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 The War of the Worlds -- IU Style Photo illustration by Heather Hill
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H. G. Wells, author of the 1898 novel, The War of the Worlds.
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 Classes as usual? Photo illustration by Heather Hill
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We had some fun here at the Home Pages this week, preparing for a serendipitous Oct. 30 issue, which is the 60th anniversary of Orson Welles "WOW" radio broadcast.
It is also the 100th anniversary of H.G. Wells publication of The War of the Worlds.
Wells' work was right on the cusp of the 20th century, but as science fiction goes is there any better, before or after?
His views of Martians, heat rays and time machines, scared the pants off terrified Victorians. Would he have been surprised a century later about how little (or how much) we know about extraterrestrials, black holes, time travel, relativity, the whole schmear? Would he have been happy knowing of Orson Welles little theater piece in 1938? Would computers have surprised him? Would he see them as an advance for mankind or a terrible aberration? What would he have thought about the movie Contact, the TV series X-Files, New Agers discerning angels in their living spaces?
 Day |
"The morning after the broadcast, my young laboratory technician came to work and told us that on Sunday evening she and her husband had been riding around in their car. They turned on the radio and heard the War of the Worlds broadcast after it had started. It was so real that for a time they were frightened. The lab assistant had recovered by the time she came to work the next morning," said Day.
(Editor's note: Battery powered radio receivers for automobiles had been introduced in 1930. By September 1935, 2.5 million auto sets had been sold. Three years after the WOW broadcast, 8 million American cars were radio equipped.)
 Bannerman Time machine file photo |
Leroy Bannerman, an emeritus professor of radio and television at IUB, was a senior in high school in 1938. He did not hear the actual Welles' broadcast, but learned a great deal about it when he got interested in doing research on old-time radio.
"The reaction to the 'War of the Worlds was sporadic, geographically speaking," he said. "People in New York and New Jersey were particularly affected because the Martian invasion was supposed to be in that area. The program also mentioned that Martian machines had also dropped down in St. Louis and Chicago."
 That evening, the majority of American and Canadian radio households had tuned to ventriloquist Edgar Bergen and his sidekick, Charlie McCarthy. |
 Orson Welles on the air... |
"People tuned into the McCarthy program to hear the opening monologue, which was followed by a singer. During the singing, people switched over to the Mercury Theatre and missed Welles' disclaimer to the effect that it was merely fiction."
Many listeners were convinced that the "invasion" was actually happening.
"It was just before the war in Europe, and Americans were afraid of invasion. People were not so sophisticated in those days. Lots of people depended upon the radio. They believed in radio. And so they believed the Orson Welles' broadcast was real."
Former Ohio Sen. John Glenn was scheduled to return to orbit aboard NASA's space shuttle Discovery, some 36 years after his voyage aboard Friendship 7, at 2 p.m. EST yesterday (Oct. 29) from Kennedy Space Center in Florida. He is 77.
"I have never seen any evidence of UFOs, but I don't argue with those who claim they have."
 Thomasson |
IU alumnus Dan Thomasson, Washington, D.C., bureau chief of Scripps Howard News Group:
"I was born before 'The War of the Worlds' was broadcast, but I was too young to remember," he said. "It wasn't as big a deal at the time as it is now, though. Most papers just ran little stories about it. The repercussions are obvious, however. The FCC got involved, and the whole thing led to media practices in place today. The funny thing is that they announced at the first and in the middle that the broadcast wasn't real and still people didn't hear that. What they heard was an invasion. People tended to believe what they heard on radio. We didn't have the money to do much, so what we did in America was listen to our radios."
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