Technological Change in Radio

Technological change is what began the common use of radio in the 1920s and what allowed radio to continue to grow throughout the decade, as it still does today.  From the initial creation of the radio, to the mainstream use of it every day, to the many evolutions it has gone through since, radio has always been greatly affected by technological change and progression.

As consumer demand expands, radio expands as well, leading to more common use, larger audiences and better quality of sound thanks to better radio frequencies. This is all thanks to technological change, which took radio from solely military use, to common household use, to the main source of entertainment in America. As audiences asked for more, radio controllers supplied in, but were only able to thanks to the progression of technology is response to the demand.

Radio as we know it today was initially begun by technological improvements by Guglielmo Marconi, who created the radiotelegraph and performed the first transatlantic transmission. After this kind of radio helped to save many lives on the Titanic in 1912, the idea for what radio could accomplish broadened greatly. It became so commonly used, first by the Navy in the early ‘20s, and then in average American homes by the middle of the decade, regulation became necessary to prevent interference between frequencies (the Radio Act of 1927, for example). This was perhaps the biggest initial technological evolution of radio in the 1920s — the idea of making radio accessible to the masses for news, shows, and music. Eventually this led to use of FM radio, which was not as affected by interference as AM radio and allowed for many different radio stations in a single city. Multiplex stereo radio was also introduced at this time as technology continued to progress in response to consumer demand. The sound quality of music played on radio stations improved thanks to new technology, which in turn made for larger audiences. This technological growth made for a “golden age” of radio from the 1920s to the 1950s and allowed for the syndication of talk radio in many cities throughout the country. Eventually dwindling audiences led to another technological boom in the last twenty years, leading to the automation of radio. Satellite radio allowed for national formats to become popular and in the last several years, Internet radio has become the most widely used radio technology. Today, new music is usually found on “personal” radios such as Pandora, which gives a consumer access to most any song and even goes so far as to create personal playlists.