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Amateur radio history

N0NB

Active Member
Oct 3, 2010
265
100
38
Bremen, KS
www.n0nb.us
This time of the year always gets me nostalgic for the history of radio and amateur radio in particular. Perhaps it is the long winter nights and the kinship I feel with those amateurs of late 1912 banished to "200 meters and down" as I operate on 160m that gets me in this spirit. I must admit that I have learned much from these forays into our history and try to incorporate the best of those attitudes and practices into my own on-air operations. What follows are some resources for those so inclined to learn a bit more of where radio as we know it today has come from.

One of the most complete web sites for radio history has to be Thomas White's UNITED STATES EARLY RADIO HISTORY which encompasses more than amateur radio. He has divided the subject matter into various categories, some by time, and others by technology or practice. Among the most entertaining reads is Irving Vermilya's Amateur Number One published in QST in early 1917. There are, of course, many more articles and many hours of reading await you at this site.

ARRL members, as part of their membership, have access to the complete QST archive from 1915 to 2004 (as of this writing). The archive includes articles but seems to omit the covers and advertisements. The rest of the magazines can be found on the QST View CDROM series where each issue is available in full. The CDROMs are out of production, but its possible that they could be found at hamfests. Many times a lot of old issues can be found or had for the taking, although the very oldest are often sought after by collectors. The down side of QST View and the online articles is that the scans were poor by today's standards so pictures often lack contrast and are in black and white with little gray scale.

CQ Amateur Radio, although only around in its current form since 1945, is another treasure trove of amateur radio history since the end of World War II. High quality color scans are available online at CQ Magazine Archives Online and subscriptions can be purchased to download up to 300 pages per day.

Another recently discovered archive or radio and electronics books is Technical books online where a number of engineering and radio handbooks have been scanned. He found that a lot of books published prior to 1964 have not had their copyrights renewed so they are now in the public domain. They are most definitely history from the technical perspective.

There were many radio magazines in publication a century ago as "wireless" was the hot technology and many people wanted into the game. Most of those are not found online, but those now in the public domain would make for an interesting scanning project. :D

Print books you may want to keep an eye out for include 200 Meters and Down (still in print from ARRL) and Fifty Years of ARRL published in 1965 after appearing as a series of articles in 1964, the 50th anniversary of ARRL. I'm sure there are plenty more.

Searches will turn up other sources of amateur and other radio history so don't be shy about posting your finds here. I look forward to seeing what others come up with.

Happy readin'!
 

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