The Radio

During the 1920's the automobile was one of the best inventions, but it was not the greatest.An invention of smaller dimensions, lower cost, and with the same abilities to bring people together spurred on as the greatest craze of the 1920s. The radio was an instant success with the American people. It was cheaper than a car and so it virtually became a part of every home in America in a couple of short years. Following the first American broadcasting station, KDKA, in Pittsburgh. Thousands of broadcasting would pop up in the later years. Everyone instantly obsessed with the radio. Many people would stay up half the night listening to concerts, sermons, news, and sports. People without home radios would gather around in public places. The advent of public radio allowed listeners to not only keep up with national issues and events, it also allowed listeners to experience new ideas, new entertainment, and to form opinions on matters that had never been publicized to a national degree.Radios in thousands of homes linked people simultaneously in enjoyment and excitement.

There were actually many negative effects to having a radio. For example, if one were to spend a lot of time listening to the radio they would become idealistic, and for some it would be hard for them to discerning reality from "radio reality". "The hobby of radio listening encouraged a tendency, ..., a feeling that one's country and one's self were exempt from unpleasant consequences.", which said that people in the 1920's only saw "good" in life and were ignorant of the "bad". Advertisement quickly followed the outburst of radio popularity. According to Stevenson, radio advertising did not help the American public to become more open-minded. Take the following passage from Stevenson's The American 1920s.

"... Advertising was false in promising more than the seller delivered to the buyer, but it was false in seeming to be a world to which real life must bring itself to relation. It was false to particular American life and it was false to particular human nature in its blindness, narrowness, its smoothing away of individual corners and all inconvenient or tragic exultations or despairs. It was so persuasive a surface, so willingly adjusted to by many people that it was like a lowered, limited horizon. Strong emotions and fierce beliefs were stoppered down so that when they burst forth they rushed out with violence and exaggeration. ..."

-Prashant Singh