frequencies than AM, is also slightly better at penetrating solids, like
buildings, which is why you hear FM slightly longer when you drive through a
tunnel, while AM dissolves into static as soon as you enter."
Regulation also ensured network radio's abilityto expand its scope.In 1928
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nothing was
These were the frothy "boom" years of radio, when virtually
frequencies of stations (although at first everyone was suP-
fixed-not the
of financial supposed to broadcast on the same wavelength), not the method
of
port, not government regulations, and not the design or domestic location
as the
lhe radio itself. There were no networks-known in the late 1920s
exceptions,
few
a
With
air.
chains-and there was very little advertising on the
probroadcasts of church services, there was not a predictable
like the Sunday
by a lecgram schedule. Instead, stories geared for children might be followed
would
which
homei'
Iure on "hygiene of the mouth" or "how to make a house a
forme-r-lY
in turn be followed by phonograph music or "Madame Burumowska,
Sun."'zpe"Hymn
the
to
opera' singing Rimsky-Korsakov's
of the Moscow
colleges
partment stores, newspapers, the manufacturers of radio equipment,
joined the rush
and universities, labor unions, socialists, and ham operators all
to start stationsal
r,g
it ior granted, often wearily, that broadcasting is supported
that
by adveriising, that its mission is to promote compulsive consumerism,
by
or
owned
most broadcast stations are affiliated with national networks
chains, and that broadcasting is regulated by the Federal comToday we ta[e
broadcasting
consolmunications commission, all too often in ways that benefit corporate
to, the
idation and greed at the expense of real diversity on, and access
only one imaginable. It
airwaves. It seems fixed, as if this system was and is the
seems so hopelessly and relentlessly
top-down'
ManyoftheseprecedentsgotSetinthemid-andlatel920s_someofthem
earlier-when none of this was taken for granted. In fact, we have had adit is easy to
vertising-supported broadcasting for so long-seventy years-that
in the 1920s'
forget that ihi, *u, extremely controversial and hotly debated
(We
thank AT&Tfff'
can
condemned as a crass invasion of people's private lives.
wEAF.) susan
for pioneering the use of radio advertising in 1922 on its station
radio' remind
early
on
books
excellent
smulyan and Bob Mcchesney, in their
be financed
to
us that there was nothing inevitable about the way radio came
labor orgaand regulated., This was a contested process, with educators and
even
all advancni"ers, corporate interests, amateur operators, and the government
ing their very different visions for the future'
especially foBecause this decade was so formative, radio historians have
advertisof
radio
rise
cused on the 1920s and done a fine job chronicling the
and
ing, the emergence of the networks, the establishment of radio regulation,
solos
soprano
and
speeches
evolution of programming from impromptu
the
to regularly scheduled shows like Amos'n'Andy'n
the visual
I want to explore something else here: what did it mean, amidst
newspapers'
and
sports'
onslaught of billboards, magazines, movies, spectator
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the surrounding sounds of home shut out by the black disks on their ears. And
while we don't have the kind of detailed surveys of listeners that historians long
for, the journalistic record contains various romantic accounts by middle-class
"distance fiends" who gushed about the pleasures of DXng. What is especially
striking about these accounts is the way they describe using radio listening to
imagine America as a nation more harmonious than it was yet simultaneously
reveling in and embracing its differences-what divided it, what rebelled
against "America" as a homogenizing notion.
The second stage was music listening, which began, of course, at the same
time as DXing, since most of what stations played was music, but became more
possible and popular with the introduction in 1925 of improved loudspeakers.
The third stage, which crystallized with the extraordinary success of Amos'n'
Andy in 1929 as a network program, was story listening, in which people sat
down at the same time each day or each week to listen to the same characters
enact comedic or dramatic performances.
The rapid explosion of exploratory listening would not have occurred
without that fraternity called the amateur operators and later known as ham
operators.s They constituted the very first radio audience in the first decade ol
the century, and through their technical innovations as well as their social uses
of wireless telegraphy, they paved the way for radio broadcasting in the 1920s.
But they also extended the nature of such listening. In the 1920s, while most
listeners were trying to tune in broadcast stations, the amateurs-who had nol
only received but also broadcast wherever and whenever they wanted before
l9l2-were forbidden from transmitting in the broadcast band and were relegated to an etheric reservation then thought of as pretty worthless: waves 200
meters and down, or shortwaves. Shortwaves, it was thought at the time,
wouldn't travel any distance at all; longer waves did that. If the amateurs wer!
going to continue as active agents in the spectrum, they had no choice but to
figure out whether they could get anything out of the shortwaves. And figure
it out they did, long before Marconi or any corporation.
The amateur fraternity in America began to take shape between 1906 and
1907, after the discovery that certain crystals, like silicon or Carborundum.
were excellent detectors of radio waves. More to the point, unlike the prototype
vacuum tubes new to the market in 1907, crystals were cheap, durable, and reliable. The events at a receiving station were the same as those at the transmitting end but in reverse sequence. At the transmitting end, inventors had tc
devise the most efficient method of generating very-high-frequency alternating current from a direct current source. At the receiving end, the problem was
"rectifring" these oscillations: translating high-frequency alternating currenl
back to a unidirectional pulsating current that could flow through a telephont
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comparing the answers to their arithmetic homework and refused to pipe
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The navy sought, unsuccessfirlly at first, to get the amateurs banished from
airwave s. The Titanlc disasteL however, moved public and congressional
opinion against the amateurs'unrestricted access to transmitting. The loss of
so many lives, when there were ships near enough to rescue the survivors had
they only had wireless onboard, drove home the need to require wireless
equipment and at least two operators on all ships.
