As a long-time radio-lover, I couldn’t help but smile when I saw this recently-digitized Philips Radio map appear in our collections portal the other week. It shows international shortwave radio stations around the world, circa 1935. It includes a pictorial sketch of the world in a Mercator projection, an alphabetic index to radio stations across the bottom, and a small inset on the right side showing the radio stations as they relate to different time zones.
It makes sense that maps and radios go hand-in-hand: the invention of radio was, of course, all about going distances and crossing borders. Public radio first entered public consciousness in 1920, after wartime restrictions on radio broadcasting were lifted at the end of World War I, and by 1922, a broadcasting boom swept the globe. Radio was not only used for news and weather, but offered expanded programming and entertainment.
Listen to this recording from the British Library to hear what is considered one of the pioneering entertainment radio broadcasts, the “voice around the world”: Singer Nellie Melba’s June 15, 1920 concert transmitted from Chelmsford, England, across European cities.
In the December 16, 1922 issue of The Country Gentlemen, an agricultural and rural magazine, John R. McMahon writes: “The radiophone is a marvel. After the automobile, it is to become the foremost agency of civilization. Anybody who feels discouraged about things in general should clamp on a pair of ear phones and tune up.”
So by 1922 and beyond, there was enough radio activity for publications to begin putting together lists—as well as maps—of stations that were broadcasting to the general public. A Radio News article in March, 1922 attempted to list all the national broadcasting stations in existence, while also noting that “Things are moving so rapidly in Radio of late that it becomes almost impossible to keep up with the trend…what a tremendous grip the Radio telephone has upon the popular imagination to-day.” Stations arose so often, and changed so frequently, that no single article, list, or map was able to keep up with all the stations on the air.
The Philips Radio map is not the only radio map in our collections: you may have seen us post before about this Radio Map of the United States, from about a decade earlier (~1922). It attempts to show the locations and call letters of broadcasting stations across the US, marked with red circles, as well as the division of four time zones marked in thick red lines. The margins alphabetically list the city, the name of each station, the broadcast wavelength, and the timed schedules.