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For many of you alive today, podcasting is ancient history, but it first emerged in 2004, part of a long series of events that could only have happened after the invention of the radio in 1895 by Guglielmo Marconi: an Italian inventor. On National Radio Day, August 20, we celebrate the invention and all the ways that radio helped us to get to the Internet today.

A lot of people contributed to the idea and development of what became the radio that has, in the past, been relied on for news, sports updates, music and other entertainment. There was a time, even, that people used to target their entertainment opportunities around the schedule that radio programs were going to be on the air. At one point, the radio was the quickest way to get news, whether it was live sports or broadcasts of war.

By 1902, there were broadcasts in both voice and music, but it wasn’t until 1920 when there was anything resembling an actual radio station, KDKA in Pittsburgh. Their announcement of the election (Warren G. Harding won) was the first time that most people didn’t have to rely solely on the newspaper, word-of-mouth or being in the right place at the right time to hear news.

President Roosevelt used the medium to his advantage, starting in 1933 with his Fireside Chats, the same year that FM was developed. In 1938, Americans believed that we were being invaded by Martians with an Orson Welles radio play that was so convincing that it caused panic across the country. By that time, four out of five households owned a radio, although the choices of programming were limited and most people heard the same broadcasts at the same time.

Radio technology has been used for the military, the police force, space exploration and more.

XM Satellite Radio (1992) was followed by Sirius Satellite Radio (1999), both of which are relatively young, although they’ve been around since before current Armijo students were born.

If you are interested in seeing a more detailed history of the medium we call radio, go to http://www.spacetoday.org/History/RadioHistory.html.