But few aspects of the tragedy outraged people more than the ceaseless interference, cruel rumors, and utter misinformation that dominated the airwaves in the aftermath of the disaster. Immediately after the TitaniCs wireless
operator, Harold Bride, notified stations that the ship had hit an iceberg, wireless stations all along the northeast coast of North America clogged the airwayes with inquiries and messages. Out of this cacophony emerged a message
picked up by both sides of the Atlantic and reprinted in the major papers: "All
Titanic passengers safe; towing to Halifax." Editors of the London Times and
The New York Timeswere appalled to learn the next day that the message was
false, and they blamed the amateurs for manufacturing such a cruel hoax.
The etheric congestion that persisted as the survivors made their way to
New York further cemented the amateurs' fate. Passed just four months later,
the Radio Act of 1912 required that all amateurs be licensed, and it forbade
.'-:*them from:Tidfr3mitting on the main commercial and military wavelengths.
They could listen in, but for transmitting they were banished to an area of the
spectrum regarded as useless: the shortwaves of 200 meters and less. The
power of their sets was restricted to 1,000 watp-/fDespite this, the number of amateurs increased in the 1910s, and they improved their image by providing impromptu communications networks when
windstorms or other disasters crippled telephone and telegraph lines. In 1914
Hiram Percy Maxim, the inventor and radio enthusiast, organized the American Radio Relay League to establish a formal relay system or network among
amateurs that could step in on a regular basis during natural disasters. Now
there was a grassroots, coast-to-coast communications network that made it
possible, according to Popular Mechanics,"for the private citizen to communicate across great distances without the aid of either the government or a corporation.'7
During World War I the federal government banned all amateur activity
and closed all amateur stations to prevent any interference with government
transmissions. But by Iune of 1920 there were already fifteen times as many
amateur stations in America as there were other types of stations combined,
and the next year there were 10,809 licensed amateurs (many more, with
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conformity,,_thenativistinsistencethatimmigrantsabandon.theirpastand
with a refusal
Anglo-Ameri.u" upptu'unces and behaviors-clashed
embrace
disappear''o
by many to issimilate, become homogenized'
Soradio,whichhistoriansagreepluyedacentralroleindeliveringand
and'40s' did not do so the instant the
forgirrg a national culture in the iSeOs
radioboomstarted.Itcouldnt.Rather,inthisenvironmentpeopleusedradio
com-
ethnic, religious, and class-based
both to celebrate and strengthen local,
spectacles, like election returns' the
munities and to participaie in national
ot the World Series'
l.rrrpr"y-Curp.nii., boxing match in Iuly l92l'
strong pulls between oppoIn 1g20s radio, as in 1g2bs culture, there were
sites:betweencorporatecontrolandanticonsumerism,betweenthedesirefor
orderandthedesireforfreedom'betweenthesafetyofculturaluniformityand
thetitillationofsubculturalrebellionandinsolence.Thesecontradictionsand
conflictscansometimesgetplasteredoverinahistorythatseesaprogression
order' There was such a progression' technically
from etheric chaos to
"tf'"'ii
andbureaucratically,butitwasonethatfavoredrichandpowerfulbroadcastdeeply loyal
smaller, community-based stations with
ers-the networks-over
or clout'
listenerships but inadequate resources
Theinstitutio,,utt'i,toryofradiothathistorianshavealreadycoveredquite
wellisanaccount,inpart,oftheeffortstoimposeorderandconformityonthe
airwavesandtoe"t,actprofitsfromthemaswell.Thebattlesthatragedinthe
lg20soverwhatradioshodabeproducedinlg2TtheFederalRadioComprimary job w1s to decide
mission-the predecessor to the FCC-whose
whichstationsgotallocatedwhichfrequencies.Betweenlg20andlg22a|'stas;by lgl2just two more had been
used the same n*ot"ty, s33 kilocycle
tions
added.(Klocyctes*u,.h"termusedinthelg20stodesignateastatiori'sfre1926 the airwaves were completely
quency; today the term is kilohertz') By
cloggedinmanyareas:NewYorkhad38stations'Chicagohad40'andnation-
widetherewere620.Whatmadethisintolerablewasthatnogovernment
agencywasempoweredtoassignwavelengthstothesestations,althoughHer(and presidential hopefrrl) in t923'
bert Hoover, as secretary of Jo*-""e
to assign wavelengths'" some had highbegan to classiff statio"' by po*"' und
powered, state-of-the-art
tru"'-ittt";
otherswere Rube Goldberg jobs broad-
casting with just 25 watts'
Aseriesor*ia.rypoulicizednationalradioconferencesthlt.Hooverstaged
betweenlg22andig25didlittletoresolvetheintensecompetitionoveraccess
his efforts to allocate
to the few available broadcast frequencies, although
set the stage for who would win and
wavelengths according to a station s power
slots' Meanwhile' Eugene Mcwho would lose in thJscramble for broadcasting
had
Zenith and owner of wlAZ in chicago, which
Donald, the president of
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lueru 'suc '
Ortq^ 5o
-els **eo.,*T,l1lltUi{i
ilffi::;"T, ]:}#l*,l;]:,{J##,r"pq, "qrl
srouttU uraquoN
-o1P ot ,.blroqlne
e9 /
'OZ6t
s('
Aroloroldxl
et{l ut 6ulualsrl
64 \
LtSreNlNG lN
featuringtheGoldDustTWinsandtheCliquotClubEskimos)andthento
pitches'"
sales
l
grab-'em-by-theJapels
precedent number three: Direct,
history-bureaucratic cenThus the story is a familiar one in American
of a technology that overly romantralization and increased corporate control
ticwritershadoncepredictedwouldbringAmericansjusttheopposite.But
awayfromthedeliberationsoftheFederalRadioCommission,thenetworkoffices,andtheadug","it',whatchangesdidradiobringtoeverydaypeople?
these earlS heady years?
