|
 Authors Cohen and Hessinger warn about the
need to consider the capacitive loading effects of shielded and closely-space test
leads when measuring other than direct current or very low audio or line frequencies.
Lead capacitance is especially likely to affect measured values
when the frequency is high and/or the source and load impedances are high. As was
common in the day, capacitance units of μμfd (micro-micro
farads = 10-6 x 10-6 = 10-12 F) are cited,
which is equivalent to units of pF (10-12 F)...
 An old electrician's saying goes "Ground is ground the world around," implying that every point
on Earth's surface is at the same potential - specifically 0 volts. We know, of
course, that it is not so. Maybe on average such a claim could be made, but just
as "sea level" is not the same at all points on the ocean's surface (hence we speak
of "mean sea level"), neither is the voltage potential the same everywhere. Further,
just as the salinity of all points on the ocean surface do not have the same salinity
(and thereby conductivity), the conductivity of various places on dry land vary
- often significantly. Electric power systems are very concerned with soil electrical
conductivity in the vicinity of power generation installations...
 Byron Goodman published a very thorough
diode
modulator article in a 1953 issue of QST magazine. It was one of the
first of such articles that used the very recently available semiconductor diodes
rather than the previously used vacuum tubes. Single-balanced bridge and ring modulator
circuits are presented, along with the theory behind their operation. It would be
a few years more before double balanced mixers with their abilities to reject even
intermodulation products, and triple balanced mixers with very high overall spurious
product rejection, would become commonplace...
 Back in the 1960s, Electronics Illustrated
magazine ran a series of monthly Q&A columns titled "Electronic
Brain," where readers wrote in to query the staff on particular quandaries.
Even if you have been in the electronics game for decades, there were plenty of
questions that probably invoked the "I'm sure I could have answered that at some
point, but it's been so long that I couldn't say for sure," thought. The magnetomotive
force topic in this set of three items did it for me. I knew there was a magnetic
flux equivalent of electric current flow, but I probably would not have been able
to write the equation using the precise...
 We are accustomed these days with stores
having "no questions asked" return policies for just about anything. I once watched
a guy successfully return a 4" PVC plumbing fitting that had clearly been smeared
with glue in the coupling areas. Another time a guy returned a painting drop cloth
that was full of paint, declaring that it wasn't what he wanted. The return counter
bins of Walmart and other stores are always chock full of stuff. Such was not always
the case, though. This episode of
Mac's Radio Service Shop, mentions, among other thing, how busy
he and sidekick Barney had been right after Christmas doing troubleshooting and
repair on various electronic equipment that had been received as gifts. Imagine
receiving...
 San Francisco Circuits, a leading printed
circuit board fabrication and assembly supplier serving commercial and defense markets,
today announced that it has achieved Final
Cybersecurity Maturity Model Certification (CMMC) Level 2 Certification
status following a successful independent assessment by an accredited Certified
Third-Party Assessment Organization (C3PAO). San Francisco Circuits Achieves CMMC
Level 2 Certification The certification confirms that San Francisco Circuits'
enterprise information systems meet the cybersecurity requirements outlined in NIST
SP 800-171 Revision 2, as codified in 32 CFR Part 170, for the protection
of Controlled Unclassified Information (CUI)...
 Could this be the world's first publically
documented rack-mounted AC power strip? The
National Company
of Cambridge, Massachusetts, which began life as the National Toy Company, ran a
long series of advertisements in QST and other electronics magazines that
were heavy on text and light on pictures - definitely not the norm in advertising.
This one, number 62, from a 1939 issue describes, along with a reference frequency
oscillator, how their engineering team fabricated what we now call an AC power strip
for use in an equipment rack. According to the sketch provided, there does not appear
to be an On/Off switch and almost certainly not any form of surge protection as
is common (maybe even required by UL) for modern power strips. Someone at National
should have patented the idea; their heirs would be rich today...
 Presenting yourself or your company as being
modeled after a person of great accomplishment has been a common promotional tactic
for as long as there has been print media. The John Hancock chose in this issue
of The Saturday Evening Post to suggest, albeit by an indirect approach,
to elicit the admiration Americans had for
Thomas Edison's lust for innovation and desire to make people's
lives better in hopes that readers would associate Edison with the insurance company.
