The evolution of the car radio.

The evolution of the car radio.

Our car did not have a radio when I was in grade school . We road in silence. No one said much other than something like ‘Turn right at the at the next corner.’ I was kept busy playing an alphabet game involving seeing something that began with a letter of the alphabet: The next letter is 'C'. Find something that begins with the letter 'C'. There is a cow.

Our first car radio was AM. That arrived when I was in High School. There were few stations at the time and most of them broadcasted a weak signal and the programming was worse. The nearest one to me was in Midland, Michigan. That was about 20 miles from Hope. Another one was in Saginaw. That would have been about 50 miles away. The reception was mostly static. When the reception was clear it would only last a few minutes and then drift back into static.

I got my first car after I graduated from high school. It's radio was AM. I seldom turned the radio on because the quality of the signal was so poor that it was best to leave it off.

When I was in college in the 70's the car radios were still mostly AM and the reception still had not improved much. However, at the time home receives had made a giant leap in quality. I recall wondering why they did it for the home and not car. They would about 20 years later.

Now the car radios are top quality. My truck's radio is beyond criticism. What came next were people like Rush, Sean Hannity and other radio talk show talkers. Recently I was drive in heavy traffic on US 19 and thought about all of us listening to a talker that wants to effect our thinking.

There was a time when we drove in silence. If we talked. It was to the passengers. Now we listen to a talker with a political, religious or some other agenda. I think of people like Rush as being political provocateur.

What would George Orwell think about this?