What did radio listening mean during
(later WWI) in Detroit' 2XJ in
Beginning in 1920 Jt-'"'al stations-8MK
Deal,NewJersey,and2XBinNewYork-beganbroadcastingvoiceandmusic'
credited with inaugurating, in the
But Frank Conrad at KDKA is generally
shows, initially called wireless conspring of 1g20, the first regularlylro"d."rt
and
of pushing a Victrola up to a microphone
certs, which consisted primarily
his garage in Wilkinsburg' just outsid'e
playing records." Transmitting from
hams over the air and ap-
talked to fellow
Pittsburgh, Conrad and his 'oi' ul'o
picked up the music' As more and more
pealed for feedback on how well others
Conrad became a local
the word about the
hams tuned in and
'ho*''
that a
'p;;"i
the executives of Westinghouse' saw
sensation' When his employers'
the broadcasts to sell radio equipment'
Pittsburgh department st" *"' using
manufacturc appaon the fad themselves. They would
tt .y a.jd"a io ."sh in
ratussuitableforamateuruseandbuildConradamorepowerfirlstationatthe
Westinghouse Plant in the citY'
Westinghouse'sinaugu'al'publicity-stuntbroadcastwascoverageofthe
presidential race, with the 100incoming returns oithe"tszo cox-Harding
wattKDKAontheairfrom8:00p.tr,t.untilmidnight.ThenextdaytheWestdebut the
inghouse
s\ritchbo; *u' '*u-p"d withphon"^*t:O1:t^this audience'
growing
out each niiht, from 8:30 to 9:30, to a
wireless concerts went
urd, in this very early period, facing virBoosting its transmitter to 500 *itt,
could be heard in Washington' D'C"
tually no competition on the air' KDKA
New|ersey,andlllinois.Earlyinlg2lKDKAexpandeditsofferingsandfeaCalgary Episcopal Church.
tured the Sunday ,",ui.., of the Pittsburgh
In1921,twenty-eightnewstationswerelicensedtogoontheair.Pioneers in
and KYW
WIZ inNeriark, WBZ in Springfield' Massachusetts'
opened: over 550 new stations began
Chicago. The next year the floodgates
included
broadcasting,mostonthesamewavelength.Somefeaturedspeechesbyedu-
catorsandpublicngo,..ontopicsfromEinsteinstheoryofrelativitytothe
football'
covered baseball games' college
merits of the Boy sc-outs, and others
threeearly broadcasting-by some estimates
and prizefights. But the staple of
classesprogram"'iig-*u' music' And radio took the middle
quarters of all
andthepress-bystorm'Theradioboomwas'accordingtoHerbertHoover'
o] dil!Iladse-BuruaNrl
.ruooq aqr peranJ
aql pue'uorsla,np
sB
lsn(
ol urnl
pPe ol luerv\ I
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or arrsap Eut8raura
,.jr;ili:;;}.'ridu:"{
",elpqr,"
rE
os
ruo{ )rsn.' pue
pt'"''1"Lt'"1"1o' io; ra8unq'der*e safolouqra
'lrp'rou lBlluqlat'o'pn' "1',1
sa:ro,r Suuuaq 1o 1g'q'
'u'
eqr qll^\'araqds """*of
aqr'AQ
1o BuruulSaq
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IIa/v\
'ale'nrd 'T
'git
.qt"oa
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o"I.-*tt1ar 8uo1-'knluef, (sue)rJaurv
usluorl
pue'qtlln pesralul ol pauaes
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lq
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I
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'q'5o
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pue 0Z uaaapqPu!'uorleanar
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uo Bulpuads ur aseanur
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"q"n^
peq orp!J tuoqr* JoJ sueq Jo 'pt""toq'5o "t'r "qi to1 'tufgqres dlaralduor
dpearp,se^
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-'11ti:tra*nt"
eraql'ureas lllru rr
sr'ot"ro
""
lou urBurar daqr rnQ'suopeueldxa
rou
sr s0z6r ,r1r",
"qr
w uoqesuas n q,"i "*n"-:::#jlt-tl",rl"X#fur^
rf
lIer
r"ql
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^tou>I
P:lY'"' "'lueaur
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aq1-,'raqrug Pau
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eql ul-pulo-ln
-xa olp'r t"q
''u"'^ Eurpunolse lsolu aql Jo auo,'
;';;'" aruo: 1seq1 leqr sSulgr
Jo uolle^Jasqo
{ro1oro1dx3
t eql ur 6uruolsrl
aqt
99 /
'OZ6
66 \ itstENlNG
lN
and
ways that some men
one of the important
increased
listening-was
and their
exoloratory
t
"tttf"ity
radio ownership
bovs navigated the .t#;n"iiio"r.i r-r2.Os'i'o*
tt"
in the
domesiic"';;t"
"urt
the
in
or"r"n..
