By Dr Michelina Andreucci

MANY of us will remember the large commanding piece of furniture that occupied pride of place in our homes.
The ubiquitous models of Supersonic, WRS, Panasonic as well as Peoples Radio sets that filled a corner and dominated the greater part of our small lounges with speakers as large as a modern-day PA system.
It was an essential piece of furniture, the pride and joy of every home.
It was the talking point of the neighbours when one was delivered to one’s home from Nyore-Nyore, Station Furnishers, Radio Limited, Pelhams or Bradleys.
The radio was housed in elegant simulated-wooden cabinets in several contemporary furniture styles of the time, with convenient storage compartments for records.
Being the only source of news, knowledge and recreation at that time, it kept everyone entertained and well-informed.
For the housewives it was an ever-present companion.
For husbands, the news and the 3 pm football at weekends and for children it was Top of the Pops, or Top Ten and for the police and armed forces’ the greeting programme, Kwaziso/Ukubingelelana.
Radio was an essential part of our everyday lives in Zimbabwe.
It was undoubtedly the dominant and most important mass medium in Africa. From the early 1950s and 1960s when our fathers, and grandfathers before, went to work in one of the 53 mines of ‘Wenera’, the Witwatersrand’s gold-mining industry in South Africa, where they toiled in the bowls of the earth for up to 14 hours a day, it was mandatory that they brought back the latest radiograms from South Africa; a positive sign of their newly found wealth, upward mobility and sophistication.
African radio stations played a major role as a promoter of popular local music.
At the time, we listened to the humorous, anecdotal, romantic, morally upright and sometimes sad records of the socio-cultural situations in the high density suburbs. Radio provided music that offered relief from the pressures of high density life, Rhodesian oppression and respite from the labour-intensive farming compounds and mining communities of pre-independent Zimbabwe, where many early music groups had their foundation.
I am reminded of such popular songs as Safirio ‘Mukadota’ Madzikatire’s ‘Kwa Hunyani’ the popular duet with Susan Chenjerai and later remixed featuring the voice of Elizabeth ‘Katarina’ Taderera.
Joseph Musabika, Jordan Chataika, Jackson Chinembiri, Ngwaru Mapundu, Taurai Zumba, Mahotela Queens, Lovemore Majaivana, Fanyana Dube, Devera Ngwena, Jonah Sithole and Zexie Manatsa provided the mainstay in entertainment for the people.
Some of these musicians were already singing songs in support of the war of liberation and the peoples struggles, despite the omnipresence of state censorship from the Rhodesian regime.
We thus cannot ignore the role of the simple radio and the broadcasting and dissemination of information as a sensitive and important component of nation-building today.
But is the plethora of broadcasting stations living up to their expected mandate today?
It is hard to imagine a world without radio.
Yet we have taken this industrial design invention, that has been part of our lives, for granted in this country for so long.
So, what is a radio that fills up the air waves and so much of our time?
When was radio invented?
Although many people were involved in the invention of radio, Italian electrical engineer-inventor, Guglielmo Marconi (1874-1937), is credited with devising the first step towards its invention in 1895 by ‘signalling through space without wires’; he sent the first radio signal by using several different electrical, magnetic (electromagnetic) physical phenomena to transmit signals over a distance as a means of transmitting information using ‘wireless’ radio waves; foreseen by scientists in 1860.
In fact when first introduced in this part of the world, the radio was commonly known as the wireless or ‘wairesi’.
His invention however, was not taken seriously by the Italian authorities and government who were reluctant to finance its development.
By 1866, the possibility of rapid variations of electric current could be projected into space in the form of radio waves similar to those of light and heat was demonstrated.
In December 1901, Guglielmo Marconi successfully sent the first radio signal across the Atlantic Ocean from England to Newfoundland without the connection of wires.
By 1903, Marconi’s invention enabled an exchange of greetings between President Theodore Roosevelt of the US and King Edward VII of Britain.
Marconi’s radio did not transmit or receive voice or music; rather, it received ‘buzzing’ sounds created by a spark gap transmitter which sent signals using dot-dash Morse code message system which proved effective for rescue work.
This means of communicating between two points developed into radio-telegraphy, mainly for ship-to-shore and ship-to-ship communication, but not public radio broadcasting as we know it today.
Later a number of ocean liners installed wireless equipment.
As a result, when the Titanic Liner sank on its maiden voyage in April 1912, 700 people were reported saved.
For most of the 19th Century, many people, among them scientists, mathematicians and theoreticians, contributed to various theories and inventions to what eventually became radio.
While many scientists had for long speculated that there was a connection with electricity and magnetism, it was first proven in early 1800 by Italian scientist-inventor Alessandro Volta, who developed an electric current by means of a galvanic battery.
The first step in the development of electro-magnetic waves, a combination of overlapping electrical and magnetic fields, a requisite for radio was established.
Radios receive electro-magnetic waves from the air that are sent by a radio transmitter, converting these electro-magnetic waves, called a ‘signal’, into sounds that become audible to human ears.
In 1894 Marconi built the first commercially successful wireless telegraphy system based on radio transmission.
He went on to demonstrate its important application in military and marine communications and opened a company to further develop and extend radio communication services and equipment; the first of many of Marconi’s enterprises.
The ‘Marconiphone’ department formed in 1922 by the Marconi Company to design, manufacture and sell domestic receiving equipment was revived in the late 1980s as a brand and used by a division of GEC-Marconi for mobile phones.
In the UK, GEC-Marconi acted as a service provider for Cellnet and Vodafone prior to selling their client base to Mercury in 1991.
The early history of radio is irrefutably synonymous with the history of other technologies that produce and use radio instruments that apply radio waves; the transistor, telephone, internet, broadband, satellites, iPod, blogs and SNS, among others.
While today we have ‘wireless Internet’, the development of radio began as ‘wireless telegraphy’, until 1910 when various wireless systems came to be referred to by the common name ‘radio’, which subsequently became increasingly connected to issues of broadcasting and part of our everyday lives.
Today radios have become indispensable devices, not only for domestic use, but for the police, fire brigade, airports, navy, military, education, commerce and industry.
Dr Michelina Rudo Andreucci is a Zimbabwean-Italian researcher, industrial design consultant and specialist hospitality interior decorator. She is a published author in her field.
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