ABSTRACT
At its inception, radio was not a voice medium. Dots and dashes, known as Morse Code, emanated from the crude wireless telegraph invented by the young and brilliant Italian, Marconi. In the 1890s, Marconi began transmitting his first airborne, wireless messages. Reginald Fessenden, an engineering professor at the University of Pittsburgh, was one of the first to actually speak over the air. Fessenden was not the only scientist to expand on Marconi’s wireless contraption. The public’s use of radio was curtailed when the government took it over for military purposes during World War I. Radio was actually launched in earnest in 1920 on KDKA. Announcers were known only by initials until the public’s demand for identification of the voices pressured stations into changing their policies. The networks spurred the growth of broadcast journalism and significantly expanded the opportunities for radio voice performers.