go"' tht Harvard historian Lizabeth
classes'
;fudk
th"
classes in
was highest among
il;;'v of the *-olK"g every
ua*i'"a
i";;;;;;
day
cohen points '"t
t*t'*tta'*itf'-i"ttory machinery
*o'O#*t'"
often
men
*"",
Chicago,
niSht' These
radio technol""
buy
"
were not daunted ;;;*ii;*
could not afford to
*tt"itttl
i*p*"isation'
homemade aerimade up in ingenuity ""J
trui*ti
ffi;;;t*"'
o"J
u"d
citv's in'ttut"t'od"
in the shops,
break streets in the
,n"
-';;;;
i";;;;g
"' trt" t"'rttrs2Ot first generally excluded
als are on one ,""f
dustrial zones.",'
*"ii" il .';Gi"
"t
women.Sowe'ttoot'a-to"'idJrwhat'ntttt"i"ttasradiomighthavead-
over
dressed in men'
a time of great anxiety
the 1910s and'20s as
identified
have
Scholars
##.'""1,;.'::,;i:n,T$*Il*H*';:*liJ":ll'iiiiiii
mr
"quaSicollided, and manY
bv mixed messages
even
tbt"t *fttit'er to be'vigo'oo" 'po"tuneous'
oiimiti',,.;'ortobe*"*J;'o"ne'and;;;i;iE'AnthonvRotundoin
AmericanMa'l'ooauni;^ititlt'*""nu*'i""tandCivilizauonnotethat
model 6f "6xnlinessi'
u"tt"""'
t;;;;tia
tht
'"i;il;s strong character' and the
bv the turn of
tt"J*o'rt'
irwhich emph"'i'"a r'o"ll'l"ii-""'"*t'
; t'i*"r' seemed pass6 and enduw (and power)
t";llcitt';;i;;J':^men' African American activists'
and immigrant
relevant. Working-class
all
women's movement
ones who
tertainers u"a
U.fi.i, tttut ttt.y were the
of manliness seemed
challenged..white
;;;;;iestiny''{hrt
'ii',,,"aa epithets like "sissy''
should control
gta"";u;t'
'no*it"'*"1"T'n"
**t '-i4;;;
J;:i;"
'nt
"overcivilized" and
#;;;;'
;:;ltf;;:Jl;ffi
""a
";t"'
""*
ffitj;"]11"Jfr'J,..iioo,..,,.r,*ourdroreverbrand"the
bodybuildcutt""'?iiot t"rm of football' Rice Burd"*;;;;populur
life'
of Edgar
strenuous
tht
Co"'ui-"outt" ""a
""'"tio"ul 'ottt"
roughs'sTarzan't'il'i'''''iulionsofmeni"i*art"*nal'organizationsthat
and young men were
other .lu"r.s and races,
ing, Ioseph
excluded women
urged to become
u
deed, there
**
#;;
;;";;;
of
th':"9:;'
InB"v Scouts and theYMcA'"
and early tlventieth
*u;o' 'i*"1o*1t"tht i;iltteenth
"overfrom falling prey to
and to p"'nt*ioyt
centuries to ttt"U'utlUoyttood
fj;;j,;;
tnJ;;;i;"*t"
toolsl' warned
;J'l' *it'n'i'*'u
#;;;;:"ns
;;;;i;'n"*
civilization."'n'
with
bovs to'be "handv
with shalcv
"n"ttrt*tj tt*t"o:-:mokers' Fathers' es-
mu:"ty' self-reliant"'
to bt'
douutfol;;;1"'";*
und
'obott'
nerves
to be competitive and
hand
in
peciallv, were to
pe8Jn
lerll uels/s
enp^ Bur[E^eJd p ,.(soqle f,nnedeJar{1,, aql
slp] eq ler1rr
ar{l paqrrlsap seq sreaf uo$llul .; ,(nq or
Jo 's0zdl aql,(q
iuen ppo,'
sJeqlo sarlrporurrroJ elrppJne .sJar.po
Jo pzrordde aql qlrrvr passesqo ..,pella4p
-Jar{}o,, aruof,aq uatu }uq} peNrsu esaqt
,arourzftreg uqol
pm DIueqnBJ
IIE
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ura6,h
rels s,pooa,rdlloHJo asrr
aql 'aldoad ef,uanltw ol ^{roq uo $looq e]tzrpu ,ur
lg daql raqfqzrr puu suorssard
-rur lsrg rlJrll rnoq' aldoad panSueruq,(llueNuor
,(do: Sursrlra,rpe ,saar1
}uq1
-eradurr f,rl?rf,npeJng .Buuuaqralo guraq pue
guraq uaarvrleq aurl
.,f,r1eugBru,,
(esrr
.I
aug luql {lervr uaur dlaq o1 pasrurord
a4q aldoad e{Btu ol s,t"rrr os,, uo
1e.,nod
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q ulotjv oj
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lno
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o1 pasoddns osle eJalr rbqr lar( ,ur lg ol pasoddns aJaM
ueru ,rn1r_rlppryni
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rapuag,r,rau
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aqr qr1rvr Surpap araqm (surpal Jrroxa ro
aJou ol adursa u3 p3rpoqua
1ry,fu1d
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<(elruam(,,;o lsoq
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Isrflgo
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aql puu a8e4gns alpuraJJo ary 4, eql ur
.ssarord E
satou
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luql
sp pooq
-uetu Jo Suruuop eql (uoEeruJoJsuuJl pelqg$Flq sruru
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suqg aql .suorlaldap
Jo
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ue uo lnd urqt p,r"
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aql pazrseqdura ,re1pn15 ur(1
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Jo
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aql ur sauoyq .Bur
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roJ satruuqf, aql
4q3H asaql uI
13ql parJJon uaru r(ueru .sSunlas JrlpJsneaJnq ,pazurlnoJ
,r.nlre1d rueel e aq pue.aleradoor,ul lg ol peq uetu E (peaf,
-lns oJ..'palIuII aJam s[DIs parrnbar puu aurlnoJ,, se/vr_0l6l
pue 0/gI uaaal