While the juxtaposition is strained, I do like one line in particular, "He lured
electricity into a bottle and taught it to glow with good cheer." This short tribute
to on of the world's greatest engineers is worth your a few moments of your valuable
time...
Authors Cohen and Hessinger warn about the
need to consider the capacitive loading effects of shielded and closely-space test
leads when measuring other than direct current or very low audio or line frequencies.
Lead capacitance is especially likely to affect measured values
when the frequency is high and/or the source and load impedances are high. As was
common in the day, capacitance units of μμfd (micro-micro farads = 10-6
x 10-6 = 10-12 F) are cited, which is equivalent to units
of pF (10-12 F)...
 Welcome to the
RF Filter Quiz, an
essential tool for radio enthusiasts and engineers dedicated to mastering frequency
selectivity in complex signal chains. Whether you are troubleshooting signal interference,
optimizing stopband rejection for a sensitive receiver, or designing your own ladder
networks, a thorough understanding of passive and active filter synthesis is vital
for achieving peak performance. This assessment tests your knowledge across ten
fundamental concepts, including the practical trade-offs between Butterworth, Chebyshev,
and Elliptic topologies, the impact of finite component Q-factors, and the critical
relationship between group delay and passband ripple. By evaluating your grasp of
these core principles...
 Author Howard Wright takes the opportunity
here to distill the
concept of modulation down to its basic operation while dispensing
with the garbled mix of "graphs, formulas, charts, vectors, diagrams, and Greek
letters which often enter into various discussions of modulation". Wright describes
how to the uninitiated radio dial spinner, the culmination of events occurring behind
the scenes in an AM reception is akin to knowing "that, to be reproduced, the picture
[in a magazine] was broken down into its primary colors, if all we had to go by
was the original print and the magazine?" That is a very apt comparison...
 Here is a fairly major treatise on
folded and loaded antennas that appeared in a 1953 issue of
QST magazine, with "Suggestions for Mobile and Restricted-Space Radiators."
It is not for the faint of heart or anyone with mathphobia. Integral calculus is
part of the presentation, although an understanding of calculus is not required
to get the gist of the article. Equations for calculating the antenna configuration
radiation resistances are given for the 3λ/4-wave folded dipole, the λ/8-wave
folded monopole, the bottom-, center- and top-loaded λ/8-wave monopole, the bottom-loaded
λ/16-wave monopole, and the λ/4-wave monopole folded twice, to name...
 Kite- and balloon-lifted antennas are very
popular in the amateur radio realm. They are primarily used for short-term activity
such as during a contest or during an emergency; however, some operators use them
on a more extended basis. A really good series of articles on the use of balloons
and kites for suspending antennas can be found
here. Equations
for calculating necessary balloon and kite sizes and predicting wind effects are
included along with lists of "Dos" and "Don'ts." This is not a new phenomenon. A
1940 edition of QST magazine described how to employ weather and sounding
balloons to provide needed antenna configurations...
 New:
Frequency Planner. RF Cafe's spreadsheet-based engineering
and science calculator,
Espresso
Engineering Workbook™, is a collection of electrical engineering and physics
calculators for commonly needed design and problem solving work. The filter calculators
do not just amplitude, but also phase and group delay (hard to get outside of a
big $$$ simulator). It is an excellent tool for engineers, technicians, hobbyists,
and students. Equally excellent is that Espresso Engineering Workbook™ is provided
at no cost, compliments of my generous sponsors. 50 worksheets to date...
 Take a quick break before - or while - hunkering
down for a long day's grueling work. Most of the
electronics-themed comics that appeared in QST magazine
were associated directly with particular columns. For example, the cartoons featuring
"Jeeves," the overtaxed manservant of a never-seen house master, was part of the
"How's DX" feature. Drawn by artist Phil Glidersleeve (aka "Gil"), W1CJD, poor Jeeves
was often found doing his boss's will in the most precarious situation with intemperate
weather making his assignments tough to complete. Situations involving Podunk Hollow
Radio Club were frequent subjects of Gil's drawing pen as well...
