Chemistry Reference
In-Depth Information
METHOD AND IS SENDING HIM SAMPLE.” The stringer, George
Pettitt, responded immediately; Potter folded the text into a
Daily Mail
Report
datelined September 7 (“California Cyclotron Apparatus Being
Enlarged and Improved to Make Possible Medical and Biological Re-
search”); and the bookkeeper was instructed to pay Pettitt $5.00. Such
rapid-fire exchanges became commonplace in the 1930s as physicists,
chemists, and biologists raced to the frontiers of knowledge, and journal-
ists competed to make the first dispatches from those intellectual front
lines.
5.
Chemistry on the Airwaves
In developing such stories, Science Service perceived itself as facilitating
the flow of ideas in society rather than engaging in public education.
Especially in radio, pedagogical motives would have been suspect.
Broadcasts that centered on intelligent conversations about science with
(and for) fellow citizens fit radio's entertainment focus in the 1930s;
education did not. Through a one-on-one interview preceded by the latest
'science news of the week', listeners could share a science 'adventure'
and Science Service could accommodate the agendas of the networks
that controlled access to the airwaves.
Science Service became involved in radio quite early in the develop-
ment of commercial broadcasting. Soon after Washington, D.C., station
WCAP began operation in 1924, its manager asked the National Re-
search Council (NRC) to arrange weekly talks by scientists. Lectures by
such experts provided convenient, free content that stations could sched-
ule between musical concerts. NRC's scientists knew little about radio,
so they turned to Science Service, appointed Slosson to a Committee on
Radio Talks, and the two groups arranged their first 10-minute talk for
June 6, 1924.
The talks sought to inspire rather than educate, and were aimed at a
broad audience. Slosson, for example, admonished H.E. Howe, editor of
Journal of Industrial and Engineering Chemistry
, not to make a discus-
sion of modern glassmaking “too highbrow.”
35
Speakers emphasized the
35
E.E. Slosson to H.E. Howe, June 17, 1924; SIA RU7091, Box 22, Folder 6.
