The radio set - medium and companion

These radio sets, magnificently designed (like this Art Nouveau-style Stewart-Warner, or this Atwater-Kent, named after the American inventor who also sponsored several radio shows), started to go in sale at the end of the 1920s, when the Games took on increasing importance internationally. In the US, as the grinding poverty of the 1930s prevented families going to the cinema or going out to dinner, the radio became the only distraction, allowing people to keep updated on the Great Depression or to listen to the reassuring words of President Roosevelt. The broadcast of the Los Angeles Games had audiences listening with baited breath, even in the absence of images... Radio’s reign would last until the 1960s, before making way for television.