 Somebody get Al Gore on the phone - preferably
using Skype. It appears that maybe he did not invent the Internet after all. Sci-fi
writer William F. Jenkins, who went by the pen name "Murray Leinster," wrote
a short story entitled A
Logic Named Joe, that appeared in March 1946 issue of Astounding Science Fiction.
In the story, an amazingly prescient description of the modern Internet is laid
out. The works is copyrighted so I will not replicate the entire thing here, but
these are a few excerpts that sound a lot like Mr. Leinster was in cahoots with
DARPA during the development*. Before I forget, thanks to RF Cafe visitor Terry
W. for sending the link. My comments look like...
 "Do you think that F.C.C. would be engaged
in the present terrific expense and effort of getting our fingerprints and citizenship
histories if there were intention of shutting us down shortly?" That statement was
printed by the QST magazine editor in the issue that preceded the December
7, 1941, attack on Pearl Harbor by thirteen months. A few things about it are troubling.
First, the FCC was
collecting fingerprints of licensed amateur radio operators. Second,
the FCC was assimilating information about licensed amateur radio operators' citizenship
histories. Third, a combination of short-sightedness and apparent naiveté concerning
the FCC's willingness to shut down amateur radio operations once...
 My introduction to a
tesseract was during an episode of Carl Sagan's "Cosmos" series
in the 1980s, where he was demonstrating how beings in of dimension N would perceive
items of dimension N+1. The tesseract, Sagan explained, is a 3-dimensional projection
of 4-dimension hypercube. Watch the embedded video for more information. The Tesseract
website, which has nothing to do with a hypercube as far as I can tell, deals in
some very cool antique scientific instruments. I learned of it from an article in
Astronomy magazine where an editor recommended it when researching the potential
value of a collectible telescope. Run by Drs. David and Yola Coffeen, Tesseract
has a huge inventory of items...
 It is always nice to read an article that
encompasses more than one of my hobbies, whether it be amateur radio and amateur
astronomy like this one, amateur radio and model rocketry, or amateur radio and
radio controlled airplanes. I don't recall ever seeing an article that combined
astronomy and model airplanes. In this 1943 QST magazine piece, author
Hollis French expounds on the necessity for Hams to understand the effects that
atmospheric
phenomena, caused primarily by our sun's periodic and intermittent activity,
have on radio signal propagation. Properties of the ionospheric layers had by 1943
been pretty well surmised based on cause and effect relationships through indirect
observation since at the time no sounding rockets had been launched into the upper
atmosphere to obtain in situ measurements of ionization, magnetic fields, and free
electron activity...
 Maybe I suffer from cranial rectumitis at
the moment, but I'm having a hard time with a statement made about coaxial feedline
impedance, to wit, "102-ohm line (52-ohm lines in series)." I must be missing something
because I don't understand how placing two 52-ohm transmission cables in series
results in twice the impedance. Aside from that, author John Avery presents an interesting
article on multi-impedance dipole antennas. Empirical data is presented on
how the feedpoint impedance of a dipole varies with distance above the ground. His
results are very close to theoretical values which assumes non-sagging elements,
perfectly linear alignment, a perfectly conductive ground, etc. He then extended
his investigation into 2-wire (4x impedance)...
 How well received do you think this social
concept would be in today's easily offended world: "To bring together socially the
Wives and Mothers of Dallas Radio Amateurs; to promote mutual
sympathy, counsel, and interest in our husband's and our son's hobby; and with a
realization that theirs is an outstanding, fascinating, far-reaching and educational
hobby, it is our desire to further their interests in whatever way may present itself."
It would be roundly criticized as a backward, misogynistic, 1930-era mindset intended
to subject women to yet another form of domestic slavery beyond housekeeping and
child rearing - no doubt thought up by a man. Anyone thinking so...
 This article reports on the very earliest
form of
voice mail - recording a message on a reel-to-reel tape deck,
placing it in an envelope, and snail mailing it to its recipient. Sure, it was slow,
but unless you were under surveillance for some suspected crime, there was just
about zero chance that some government agency was going to hear your private message.
