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Science on the Air

The University of Chicago Press

Contents

List of Figures..........................................ixPrologue.................................................11 Tuxedos and Microphones................................72 The Radio Nature League................................273 Syndicating Science....................................454 Cooperative Ventures...................................655 Shifting Ground........................................876 A Twist of the Dial....................................1137 Facts and Fictionalizations............................1338 Adventuring with Scientists............................1579 Broadcasting the Voice of the Atom.....................17910 Illusions of Actuality................................211Epilogue: Entertaining Lessons...........................239Notes....................................................247Bibliography.............................................281Acknowledgments..........................................295Index....................................................299

Chapter One

This is merely a matter of salesmanship. The station acquires a higher appreciation of science if science appears in tuxedos than if it appears in soft shirts and patched clothes.... Filtering down to a part of our audience, it has an elevating influence on them. AUSTIN HOBART CLARK, 1925

ON October 3, 1923, the head of the Smithsonian Institution had just returned from fieldwork in the Canadian Rockies when his clerk took a telephone message from the manager of a new Washington, D.C., radio station. "Radio Corporation of America desires the Secretary to speak for broadcasting some time between the 20th and 30th of this month, from 8 to 10 o'clock in the evening on any subject," the clerk's note read. Had Charles D. Walcott accepted the invitation, his appearance would probably have been a onetime event. The geoscientist was neither a dynamic nor a comfortable public speaker. After many months away, he had work to do in the "Castle," the redbrick Victorian-era headquarters for the museum complex. It was easy to bump this invitation down the line.

"I do not feel that I could undertake this personally, as my voice is not adapted to it," Secretary Walcott wrote to Austin Hobart Clark, a middle-aged curator in the Smithsonian's U.S. National Museum, "but it occurred to me that perhaps you might be willing to give a short talk and to make the necessary arrangements with the Company as to time, place, etc." Clark was very willing. Here, finally, might be an opportunity to make his mark.

If the request had been handed off to some other Smithsonian scientist, the result might have been less eventful. Clark, an expert on marine invertebrates like starfish and sea urchins, knew little about radio broadcasting, but he was smart, ambitious, and exuberantly confident in his intellectual agility. He also had an authoritative and patrician New England accent-an authentic version of radio's stereotypical voice of the 1920s. After his first successful appearance, Clark began, at the encouragement and invitation of the station, to arrange more "Smithsonian Radio Talks," inviting speakers from within his institution's various bureaus.

Those first programs now seem stark and unsophisticated. Succinct fifteen-minute talks delivered by ichthyologists, astronomers, and entomologists. No jokes, no banter, no clever sound effects. Clark's broadcasts found an audience, however, and they represent one of the first sustained efforts in the United States to use radio to reach the public with science, the first wave in steadily expanding popularization efforts. The circumstances surrounding these pioneering broadcasts illuminate an important moment in the history of science and of American life. From the 1920s through the 1940s, the scientific community became more concerned about scripting its public image for the sake of increased funding and political support, and therefore became more engaged in popularization. The extent to which prestigious researchers in the United States cooperated in and supported ventures involving radio-a medium they regarded as intrinsically sensationalistic-demonstrated begrudging acceptance of the need for popularization.

This preoccupation with image coincided with increasing audience interest in science. After World War I, provocative changes were occurring in "the patterns and channels and beaten ruts" of conventional thought. As each scientific insight or discovery reshaped the intellectual landscape, it also wiggled the lens of public understanding. From theories of relativity to theories about human psychology, from animal physiology to plant pathology to Tutankhamen's tomb, excitement surrounded popular discussion of science. Ordinary Americans were eager to learn more about scientists' accomplishments, about exotic aspects of the natural world revealed during expeditions, and about the science underpinning consumer technologies like radio. Topics "which in previous generations would have got into print only in the form of treatises that would have reposed on the shelves," historian Mark Sullivan observed about his own times, "were now among the books most in demand at public libraries." Newspapers and popular magazines like Collier's Weekly and the Saturday Evening Post played critical roles in satisfying the public's desire for quick and comprehensible explanations. In 1923 radio offered another tantalizing outlet for communicating about science.

Using radio to reach that potential audience proved to be as challenging as it was tempting. Within two years, Clark was declaring:

One never knows, of course, how long this will last. But all of those who have talked over the radio ... have acquired a wholly new concept of popular science, and the training they have received will not soon be forgotten.

What was that "new concept"? What did scientists like Clark believe they were accomplishing when they cooperated with commercial broadcasters? And did they succeed? As communications analyst Anthony Smith emphasizes, the "essence" of broadcasting is that editorial power over content is "fused with the ownership of the means of disseminating the product." This innate condition placed scientists-accustomed to controlling their own communications-at a disadvantage, especially when power over all aspects of broadcasting, from scheduling to scripts to access, became consolidated in the United States within a few corporations that owned the national networks. The dream of reaching enormous audiences was alluring. For the scientists and their organizations, the question eventually became whether they were willing to pay the price.

BIG DREAMS

In the fall of 1923, radio dangled in the public imagination like a shiny new toy. Wireless transmission of sound to mass, undifferentiated audiences represented an astonishing prospect, one that frequently prompted predictions of national unity, universal education, and international cooperation. As one commentator observed, radio's success stimulated the dream that society "shall wake up one bright morning with an international consciousness ... and the dawn of mutual understanding and world peace will have come." To...