-aq uotu ro; pala4rorAls puq qlrq^ _Iro/r rullof_atrq.u
asnef,eq (<poorlueru
uo paJJe luuogruBrs e peg,,,opunlog,(uor{tuV salrm..,lrerrnr"*q gurpued
-xa aqJ,, 'alqrssod 10u dldurrs r(u?u JoJ
Splvr
,ueur raqlo rarro
rfualseur Suvreq ro
'lueuruolrrrua s<auo Jo Jalseu aqt guraq ,bpar uI .aJII Jooplno aql
Jo lruol f,rl
-naderaql pue Suruarrqua aql ruorg rbrvre,searu ueqrn ur (sloopur
luads servr ag4
qrnur ,l8oloqlftu gurpeaard aql alrdsap puv .suou
Euuru sselt-appur eqr
Jo
-eluoryuotrJo spuDl rerllo ro; roqdepru u su^u
lequor prrs,(qd :apt{ paraueru
qfuar1s p:rs,(qd ,plJo,tr sseursnq aqt ur leql Jealt servt erurl
erues
lr
aql
lV
'llen sE saqquuosrad SurpuuruuroJ ,pgef,JoJ
e Br{ ol
puq uatu jsnoro8rn,(lerrsdqd aq o1 q8noue
lou sem ll puv
r.,(preq,flerrsdqd
l9 / tOZ6t eql
6urue1sr1 l(loloro;dx3
68 \
LtsteNlNG lN
selffocus on psychic revitalization and
Americans to celebrate leisure, to
gratification for some
i-pr"+r"."r' and to live for today instead of deferring
imaginedhereafter.Conformbutdistinguishyourself:thiswashardlyaneasy
paradox to negotiate'
Linkinghobbiespursuedinprivatetosuchlarge-scaleandseismiccultural
shiftsmightseemamismatchbt*"""thetrivialandthegrand'butldont
thinkso.Tinkeringwithradio(liketinkeringwithcars)wasonewayforsome
master the emerging contradictionsabout
boys and men to -"""g", ""a even
some of them found themselves spendmasculinity in Americi, especially as
home' For a growing subgroup of American
ing their increased Ieisure time at
were
definitions of manhood and success
boys, these vivid yet often conflicting
legary
tinke'ing' Trapped between the
resolved in mechanical and electrical
g""*a
of
so popularized in the new mass
culture and the pull of the primitivism
desire to
betwe"n the need to conform and the
culture, and certainlyi'upp"a
a sense of mastery' indeed of masbreak out, many boys u#-t" reclaimed
"animal
to"t'ol of technology' What if you lacked
culinity itr.lf, thro,,gh tht
magnetism," *..." t u"
lenge and
chaldaredevil like Fairbanks' wanted
"nergy-chargedyo.u' longed to escape from the confu-
ua.'"tto'"lo;;;"1
denie"d
right kind of
gender relations? With the
sions and ,.r"nt-."i of changing
*;*y' adventure' and knowledge few women'
machine, there was
"""pt,
men could have'
African Americans, or working-class
with technology as'
popular culture in the iqt6s and'20s glorified playing
morethan".,..,uy-*gman,sgame.Andfewinventions-eventheautomomen than wireless telegraphy. A new
bile_were *or. u...rible to boys and
seriesofjuvenilebooks_TheRadioBoys_flourishedinthelg20s.Justasar.
ticlesgivinginstructionsonbuildingyourownwirelesssetbeganappearingin
allkindsofrrlagazines,sodidshortstoriesentitled..WooedbyWireless',or..In
Marconilandj,andadventurebooksnamedTheWirelessMandramatizedthe
enterprisingboy'
excitement awaiting any game and
knowledge,
enviable
in"' i'omis" that you would have specialized'
in
to sioking the radio craze: most radios
*u, tot
""i-Portant
Romance,
",'a
lg20and,2lwerehomemad"crystalsetswithheadphones,andtheywereextremelydifficulttooPerate'Earlytubesetswerenotmuchbetter'andthey'too'
wereeitherho-.-ud.orhome-assembledwithgreatpride,asenthusiasts
wereguidedbyendlessarticlesonhowtobuildyourownset,withtitleslike
..Radiog,oud.u,t,,K,,ock-outFour-TubeReceiver.,'Such..how-to,'articlesin
newsPapersuna-ug"'i"ts'completewithcircuitdiagrams'werecrucial'since
assemknowledgeable ham' did not contain
early apparatus, designed for the
and
1922
in
set
a
splnding $250 for
bly instructionr. O"? fi"ener recalled
beingtoldsimplyto..sitdownandturnthedials,youcan'thurtit]'Evenfour
per'ldalaqoip'qsarraD!qasaqrrv'Pt":lTi:;::;'ii'JiT.?':'H;Sil
eqr q t:ffiH-H3jjilffi11*
p'.4
i,r,"q, sarralreq s.'aqnl
:*'*-
il:T,ff i:]','gJlT:?j{"'r!iT,1;r,u";x,H:il#iT;,"**
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pue dn pal!l[f,so
euualu! eql u/v\oP
,qi p,*,oi,-"
r:1ffii:;Jii,:;,ffi *ilruS*;-ffi
rurl
da1 aarqr Puq aqnl
or
p'p""u
aJarv\
luauala-aeJql ^" "u' "'"'ado p!q su!J otpnu
ol
uaaalaq arue'g'p 'q' "'"'l
arqeproJJe aruof,aq'ot'
HX
sPuPI aarqr arp
teql sauaDBQ Jo
puz
a-lqelle^e {apt'u'
zzlt rlun
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Pue ilar
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Jlaql a8erno$rp
Surqlauos ..'4;o asn
pln^- *o/v\ asryuof qllq^a
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lou
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*"
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or recharged frequently, which, unless you had your own charger, required lug-
ging them to your local garage or subscribing to a battery-charging service.