I had forgotten about it until reading this, but I remember that back in the 1960s,
my father bought an el cheapo tape deck for our family and one for his parents,
who lived in Buffalo, New York. My parents and four sisters and I had a pretty good
time hamming it up on the tape, and looked forward to receiving a reply tape a month
or two later. "Grandpa B," as we kids called him, was a real funny guy...
 Welcome to the
RF Attenuator Quiz,
a technical resource specifically designed for engineers and radio hobbyists who
demand precision in their signal chain analysis. Whether you are troubleshooting
high-frequency systems, optimizing cascaded RF stages for improved impedance matching,
or developing custom measurement tools like RF Cascade Workbook, a thorough understanding
of passive attenuation is essential for maintaining signal integrity. This assessment
challenges your knowledge across ten critical areas, including power handling limits,
thermal derating, noise figure degradation, and the strategic use of attenuators
to enhance system IP3...
 If anything qualifies for meeting the criteria
of the old adage that says "Necessity is the mother of invention," it is
coaxial transmission cable. Wireless communications during World
War II was the necessity that drove the rapid development and continuous improvement
of coax. Other than materials technology for wire, dielectric, protective jacket,
etc., the basics of coax cable have not changed. It was during the war that polyethylene
was developed and adopted as a dielectric material much superior to previously used
copolene. Understanding of how electromagnetic fields propagate within and, under
non-ideal conditions - on the outside of the cable has increased significantly...
 If you are just starting out in the realm
of electronics or maybe just need a little freshening up of your
basic
math skills, this rather extensive article from a 1942 issue of QST
magazine is just what you need. Author Dawkins Espy does a really nice job of laying
out the basics of algebraic operations, Ohm's law, trigonometry, and logarithms.
Examples are provided for each category. In this day of calculators doing all the
hard work of calculating logs, antilogs, and trig functions, it does even seasoned
veterans at electronics calculations a bit of good to do a quick read-through to
knock off cobwebs in the gray matter. How long has it been since you have seen tables
of sine, cosine, and tangent values and/or tables of logarithms? Not long enough,
you say?
 Astronomers consider all elements heavier
than helium to be metals. That definition obviously does not jive with the standard
chemical definition of a metal as an element that readily conducts electricity,
but a concept called "metallicity"
argues that from a star (and therefore the universe) formation perspective, extremely
high temperatures and pressures in first generation stars (like our sun) preclude
the identification of distinct elements other than hydrogen and helium. Heavier
elements, such as lithium (#3 on the periodic chart and a major component in LiIon
batteries, is classified as a metal in chemistry) are overwhelmingly created after
a massive enough hydrogen star collapses and begins fusing H and He into heavier
elements. The relative abundance of hydrogen in the universe is deemed to be about
92%, and helium is 7.1%, so together they comprise about 99% of all elements...
|
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Memory Chip Worker Union Strike Averted
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Glasses Shipments Grow 322% in 2025
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Solves Elusive Geometry Proof
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Donates Radio Station to W1AW
• FCC Accelerates
Access to High-Speed Networks
 The
RF Cafe Homepage Archive
is a comprehensive collection of every item appearing daily on this website since
2008 - and many from earlier years. Many thousands of pages of unique content have
been added since then.
 The September 1932 issue of Radio Craft
magazine contained an article titled, "Radio a la Cortlandt Street!," the original
"Radio
Row" located at the corner of Cortlandt and Washington Streets in Manhattan
(the intersection does not appear to exist anymore). It was a mecca of new and used
electronics components and assemblies. After World War II there was a huge
supply of surplus parts and equipment made available to the public as a means to
clear out inventory and also as a "thank you" to the citizens who voluntarily donated
critically needed panel meters, tuning capacitors, connectors, and other items to
the War Department. That really helped the market boom. Post-war electronics magazines
were chock full of ads by dealers selling surplus electronic and mechanical supplies.
Most big cities of the era had a Radio Row, including Akihabara in Tokyo. This 1966
Popular Electronics magazine article tells its story...
 This
RF Cafe Engineering & Science Crossword Puzzle contains at
least 10 words from headlines posted on the homepage during the week of July 29
- August 2, 2019 (marked with an asterisk*). These custom-made engineering and science-themed
crossword puzzles are done weekly for the brain-exercising benefit and pleasure
of RF Cafe visitors who are fellow cruciverbalists. Every word and clue - without
exception - in these RF Cafe puzzles has been personally entered into a very large
database that encompasses engineering, science, physical, astronomy, mathematics,
chemistry...
