The other day I was sitting on the sofa with my girlfriend and we were watching TV and a commercial of a movie she had wanted to go see came on, so she asked me if we could go and I had just gotten my pay check so I said yes. On the drive over we listened to the radio like we always do and about five min into the drive the radio version of the commercial for the movie came on. At the moment I thought nothing of it because it was normal for me to hear commercials and watch commercials. The nest day in class we talked about the 1920s and the radio and how important and life changing it was for not only America but the world.

I got home after class and started to look into how important the radio really was. And I started like I always do when I want to find something out, I asked YouTube. Unlike other subjects when you look up the radio in the 1920s not much historical info comes up, and what comes up is the same information. That on November 2^nd 1920 the first radio broadcast came out of Pittsburgh Pennsylvania and the radio station that would eventually be known as KDKA. On this historic day Conrad and his Westinghouse associates announced that Warren G. Harding had defeated James Cox to become the next President. The more videos I watched I started to get bored until I listened to this one short video. I captured a few key words, one key word was entertainment. I started to think about a black out how there is no TV no radios. That must have been how it was before the radio come out. For us when that stuff is taken away we realize how much it affects us. So I can just imagine how the radio impacted and change the American house hold.

I wanted to find out more on how it impacted people. Before the radio the way information was spread was the newspaper or in friendly conversation. With the invention of the radio now everyone could hear a baseball game from home. Families could sit around and enjoy podcasts, parents could get involved in politics and hear news that before would take weeks to become known. This idea of information became so important to the American families that in 1923 only three years after the radio came out about three million people owned a radio. Another article says it this way that after 1923 sixty percent of American families had a radio in the house. Over half of America was listening to news, sporting events and music and with the growth in the purchases of radios the growth of radio stations went from 1 to more the 500 in just two short years. That is when I realized how influential this invention is. Not only did the radio itself influence people, but the voices on the radio became icons to the people, athletes were now known all over the country all thanks to the radio.

With such an amazing turn out I mean for years the radios just flew off the shelves it was only a matter of time before business got involved and thus the commercial and the control of the air waves did not stop with business because shortly after the government started regulating what could be broadcasted. Congress got involved and shortly after we have the radio act of 1927 organized the Federal Radio Commission and this ended the free for all of the radio. Now permits had to be granted and could just as well be taken away. There were rules that had to be followed with what could be said on the radio and if such rules like profane language was broken your radio license could be taken.

After the radio impacted the ears of the American people it was just a matter of time before the eyes of the people were going to get impacted as well. When I googled entertainment in the 1920s not only did the radio come up, but so did the movie theater or how it was called back then the Nickelodeons or Picture Palaces. So unlike the radio to watch a movie you had to leave the comfort of the home. Remember in the beginning how I talked about we were going to the watch a movie. Well I started wondering after doing research on the radio how motion pictures affected people and the impact it had on American families. Movie theaters started as a silent movie. Meaning no words actually spoken but if not words would pop up and you had to read them to know what was said is kind of like watching a furan movie with subtitles. Kind of sucks if you have ever done that unless you are a fast reader so I don’t think I would have gone to any silent movies but the families in the 1920s loved the movies. On average they attended the movies once a week. As the world of motion pictures increased I can only imagine so did the economy and so did the culture of Hollywood. Movies changed from silent to speaking and from there they just got better and better and now we have Netflix and to think it all started with the radio.