1933–1944
The Fireside Chats
FDR turned the radio set into a room in the White House.
CBS · NBC · Mutual (pool)
16 recordings
Planet Vintage presents
A Centuryon the Air
Seven moments the twentieth century turned on, each assembled from the recordings that actually survive — network by network, hour by hour, in the order they went out. Nothing dramatised, nothing reconstructed. Only what was transmitted.
441
Recordings
11
Moments
538h
Of audio
1923–1984
Years covered
The dateline
Seven days worth standing inside
6 May 1937
The Hindenburg
The first time American radio broadcast a recording of a disaster.
WLS Chicago · Disc recording
2 recordings
30 October 1938
The War of the Worlds
One Halloween broadcast, and the whole 1938 season around it.
CBS
20 recordings
12–17 April 1945
The Death of Roosevelt
The networks cancelled everything and stayed on for four days.
CBS · US network pool · NBC · NBC Blue · …
25 recordings
14 August – 2 September 1945
V-J Day
Forty-nine recordings from the hours the news broke.
US network pool · CBS · NBC · BBC · …
49 recordings
22–25 November 1963
Four Days in November
The four days that made television and radio the national nervous system.
Dallas Police Department · KLIF Dallas · Network pool · Reid Collins / KLIF · …
18 recordings
16–24 July 1969
Apollo 11
One hundred and twenty-three recordings from the flight and the broadcasts around it.
NASA Manned Spacecraft Center · Time-Life Records · NASA onboard recorder · NBC News · …
123 recordings
1934–1963
The World Series
A hundred and seventeen surviving World Series broadcasts, game by game, from Dizzy Dean's Cardinals to Koufax at Yankee Stadium.
Network radio (World Series pool)
117 recordings
1923–1953
The Crown on the Air
The abdication, two coronations, a princess in Cape Town and a king on V-E night — the surviving royal broadcasts.
BBC · BBC / SABC relay · BBC Home Service
17 recordings
1932–1968
Election Nights
Conventions, concessions, campaign discs and the first debate — nine presidential cycles as they sounded.
Documentary · Network pool · Convention floor · Campaign disc · …
32 recordings
1927–1970
Disaster and the Wire
Flight, fire, flood and blackout — the broadcasts that taught radio how to cover catastrophe.
FCDA syndication · KDKA Pittsburgh · Documentary · Commercial disc · …
22 recordings
Provenance
Every recording on these pages is a surviving transmission held by the Internet Archive, the US National Archives or NASA, and is in the public domain. Dates, networks and durations are taken from the archives’ own metadata. Where the archive cannot date a reel, we say so rather than guess.