In 1938, America was fooled by a radio station that there had been an alien invasion when in fact they were listening to a short story that was being recorded in a live studio. I thought this artifact was interesting because it goes to show the importance of special effects in audio production and how the belief behind radio at this time was a foreshadowing of how we would come to believe media today. Radio shows were extremely popular at this time and those all throughout the country listened. This particular radio show stood out to me because I felt that the sounds in the back of the recording were what made it realistic for the viewers at this time. While you can still hear the speaker, the listener can also hear the sound of sirens and chaos ensuing in the background. For one of my projects in high school, we had to make a radio short using sound effects that we made live, and it is crazy to think about all the unique techniques that were used back then.
Despite the radio quality being lower than we see today, this was most likely very high quality back then. While it might have been more believable to those in the 1930s, I still appreciate that this audio was recorded live because it makes it more genuine. They had one shot to get this recording right, and they did just that. At the University of Indiana, they worked to preserve this audio recording. According to the University of Indiana, Welles recorded this radio show on lacquer discs in a live studio, which can sometimes “fail catastrophically with no warning.” For this reason, it is harder to preserve this audio after all these years, but Indiana received a $25,000 grant to digitize the audio. This illustrates to me the importance of audio formats that allow for future generations to listen to past recordings.