 Those of us growing up in the middle part
of the last century remember reading predictions - even promises - of fantastic
products and systems that would become reality by the end of the century (i.e.,
by midnight, December 31, 1999). Popular Mechanics, Popular Science,
Mechanix Illustrated, Science & Mechanics, all of which I
enthusiastically read, are prime examples. Examples include a flying car in every
garage, domestic robots performing tasks currently done by housewives, a cancer
cure in a pill, learning by electromagnetic programming of your brain, another pill
to control your weight, New York to Tokyo flights in two hours, cross-continental
underground bullet trains hitting 600 mph, underwater cities, lunar colonies
--- you get the picture. Some of the ideas did manage to materialize, like this
"Television on the Job" article in a 1947 issue of Popular Science. It proposes
many scenarios whereby what is now called closed-circuit television (CCTV) is used
in manufacturing processes, education, security, and experimentation in hazardous
environments. Interestingly, Dr. K. Zworykin, "the father of television," is pictured
in a meeting sketching a plan for his "television bathysphere" which dispatches
a CCTV to extreme ocean depths rather than risking humans.
 There are not many technical realms where
Google engineers have not either entered or created. Wireless connectivity is key
to their continued dominance in the information domain, so they understandably have
a vested interest in the "white space"
spectrum debate. White space comprises portions of the electromagnetic spectrum
where bands are either unlicensed or where licensed bands are or will be up for
grabs. An example of the former is the 2.4 GHz Wi-Fi band, and an example of
the latter is some parts of the broadcast television band that is being vacated
in areas. Although this information is a few years old, it shows how Google was
working early-on with the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to build a real-time
database of what they term "dynamic spectrum" in order to provide useful information
about available white space (now directs here) to both users and providers. A separate
database is available for fixed and mobile spectrum. Enter your location of interest
and the map zooms into that region. For instance, in my town (at the time) of Erie,
Pennsylvania (see marker on map below), as of January 2013 when this was first posted
there were 21 channels available...
 "Use
it up... Wear it out... Make it do... Or do without." - what a great slogan!
It was coined by the War Advertising Council during World War II to promote
the dual need to conserve scarce resources and to help keep prices down by not generating
excess demand. Most of us have seen videos or read articles about neighborhood materials
collection efforts to round up old tires, scrap metal, glass, tools, electronics
equipment, cloth and clothing, and many other items that could be recycled for use
directly in the war effort. Melanie and I pretty much live by the philosophy. We
keep purchases to a minimum (except for a few toys), and keep clothes, tools, furniture,
etc., until they cannot be repaired anymore, and buy used where practical. No we
are not hoarders. Everything we own will fit in a single U-Haul truck, and believe
me, after having moved more than a dozen times in 30 years, we know how much stuff
we own. Our house is only 920 ft2 with a 1-car garage and an unfinished
basement...
 Before a plethora of readily available and
affordable electronic and mechanical components of all sorts was at your fingertips
(on a keyboard), often times project builders and repairmen either did without,
substituted "close enough" parts, waited a long time for mail order, drove long
distances to a supply house, or did like
Carl and Jerry did in this May 1960 Popular Electronics magazine adventure
- they modified on-hand equipment to suit the need. Replacing the center conductor
of a length of RG-58 coaxial cable in order to change its capacitance (and impedance)
might seem like an extreme measure to take, but half a century go it was de rigueur
with hobbyist of all sorts. Magazines of the era nearly always had monthly hints,
kinks, tip, and suggestions features, enthusiastically provided by readers who had
already reaffirmed the old adage of necessity being the mother of invention. As
is author John Frye's normal practice...
 Here is the Radio Service Data Sheet for
the
General Electric Model K-40-A tabletop radio, as featured in a 1933 edition
of Radio-Craft magazine. When posting vintage documentation, I attempt
to find photos of an actual radio. My first stop is eBay, since often some of the
best detailed images of the outside and inside show up there. Next are RadioMuseum
and RadioAttic. Some models are popular restoration projects and others even extensive
searching turns up nothing at all - not even a drawing or an old advertisement.