Batteries were also notorious for leaking battery acid onto-and wreckingcarpeting and furniture, and they often gave off noxious fumes. In addition,
they were expensive: a B-type battery which lasted only three months, cost ten
dollars, plus an additional five dollars a month for upkeep."
Since enthusiasts initially listened in on headphones, they had to be passed
around from one person to the next if more than one wanted to tune in. As
they sought to share their experience with others, men installed multiple headsets, since early loudspeakers mangled the sound of radio. Listeners thus sat
around close to each other, all tethered by their headsets to the receiver. One
worker in Chicago described improvising a kind of speaker by taking the headphones and putting them in a pot so the sound would be amplified.'o Yet many
switched to the gooseneck loudspeaker, a component considered especially
hideous by most women, to try to make the pastime less exclusive.
Even store-bought sets required some assembly and, therefore, some technical expertise. Those with crystal sets had to master the cat whisker, the thin
wire that provided the contact with the crystal. If it was placed on the wrong
spot, the listener heard nothing. If the right spot was discovered, however, the
listener's ears were suddenly filled with voices and music. The same was true
for early tube sets, which required hairline calibrations to tune in different stations. Those without such expertise either acquired it or summoned the help
of the neighborhood amateur operator. Money bought distance and amplification: while a crystal set with a 20-mile range cost between ten and twentyfive dollars in 1924, a three-tube set with a range of up to 1,500 miles ran
-
anywhere from one hundred to five hundred dollars."
Once you managed to get your set to work, therai6s no guarantee you
would hear anything except auditory chaos. Not only receivers were crude, so
were many transmitters, most of which in 1923 broadcast with less than 100
watts of power and failed to stick to one wavelength. And medium and lower
frequencies, where AM is, are more subject to atmospheric noise than higher
frequencies. Thus, static was a constant nuisance, as was blasting, a loud, grating noise that blew into your ears eyery time you changed from one station to
another. And what listeners who had bought their apparatus in the winter
didn't know until a few months later was that static was much worse in the
summer, sometimes making the operation of a receiving set "practieally impossible." Listeners were advised to reduce the length of their antennas in the
summer and then lengthen them again in the winter' on the assumption that
it was better to have a weak signal with less static than a strong one utterly
marred by it. The New York Evening Mail offered detailed instructions on as-
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interference and begging for information
to magazines itemizing the ongoing
on how to reduce it'
comover radio programming. Some
Nor was there uniform euphoria
and too many
was "too much canned music
plained as early as 1922 thatthJre
parents
"proud
noted with irritation that
talks on what not ,o "J'Another
is too much
before unseen audiences' There
flaunt the talents of their children
only ten and therefore
" Review of
even,Ripplings of the Mississippi.'
hardly competent to "io.iiut"
radio performthe current system of recruiting
Reviavs argued for abolishing
talents for
their
who are willing to display
ers,..which is dependent on lrtists
of little
Jesse's
piano
pf"fi"g-ot
much because
Jesse is
nothing."ManyoftheseweresoPranosorcontriltos.singinggenteelrecital
instincevei red-blooded American boy would
music, "the .or, of tf i"g that
aftermother's
to avoid hearing during his
sneak out of ,rr. i".r. door
i
I
tively
noon teas.""
world? One
so compelling about the ethereal
So why bother? What was
demand for
so far as to clast the skyrocketing
commentator at the time went
and swearing
since the amount of time' sweat'
radio receivers as "abnormal"'
trying to
when
only led to more frustration
that went in,o
""t-Uli;i;""t
listening in altogether because
in something. ;;., in fact, abandoned
tune
theycouldntgettheir-s-etstowork'andwhentheydidtheyheardmostlynoise'
done much
noted Radio Broadcast"'has
"Constructior, *i'ft""ii"structionj'
in many quartersl"''
to make tfr. *o'a'tuiio' connote'nuisance'
radio
in the early 1920s' tinkering with
u"ailu:y' oi tu"y
But for
-."
combined technical
""'
to explore another strange but
-"rr".y *i r, ,rr. chance
compellingdimensioninaccessibletothosewithoutexpertiseanddetermina.
tion.Anyonecouldgotothemoviesoravaudevilleshow,orthumbthrougha
glossy surfaces' with
gave you already produced
magazine.plr* tt
in
"s?-m"dia
op"r th. .I.-ents. Listeners could be
radio you entered somethrrrgl.ru.i.d
next,
the
ridinjthe airwaves, yet at its mercy
control of nature orr. ,,,i-rr,,ii, uy
afterbeinghurledoffthewaveintosomeethericriptide.Therewasnophysicaldangerhere,buttherewerechallenges'victories'anddefeats'depending
and
but on how you used your mind
not on physical"t"r'O o' upptu'-uY
time' one of the few
the ether' was' at the
uncommercialized realms left '
untamed, unpredictable' and
Early ensome men felt they codd control'
Here was one technology that
hands. And the
thusiasts ,oof.
