The Wizard War

Abstract

This chapter examines how radio communications and broadcasting became essential to the prosecution of the new war. It argues that the conflict became a chilling “wizard war,” waged with ever more sophisticated scientific instruments of destruction. The chapter investigates the shift from searchlight flashes and semaphore flags to the use of radio and electronics. The Germans began navigating their planes through fog and cloud by fixing them on radio signals transmitted from stations on the continent. The British responded by deflecting the signals with transmissions of their own and sending the planes off course. Radio brought this war into American homes with a vividness and speed never known before. The chapter reveals how radio went across the oceans, too, delivering reports from home to U.S. troops around the world. It then introduces the “alert receiver,” a device that would turn on a radio automatically and ring a bell to summon listeners to hear announcement of an attack.