A hundred years ago this month, wireless column of the February 1922 issue of Boys’ Life showed scouts how to put together the simple radio receiver shown here.  The magazine noted that just a few years prior, there was still little to hear on the airwaves in most of the country.  Near the coast, it would be possible to pick up Morse transmissions to and from ships, and in larger cities, there might be a few signals here and there.

But in most of the country, there had been little to listen to.  But that ways changing, and by 1922, just about anywhere in the country, there were plenty of interesting signals just waiting to be pulled in.  In fact, even in areas without newspapers, the radio could be used to pull in stories straight off the news services, and it was possible to get sports scores long before your neighbors could.  There were even concerts being listened to by hundreds of thousands of people in many states.