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Beginnings of Amateur
Radio
Amateur radio began almost as soon some
of the details of Marconi's successful radio experiments became public.
People with no special interest in commercializing radio or pursuing it as
a career began trying to use radio communication just for fun. The first
amateur radio, like the first commercial radio, used a variant of the Morse
telegraph code (called International Code) to transmit messages by turning
a radio signal on and off in a rhythmic pattern which spelled out letters,
numbers, and a few punctuation marks. In the beginning of amateur
radio most amateurs were much more interested in the fact of the
communication than in the content. They exchanged information only about
their location, name and maybe the weather. They wanted to know how far
away the other station was. Others fairly soon tried to give some utility
to their hobby by transmitting messages for friends or anyone else who
would give a message. A third group, who became known as
"ragchewers", simply gossiped and chatted, making friends whom
they might never see. Others were experimenters, who tried new ideas or
looked for new frontiers.
Until the late 1940's amateur transmitters
were on fixed frequencies. There were two methods of making a contact. One
was through the call sign CQ, which had originally been adopted by
ship to shore and ship to ship radio as the indication that the station was
calling any station which wished to answer. After calling CQ the operator
tuned the receiver over as much of the amateur band he/she was operating on
as was convenient, hoping that someone was responding by transmitting
her/his callsign back. Conversely the operator would listen for someone
calling CQ, and hope that his answer would be heard. The other means
was by prearrangement, on schedule.
Until fairly recently the number in the
callsign of U.S. amateur stations indicated the area in which the licensee
resided. As a result, when I moved to Philadelphia from Columbus my
callsign was changed, initially to W3LXS and then because of a special
situation to W3UKI. When I planned to return to the Columbus area and was
concerned about the new callsign I might be given, I took another special
opportunity to change to W3EL, and when I came back to Ohio I received
K8EF, which I now hold.
Amateurs played a very important part in the
development of VHF and UHF radio, using wavelengths even shorter than the
"short waves". Transmission on these wavelengths seemed, in the
1930's, to be limited to very short ranges, so they were of little interest
to commercial radio at that time. A few amateurs (who quite proudly accept
the slang designation "ham", a word of much disputed origin),
just interested in experimentation, found that these wavelengths had a much
more complicated pattern of propagation than was initially assumed. When
commercial development of FM and television broadcasting, local
(particularly emergency, police and fire for instance) communication and
"microwave" relaying of telephone and television signals began,
the information developed by amateurs about the properties of these
wavelengths became very important.
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