Radio

Few people today can appreciate the impact the advent of radio had on the twentieth century. Not only did it suddenly make it possible for a person to be heard from hundreds or even thousands of miles away without the use of a wire (quite an accomplishment in the first years of the century) but it was the center of family life through the end of the Second World War and into the doldrums of the fifties, when it was gradually replaced by that new-fangled contraption, the television. Today, it seems to only be useful in the car as a means of keeping the driver from falling asleep behind the wheel or as a tool of talk radio designed to rile the masses. In its day, however, it was every bit as vital to existence as the television, the computer, the microwave, and the cell phone are to us today.

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