Resumen: One could say that radio and independent Poland are peers. Since the early 20th century, once the achievements of scientists and inventors allowed remotevoice transmission, radio and radio broadcasting developed rapidly, and the radioset soon became a permanent device in almost every household. The radio arrived in Poland at almost the same time as the country reappeared on themap of Europe, and since then it has continuously influenced the nature of its society and statehood. In the times preceding the spread of the Internet, andnowadays, when Internet access is difficult or impossible for whatever reason, radio was, is, and will continue to be its equivalent: the fastest and cheapestsource of information, as well as a culture-making, sound window on the world, which develops the imagination and broadens our cognitive horizons. The text is based on scientific, popular science and journalistic studies,printed and published online, or on conventional publications and primarysources, with documents, reportages, interviews, and the authors¿ own collections. It is accompanied by rich photographic material from institutional andprivate, Polish and foreign archives. In several places, the authors have giventhe voice to witnesses of the stories described and experts in the issues at hand.It was not the authors¿ intention to provide an exhaustive study of the subjectmatter ¿ this would be neither justified nor even possible. To paraphraseW¿adys¿aw Niemczy¿ski, the author of the first Polish radio textbook (1925),¿a certain superficiality resulted from this approach, but not in the sense ofskipping difficulties, but in the sense that by emphasizing the most importantdetails a clear overall picture was created¿.