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Radio During The 1920's Essay

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Radio Broadcasting During The 1920’s During The Roaring ´20s, many things became popular that were so important to the U.S., they are still used used frequently today. One of those things was the radio. Radios were actually invented around the year 1900, when Reginald Fessenden first spoke in a weak transmission through airwaves. Radios began to take off gradually after that, and according to http://xroads.virginia.edu/~ug00/3on1/radioshow/1920radio.htm ¨between 1923-1930, 60% of Americans had purchased a radio¨ When radios became more popular, they also generated a lot of revenue- by the 1930s, an hour of premium broadcasting time costed advertisers about $10,000. Thats is roughly $137,514.53 today! Radios also provided a source of cheap entertainment for families across the U.S.. Once a family had a radio installed and it was fully paid for, everything after that was free thanks to all of the advertisements from companies. Radios soon became so popular that soon listening to the radio became a national pastime. Radios were very important to the U.S. because they helped to save lives - on the seas, during bad weather, during battles (WW1 and WW2) and during other emergencies. They also helped to spread news in the U.S. far quicker than before (results of presidential elections, etc.), and finally, they allowed communication …show more content…

With radios, people on the West Coast could listen to the same sporting event that people on the East Coast were listening to. Not only were radios used to broadcast things such as sporting events, they broadcasted very important events, such as the 1920 election, when the radio station KDKA in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania announced that Warren G. Harding had won the presidential election. Later on in 1922, Harding became the first president to be give a speech transmitted over the radio. Because of this, the whole political system began to transition and began to resemble what we all see

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