The technology that sent sound through the air without wires — and by reaching everyone at once, created the first electronic broadcast mass medium and the modern broadcast nation. Radio collapsed the distance between a single voice and millions of listeners, making it possible, for the first time, for one person to speak intimately to a whole country simultaneously. That power built democratic movements and fueled dictatorships alike.
On the evening of November 2, 1920, a Pittsburgh station broadcast the results of the presidential election, live, to anyone within range who had a receiver. The winner was Warren G. Harding. But the real story was not who won. It was the fact that thousands of people heard the same news, at the same moment, in their own homes, without a wire connecting them to anything. No one had to go to an office, decode a signal, or wait for a morning paper. A voice came out of the air. That had never happened before.