“Even in an age of wonders”: radio as an information resource in 1920s America
| Pages | 417-434 |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/JD-08-2012-0108 |
| Date | 10 May 2013 |
| Published date | 10 May 2013 |
| Author | Christopher Crawford‐Franklin,Lyn Robinson |
| Subject Matter | Information & knowledge management,Library & information science |
“Even in an age of wonders”:
radio as an information resource
in 1920s America
Christopher Crawford-Franklin and Lyn Robinson
Department of Information Science, City University London, London, UK
Abstract
Purpose – The paper aims to analyse the development of broadcast radio in the USA during the
1920 s, focusing on the legislative and regulatory background, considering the broadcasting spectrum,
programme content, and nature of radio as an information resource at that time.
Design/methodology/approach – An analysis of primary materials, and of recent secondary
materials, is carried out.
Findings – The legislative and regulatory framework failed to take note of the unique attributes of
information resources, and attempted to treat them in the same manner as more traditional resources.
Records of the early days of USA radio are very limited. More positively, radio information resources
played a major part in developing several aspects of society, including education, agriculture, and jazz
culture.
Research limitations/implications – The study shows lessons for development of current
information society. The research is limited to one communication medium, in one country, in one
decade. It is not a full historical analysis of the development of radio broadcasting, rather it is limited
to information resource aspects, largely of public sector broadcasting.
Originality/value – The paper is the first study of the early development of radio broadcasting from
an information perspective. It shows the value of the “information-as-resource” model for analysing
developments in the communication of information.
Keywords Communications,Radio broadcasting, Informationresources, Information history,
United Statesof America, Twentieth century, Modernhistory, Information exchange
Paper type Research paper
Introduction
This paper analyses certain aspects of the development of radio in the USA during the
1920s, focusing on the idea of the broadcast spectrum, and the content of broadcasts, as
information resources. This is not a historical analysis of broadcast radio: rather it is
an analysis of historical information resources, specifically those relating to broadcast
radio, making use of primary sources as well as more recent analyses.
By understanding how contemporaries viewed, understood and used radio, as well
as by examining the developments of the time, it becomes possible to paint a larger
picture of the nature of broadcast information resources during this period, and
perhaps to draw lessons relevant to the information society of the present day.
The article is structured into sections dealing with the origins and development of
radio in the USA, and with the developing regulatory framework, followed by an
analysis of the extent to which it is helpful to regard the radio spectrum, the content of
radio broadcasts, and the permanent records derived from them, as information
resources. The concept of information resources follows that outlined by Eaton and
Bawden (1991) and Yates-Mercer and Bawden (2002).
The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available at
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“Even in an age
of wonders”
417
Received 24 August 2012
Accepted 27 August 2012
Journal of Documentation
Vol. 69 No. 3, 2013
pp. 417-434
qEmerald Group Publishing Limited
0022-0418
DOI 10.1108/JD-08-2012-0108
The origins of radio in the USA in the 1920s
The 1920s has long held a special place in the history of the USA, conjuring vivid
images of flappers dancing the Charleston, bootleggers and gangsters skirting the
prohibition laws, and the care-free post-war socialites of F. Scott Fitzgerald novels. As
with many evocative eras in history, the 1920s has been given many titles which seek
to capture and convey its very nature, labels which attempt to express the mood and
events of the time. Most commonly referred to by historians and lay people alike as the
“Roaring 20s” or the “Jazz Age”, the 1920s in the USA is often categorised as one long
sigh of relief coming from the nation as a whole, stretching from the end of the First
World War to the beginnings of the Great Depression. As Thompson (1973, p. 296)
notes the nation was “... weary of two decades of ‘the strenuous life’, [and] sought to
regroup and reconstitute itself-albeit through self indulgence”. This was also a time of
great contradiction, with speakeasies and jazz clubs existing alongside prohibition
raids and religious revivals.
Perhaps more than anything, the 1920s is perceived as being a time of dramatic
change within the USA. The “great migration” shifted the entire geographical identity
of the nation; for the first time more Americans lived in cities than in rural areas.
America and its population were leaving the traditional down-home, agrarian life of the
Jeffersonian farmer and embracing the cosmopolitan existence offered by major cities
such as Chicago, New York and Detroit. The huge number of refugees and displaced
persons in Europe after the First World War were also flooding into American cities,
creating even greater growth and ethnic diversity within urban centres (see, for
example, Kutler and Goldberg, 1999).
One of the greatest changes experienced in the USA during this time was the advent
and meteoric rise of broadcast radio. Despite all the images and events associated with
the 1920s, perhaps none is as evocative or illustrative as radio. Broadcast radio was
exactly what the war-weary nation craved; the 1920s “...was an age of frenzy and
boredom; a period when a restless nation demanded to be entertained” (Rodnitzky,
1968, p. 505). Starting with the first radio broadcast in 1920, the USA quickly
developed an insatiable appetite for radio. There is no hyperbole in stating that
broadcast radio was born and reared in the 1920s. As such, the broadcasting of radio
was both defined by and served to help define the decade itself. Indeed, as J.L. Clifton,
director of the Ohio State Institute for Education and a pioneer of the use of radio for
instruction and education, noted at the close of the decade: “Even in an age of marvels,
there is something awe-inspiring about the radio” (Clifton, 1930, p. 201).
Although broadcast radio was born and developed in the 1920s, radio itself had
been developed decades earlier; Henrich Hertz’s experiments with the electromagnetic
spectrum at Karlsruhe in 1887-1888 can be taken as its starting point (Aitken, 1994); for
overview of the early history, see Douglas (1989) and Garratt (2006). During these early
years, radio was known as wireless telephony and was utilized strictly in a
point-to-point manner as opposed to broadcast which was first used commercially in
1920.
It will be noted that radio communication can be grouped in two ways:
(1) when voice and sound waves of various kinds are transformed into electromagnetic
waves, carried through the ether, and reconverted into sound waves, it is called
telephony;
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