Today, some thoughts about radio. The University of
Houston's College of Engineering presents this
series about the machines that make our
civilization run, and the people whose ingenuity
created them.
I was in grade school in the
late 1930s. My family would gather around the radio
in the evening. It was just a simple wooden box
with a rounded top. But I'd look in the back and
see its bright glowing tubes -- a kind of miniature
Christmas tree with the mysterious power to pluck
adventure out of the sky and drop it into our
living room. After school we'd listen to "The Lone
Ranger" and "Jack Armstrong."
But in the evening we had to listen to the grownup
stuff: Jack Benny, Fred Allen, all kinds of good
music -- and the October evening my father tuned in
to the Mercury Theater. He caught it just a minute
or two late. An agitated network announcer was
telling about a huge meteor that had landed in
central New Jersey. Then he switched to a mobile
unit. Something strange was happening. Something
was coming out of the crater -- something alive!
And the game was afoot. It was, of course, the most
famous radio show ever broadcast -- Orson Welles's
version of H.G. Wells's story, The War of the
Worlds. By 7:15 the full fury of the
invaders from Mars was clear. They were moving
across America, toward my gentle home in Minnesota,
killing everyone and everything in sight. When the
station break came, I laid my delicious thrill of
terror before my father. Was this real? I
asked. He smiled and said, I don't know. We'd
better stay tuned. I was almost disappointed
when it turned out to be make-believe. Earth was
safe -- at least until World War II.
Radio was what Grimm's fairy tales had been for
children before me. It stretched my mind. It showed
me the world of good and evil, honor and deceit,
pain and pleasure. It sketched the story and let my
mind fill in the details. I heard Joe Louis --
larger than life -- destroy the Nazi champion Max
Schmelling in two minutes of the first round. In
1937 I heard the announcer when the Zeppelin
Hindenburg suddenly caught fire. His voice rose
over the crackle of static and flames while he
watched what no human being should ever have to
watch. I learned the difference between fantasy and
reality when he broke down and wept, Oh, the
humanity, the humanity!
There's not much of that anymore. Commercial radio
is for commercial messages. The trick is to
fragment our attention span -- whatever falls
between commercials has to be simple. The radio of
my childhood was more naive. It copied the stage --
the theater -- the town meeting. It engaged us, it
led us into our right brain, it touched our hearts,
and it made us free. It did what Public Radio does
today.
I'm John Lienhard, at the University of Houston,
where we're interested in the way inventive minds
work.
(Theme music)
This episode has been greatly revised as Episode 1780.
The Engines of Our Ingenuity is
Copyright © 1988-2018 by John H.
Lienhard.
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