Radio did change the home, though not enough for the
Bodleian Libraries, apparently. It was once ‘the disruptive new technology’, they tell us, which ‘transformed, or
sometimes failed to transform, domestic and class dynamics, and in 1939 would
unite households on the brink of war’. One senses a certain underlying
disappointment that it did not wholly revolutionise the home, if not society.
However, once past the rather heavy-handed political gloss, there is plenty of evidence
of radio’s unifying, sustaining, educational power in this beautifully curated
exhibition at the Bodleian’s Weston Library.
This, for example, is from a letter from a Birmingham clerk in
the January 1928 Radio Times:
I’m only writing to say how much wireless means to me and
thousands of the same sort. It’s a real magic carpet. Before it was a fortnight
at Rhyl, and that was all the travelling I did that wasn’t on a tram. Now I
hear the Boat Race and the Derby… There are football matches on Saturdays and
during the week music and talks by famous men and women who have travelled and
can tell us about places…’
This listener actually felt physically transported through
his set. He seems to listen alone, which was unusual – people usually listened
together, and a picture in The Broadcaster magazine of December 1922
shows two couples in Christmas hats ‘listening in on a marconiphone’. When
radio started, it was sometimes intimidatingly technical – and in fact, that is
where the word ‘set’ comes from, as owners sometimes assembled radios
themselves:
In its early days radio meant the BBC (amazingly, no commercial stations were allowed in the UK until 1973), and so one of its missions was to educate. These pamphlets (what design and typography!) accompanied broadcasts which were meant to be listened to and discussed in places like schools, libraries and working men’s clubs by people who had probably left school at 14:
One can’t help seeing this tradition continuing today in the impressively low-tech In Our Time and its reading lists.
So plenty of evidence that radio brought people together –
any fears that it would inhibit or even replace conversation, like a 1920s
smartphone? Fascinatingly yes, in this pair of cartoons:
Other documents in the exhibition are this early guide to BBC pronunciation (try ‘exquisite’ with the stress on the first syllable):
and this listing, showing how random early programming could be (interesting to see an early version of celebrity gossip):
There is some audio in the exhibition – excerpts of early 1920s broadcasts: ‘Hello Marconi House, London calling’, ‘Hello children’, and an SOS message asking Mrs May Dibble to go to Burton-on-Trent Infirmary ‘where her son is dangerously ill’. There’s also a lovely early bakelite radio (what curves!) and lots of technical equipment.
On the basis of this exhibition one could imagine radio as
an old-fashioned technology, now superseded by multimedia. The amazing thing is
that it is not. Eighty-six per cent of the UK population aged over 15 listened
to radio in the three months to June 2025. This is even more than the figure of
77% in 1939, when the UK population was much smaller and TV yet to arrive.
Why does it remain so popular? The exhibition comments that
‘wireless was (and is) astonishingly inclusive, cheap, and accessible’. But this
is only part of the story. Practically, one can listen to it while doing other
things – driving, cooking, working. But does it not also allow you to use
imagination while listening – encourage you to make your own connections, muse
along with the music or commentary, in a way which TV does not? It’s also amazing
how much can be done purely through audio – even topics which you would think
demand a visual element, such as A History of the World in 100 Objects. There’s something about the auditory.
Listen In: How Radio Changed the Home is at the Weston
Library until 31 August.