In the early 1920s radios were purchased in pieces, not just by those ambitious to build their own set, but by everyone. People purchased tubes, dials, headphones, batteries, and aerials, and wired them together at home. The challenge for the middle-class homemaker was to make this mess of wires and parts invisible or at least presentable, and to prevent leaking batteries from ruining furniture and carpets. Christine Frederick, a popular home economist and magazine writer, provided extended interior decorating advice on the appropriate place in the home for a radio. She chronicled the change

Frederick suggested putting the radio in a room where the family gathered, and hiding the “ungainly horns and instruments” in a cabinet or wall recess. More direct, an Atwater Kent ad in Ladies' Home Journal of December 1925 reassured middle-class housewives that “radio needn't disturb any room.”