The electrophone and the gecophone are featured in reproduced advertisements in Listen In: How Radio Changed the Home. In 1922 just 150,000 people listened to the radio. Fewer than twenty years later, that number had expanded to 34 million. Back then, radio was the cutting edge technology in the home.
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I’ve been asked to review this book for Teach Secondary magazine, and from a quick glance through the pages reading it will be a very pleasant experience. There are photographs, old advertisements and cartoons. And all on the usual sumptuous quality paper we associate with the Bodleian.
Although I’ve been writing for donkeys’ years, I’ve never written anything for radio. That probably sounds strange, especially as I used to listen to radio a great deal. But writing for radio requires, I think, a different skillset to the one I possess. But I’m looking forward to reading this account, which mentions a few authors, such as Proust and Woolf.
I will republish my Teach Secondary review here once it has been published in Teach Secondary. In the meantime, just to provide a personal note, when I was very young (around five years old) I listened to a programme called Listen With Mother every day. I would sit in my favourite chair, which was just in front of the radio. The presenter would say, “Are you sitting comfortably?”. Then I would look at my mum and she would mouth words “Say ‘yes’”. So I would say “yes” and then the presenter would say, “Then I’ll begin.” I honestly thought that there were little people inside the radio who were interacting with me!
Anyway, look out for my review soon.