t"""il
o"t tti"'"d'
g"ui;;ide ilcustom-designing their sets t:
distinc-
lltl*ot
a home set is a short cut to
tive and bore the -"kt''' mark"'Installing
neighborhoodfame,"wroteonecommentatorinlg23"'asurewaytobecome
knownasamechanicalgenius.,'AccordingtotheLiterary.Digestinlg24,the
as much pleasure out of makrO mittioi set owners "get imost
approximately
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(400stationsandverificationfroml0stationsmorethan2'000milesfromthe
in the early 1920s designated
point of reception).n'As noted earlier' some cities
stopped broadcasting so lisine night u *""k as a "silent night": local stations
from around the country'
teners-could more easily capture stations
particular qualities of the AM
DXing at night *u, po,,iUtt because of the
from both ground-wave and slcyband. Because AM transmissions benefit
*u:'n"p,op"gation,andatnightare..bouncedback-,toearthbytheionosphere,
eien thousands of miles away from the transmitting
tt.y.an;t"itd"
hundreds,
station.SodistancesnotPossibleduringthedaycouldbeachievedatnight,but
youcouldneverbesurewhichstationsyoumightsnatch.onelistener,forex"-pl",recalledWBTinCharlotte,NorthCarolina'cominginthroughoutthe
West.Becausetheionosphereitselfisconstantlymovingandbillowing,both
horizontallyandvertically,makingthereceptionofsomefrequencies'from
and silent the next, DXingwas a real adsome locations, crystal .1.u, orr. nilht
venture in mastering the unpredictable'n'
1'000' or even 1'500 miles;
More expensive sets had receiving ranges of
peoplewho.hadnevermadealong-distancetelephonecallorsentatelegram
morethanafewmilescouldnowlistenintoChicago,Havana,orSanFran-
finger"' One-upmanship also fueled the
cisco, all by "the slight crooking of one
practice,whichfitinwellwithaculture-especiallyamasculineculture-that
to gauge prowess' achievement, and
used numbers and statistics like weapons
"It wasn't then a boast that you
determination. As one enthusiast recalled,
with frrll range of frequency' It
could get the Philharmonic in good tone and
say, for instance, that you had
was much more to yoo, ...aii if you could
from New York to Los Angeles-as
n**U up twenty-five stations ranging
oft"nhupp.rred.'!'Asearlyaslg22thenewmagazineRadioBroadcastsponsored..HowFarHaveYouHeard''contests.Anotherthrillwasfindingastation
justrecentlyontheairbeforeanyoneelsedid.Thesheerimmediacyoftheautoo-you either caught the
ai ory *orid, its fleeting quality, was gripping
soundatthatmomentorlostitforever,likeaprizemarlin.
Thiswasnotpassivelistening'Norwasitthekindofgrooved'regularlisteningtofavoriteshowsthatwouldcharacterizethelg30s.Thepleasureofexploratorylisteningwasnotpredictabilitybutitsopposite'surprise'Thenature
psychologically different from the
of anticipation of exploratory listening was
with the latter, memory of the
anticipation of tuning in to Burns urrd All"tt.
the format and the stars' personasshow,s pleasures-thl predictability of
coupledwiththerorp,i"'ofthatweek-sjokes'shapedtheanticipationof
hearingsomethingl*o*,'andfamiliar.ButwithDXingtheanticipation
restedonnotknowingwhoorwhatyouwouldhear,orfromwhere:thiswas
the delight of using your ears for discovery'
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nizing effects on language, pronunciation, and programming, hearing the regiorral accents of announcers affirmed how far the listener had traveled, and
how different other parts of the country were. Yet despite these differences,
they were all Americans, enjoying this common experimental project of radio,
eager to hear and be heard by others across the miles' Understanding this appeal, one ad touted its radio as the "ears to a nation""6
Nearly every commentator in the 1920s who wrote about radio and speculated on its impact predicted that radio would foster national unity. Here we
see a class-bound wish, articulated by these white, middle-class men' thal
somehow radio would instill the'Anglo-conformity" they clearly thought
would bring about social order and peace. These predictions contain a muct
more harmonious notion of the nation than actually existed. ln a Collier's ar'
ticle titled "Radio Dreams That Can Come Truei'the author saw radio "spread'
ing mutual understanding to all sections of the country' uni$'ing our thoughts
ideals and purposes, making us a strong and well-knit people." One writel
sought to make this transformation as concrete as possible:
Look at a map of the United States . . . and try to conjure up a picture of
what radio broadcasting will eventually mean to the hundreds of little
towns that are set down in type so small that it can hardly be read. How
unrelated they seem! Then picture the tens of thousands of homes . . . not
noted on the map. These little towns, these unmarked homes in vast countries seem disconnected. It is only an idea that holds them together-the
idea that they form part of a territory called "our country." . . . If these
little towns and villages so remote from one another, so nationally related
and yet physically so unrelated, could be made to acquire a sense of intimacy, if they could be brought into direct contact with one another! This
is exactly what radio is bringing about. . . . It is achieving the task of making us feel together' think together, live together'"
pleasures: the smugness of r(
gional superiority blended with the pleasure of imagining a national entit'
something grand, with a life of its own, of which you were part. It affirme
both hopes, that America was some kind of culturally cohesive whole but on
In reality, DXing brought contradictory
ptzzle of unique, definable pieces. It allowed the lir
tener to cultivate a love-hate relationship with both regionalism and nationa
ism, homogeneity and difference. Cultural uniry while reassuring' could als
be boring. Cultural diversity, while discomfiting, could be exciting and ente
taining. Imagining a nation, and one's place in it, consisted then not only
conceiving of some unity; it also involved picturing difference and imaginir
that resembled
a jigsaw
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and whistles that a large and active swarm of bees would have been put to
shame."" Nor could these sets be kept in adjustment. One night, after painstaking tuning, you would lure in a station only to discover that the next night, having left your dials in exactly the same spot, the station was nowhere to be
found.
There was heated competition to improve these tube sets, and in I924E.
