The Age of Mass Communication

 With the appearance and acceptance of the mass press, the pace of human activity began to increae sharply.
 Although not a mass medium of communication, this device was an important element in a technological
accumulation that would eventually lead to mass electronic media.

A few decades later…

 Experiments were being carried out successfully that were prerequisite to motion pictures and wireless
telegraphy.

With the dawn of the 20th Century…

 Western society was about to experience the development of techniques of communication that had been
beyond the wildest flights of imagination a century earlier.
 During the first decade of the new century motion pictures became form of family entertainment.

1920’s

 The development of household radio.

1940’s

 The beginnings of home television.

Early 1950’s

 Radio had reached saturation penetration in American homes, with additional sets widely dispersed in
automobiles.
 There was multiple penetration in the form of bedroom and kitchen radios, and a growing number of
transistorized miniature sets.
Late 1950’s and Early 1960’s

 Saw television beginning to approach such saturation.

1940’s

 It was virtually complete in the United States and progressing elswhere.

 Mass communiction had become one of the most significant and inescapable facts of modern life.

This brief sketch of main transitions in the ability of people to communicate shows 2 major facts:

1) Communication “Revolutions” have been occuring throughout human experience.

2) The Rise of the Mass Media has occurred very recently indeed.

 One of the goals of this book is to show that the entrance of the newspapapers, the radio receiver, and the
television set into the ordinary citizen’s home represents a technological change that has greater significance
for ordinary people than our largest accomplishments at the fontiers of science.