The story of radio began in the 19th Century.  In 1895, Guglielmo Marconi  is generally credited with having conducted the first wireless transmission of a Morse code telegraph message over a distance of just over a mile!  Wireless telegraphy was born, and from there it was just a short hop to adapting the "speaker" and "microphone" technology from the telephone to transmit the human voice and music invisibly through the air without wires!  
    Commercial broadcasting did not begin, however, until some years later.  Until that time, "radio telegraphy", as it was called, was thought only to be useful for communicating Morse code to and from ships at sea.  The Titanic was the first disaster at sea, in 1912, that was able to utilize the new medium to demonstrate the importance of wireless communication.  Soon after that, radio telegraph stations were required on all ships. 

 
    It was considered a miracle when the first voice and music transmissions were heard, at first over very short distances.  In 1915, the first trans-Atlantic radio telephone conversation took place.  The first radio "programs" were readings of the news of the day over ship-to-shore radio telephone stations. 
    Isolated farming communities, too far from cities to have phone lines into their towns, relied only on printed weather reports that were often up to a day old before they reached them.  They were among the first to experience radio as we have come to know it.  The first regular radio broadcasts were daily government weather reports directed toward these farmers.  
    Finally, after a quarter century, radio evolved from it's infancy into mainstream culture.  The first radio station, KDKA, signed on the air in 1920 with the broadcast of the presidential election results.  Radio caught on quickly from that point.  Amateur broadcasters set up stations in their homes and garages to broadcast musical programs of Victrola records through their neighborhoods.  Radio was soon adopted as a form of entertainment. 

    Soon, so many stations were broadcasting that many were broadcasting over the same frequency and crowding the airwaves with noise.  At that point, the government had to step in to regulate the industry and assign broadcasting frequencies.  This is when the term "clear channel" broadcast came into being.  With these clear channels, new stations were able to optimize the quality of their broadcast, and with rapidly increasing technology they were able to service large areas with their powerful signals.  
    Big business entered the radio world at this point, when radio proved to have commercial selling value.  Large companies sponsored radio programs to benefit from the commercial advertising.  The public enjoyed listening to the music and variety programming that emanated from this speaker and glowing tubes in a box....and they bought the products that were advertised on the programs they would listen to.