Howard Armstrong introduced his revolutionary superheterodyne set. The
principle behind the superhet, as it was familiarly called, was "heterodyning,"
which involved mixing two waves of diflerent frequencies so they would generate a third, lower frequency that was much more audible and thus easier for
the radio receiver to detect and amplify. One frequency came' of course, from
the radio station, but the other had to be generated locally, in the receiver itself. The third, combined frequenry was then amplified and filtered in the set.
Signals previously too faint to pick up could now be reeled in. The superhet
made the crystal set obsolete and opened up radio listening to many more peo-
ple, especially women and children. It included two stages of audio amplification, featured a speaker instead of a headset, and was easy to tune. Most
important, the sound quality was superior to that of both earlier sets and the
phonograph. Despite one listener joking that the superhet was "at least ten feet
long and had about fifteen tubes," the new models became so popular that the
holiday season of l924was labeled the "radio Christmas." More than ten times
the number of tube sets were manufacturedin 1925 than just tlvo years earlier,
apd four times as many speakers as in 1923.50
:-X But it wasn t just the technical complexities that listeners wanted simplified. By 1925 music listening, not DXing, was what people turned to radio for,
and they were getting increasingly critical of tone qualiry especially since by
then many stations broadcast live performances instead of phonograph
records. Listeners wanted more faithful acoustical reproduction; they wanted
to hear everything from "a whisper to a torrent of sound" and all this "without
the slightest indication of distortion." Many also preferred listening with others to share the experience: they didn t like passing the cumbersome headphones around and having to take turns. By 1925 the quality ofloudspeakers
had improved dramatically, eliminating radiot "tinny" sound as the "conetype" loudspeaker with a vibrating surface 15 inches in diameter replaced the
horn speakeq whose insensitive metal diaphragm was no larger than 3.5 inches
across. In 1927 Americans were finally treated to one-knob tuning, then to the
loop aerial, which eliminated the need to string wire throughout and outside
of the house."
The shift from DXing to program appreciation was manifested in the radio
magazines of the decade: in the early 1920s many were dominated by techni-
i
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small stations." Added another, "I want the voices of the local performers."
Whether they were hearing local or national talents, listeners wanted to be able
to see the faces that went with the voices they heard so regularly and intimately.
Radio Digesr specialized in making the invisible visible by printing photographs of radio personalities and stations from around the country and
readers would write in begging for features about their favorite on-air personalities from Cincinnati or Little Rock or Dallas. As one fan put it, "We certainly
want to see and know them'In Person'as well as'In Spirit.' "tn
The amateurs, however, were elsewhere, cognitively and culturally, with a
rift developing between them and BCls-broadcast listeners-over what kind
of listening was superior. By the early 1920s, when the amateurs were back on
the air but consigned to 200 meters, they had no choice but to see what the allegedly worthless shortwaves could do. Although the Radio Act of l9l2 had restricted the amateurs to 200 meters or lower, the Commerce Department
interpreted the law quite literally, and assigned them all to 200 meters. In
March of 1923, Herbert Hoover, then secretary of commerce and father of an
avid ham, let them roam between 150 and 200 meters.
What they-especially those called boiled owls because they stayed on
the air until all hours, getting bags under their eyes-were discovering was
that they were picking up, or being heard by stations in Australia and New
Zealand or, in the other direction, stations in England and France. Amateurs
reported spanning distances as great as 10,000 miles-unthinkable back
then-and Australia and New Zealand were described in the fall of 1923 as
"a bedlam of Yankee signals."" And a major breakthrough came just after
Thanksgivingof 1923. Moving to even shorter waves, 100 meters, Leon Deloy
of Nice, France, and two Americans, |ohn Reinartz and Fred Schnell, established two-way, nighttime transatlantic communication. Amateurs were actually carrying on a back-and-forth exchange over 4,000 miles. More
important, they were doing it on 100 meters, a wavelength considered even
more worthless than 200 meters.
This was not supposed to happen, and at first amateurs and scientists
weren't sure how it did. More perplexing was how the 200-meter wave seemed
to die out at 150 miles, onlyto reappear again, as strong as ever, at a greater distance. Amateurs were generating more perplexing data for scientists, adding to
the questions posed by a more established inventor like Marconi. In 1901,
when Marconi claimed to send the letter S across the Atlantic, the feat dumbfounded scientists who had presumed that radio waves,like light, traveled in a
straight line and would never follow the curvature of the earth.
In the wake of Marconi's achievement, Arthur Kennelly of the United
States and Oliver Heaviside of England hypothesized in 1902 that there was an
b!"
l--
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died out
be a mistake to suggest that DXing
exploratory listening. But it would
DXng also died out because the FRC
solely because of audience disinterest'
reallomore aimcutt to do' When the FRC
and the networks ,i-pty -"at it
stations that were allowed to broadfrequencies in rsii, tt number of
cated
"
castatnightwasreducedfrom565to3gT'And2lofthe24stationsgranted
to 50'000
*'e right to boost their power' in some cases
clear-channel ro,o,
"J
many clear-channel stations were broadcastwatts, were network affiliates,io
to
advertisers wanted was for listeners
same thing'" And the last thing
i";;"
tuneinjustforthecalllettersandthenmoveontoanotherstation.Bytheearly
hear a
your radio to flit around the country and
1930s the pleasure
The
"f;ti;g
faced powerful auditory roadblocls.
range of independent lo.i rt"tiorrs
tensionbetweenradiopromotinglocalversusnationalcultureremained,but
their advertisers' who wanted
was clearly *itt' ttt" nltwo'lts and
the power
nationalaudiencefornationalshows.Thenetworksandtheiradvertisersdid
notwantmanyvaried,"glo"ut'orsubculturallisteningpublics'Theywanted
it'
popular music and comedy to forge
a "mass" audience, u,,i tft"ty
"t"d
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