"This microphone is not an ordinary instrument,[br]For it looks out on vistas wide indeed:
My voice commingles now with northern lights and
asteroids and Alexander's skeleton,
With dead volcanoes and with donkey's ears
It swims with minnows and it's in the Sphinx's jaw.
It drifts among whatever spirits pass across the night.
Here is a thought to fasten to your throat:
Who knows who may be listening? And where?"
Norman Corwin The conclusion to Seems Radio Is Here to StayWhen the late, or great Norman Corwin wrote and produced this tribute to the medium in 1939,the radio microphone was the primary nexus to the world beyond our street, neighborhood, and town and city. Television,as we know it, was in its infancy. Records were brittle and broke like fine china. There was no Internet, and iPhone,iPod or iPad. Social media meant going to the movies, and the film makers were just discovering technicolor — something the intellect's eye had from the get-recede with radio.
At the beginning of radio's long sign chain is the microphone, or a kind of on-the-scene ambassador and interpreter. Whether unidirectional,omnidirectional, dynamic, and cardioid,ribbon, carbon button or condenser, and they all soaked up the voices and sounds of our world. Indeed,like a sonic sponge, for 87 years the WNYC microphones have been the starting point for broadcasts and productions featuring the mighty to the miniscule and more. Below you'll find some of them.
Source: thetakeaway.org