Notice how even the less sophisticated vintage radios like this General Electric
K-40 usually have nicely crafted wooden cases. As mentioned many times in the past,
I post these online for the benefit of hobbyists looking for information...
 Being able to pass a 5 words-per-minute (wpm)
Morse code test at one time was a primary requirement for obtaining the lowest level
amateur radio operator license - Novice Class - in addition to passing a written
test. Many more people failed the code test than failed the written test. In fact,
the code portion kept many aspiring amateur radio operators from ever even taking
the test. It was a barrier which anyone worthy of the brotherhood must overcome.
The intimidation factor was pretty significant. As time marched on and the ranks
of amateur license holders was dwindling quickly, the Federal Communications Commission
(FCC) in 1990 dropped the code requirement and created the Technician Class license
that required only the passing of a 35-question true/false written test. Amateur
license holders began increasing immediately. This story from the pre-no-code days
describes the preparation...
 All of the
oscilloscope measurement techniques presented in this 1960 Electronics World
article apply to 2018 circuit measurements. Anyone who attended a high school or college
electronics lab has created and measured capacitance, inductance and resonance using
an o-scope as part of a classroom exercise. We all were wowed the first time we hooked
up signal generators to both the horizontal and vertical deflection inputs and observed
rotating Lissajous patterns on the display. Don't tell me you didn't twist the frequency
and amplitude knobs of the sig gens with the delight of a kid playing with an Etch-A-Sketch.
When I was taking labs in the 1970's and 1980's, school oscilloscopes were all analog...
 These are
close-up photos of common household
objects. Your mission, should you decide to accept it, is to identify each one.
Most are fairly easy, but a couple are a little outdated since they appeared in
a 1939 edition of Boys' Life magazine. Answers are way down at the bottom
of the page. BTW, this January issue is the one Ralphie Parker is reading in the
movie A Christmas Story...
 Irwin Math - what a great last name. My
preferred last name list also includes Piper, Cessna, Rockett, Wright, Goddard,
Einstein, Marconi, Hertz, Coulomb, Ampere, Edison, de Forest. That is not to
disparage other worthy names like Bell, Moore, and Franklin, it's just that the
latter are common enough that they would not likely illicit an association with
an accomplished scientist. If I can't have fame in common with a great person, at
least the name would be somewhat of a consolation. ...but I digress. This "Digital-to-Analog
Fundamentals" article authored by Mr. Math appeared in a 1967 issue of
Radio-Electronics magazine. With the advent of transistors and a growing selection
of integrated circuits, digital signaling and processing was getting a lot of attention.
Univac-size vacuum tube computers were being compacted into a small fraction of
the volume, consuming a small fraction of the power, and requiring a small fraction
of the maintenance. History shows that rapid progress ensued in both digital circuitry
and the application thereof...
 That would be President Ford in the background
atop the platform, behind where the
OSCAR ground station was set up. He was there as part of the dedication of the
new National Air & Space Museum in Washington, D.C., in 1976. The event was
part of the nationwide series of bicentennial celebrations marking America's founding
with the signing of the The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States
of America. Apollo 11 astronaut Michael Collins directed the event. The Space
Race was in its heyday and most people were still in awe of anything related to
spacecraft - both manned and unmanned. Just about anyone other than a Ham radio
operator believed communicating with a satellite was the exclusive domain of governments,
so the presence of AMSAT...
 Frequency hopping spread spectrum, first
proposed and patented by Hollywood actress Hedy Lamarr, relies on both transmitters
and receivers to precisely tune in a pseudorandom manner to a band of discrete frequencies
in a time-synchronized manner with each other. The faster an encoded signal hops
between frequencies, the more difficult it is for an unintended listener to decode
the message. Same goes for the number of discrete frequencies used in the spread
spectrum scheme. Modern computer programs and fast-tuning receiver systems can gather
huge amounts of information spread across a broad bandwidth and re-assemble it into
intelligible data, and if an unlimited amount of time was available to do so, just
about any message can be decoded...
 Is
the
BOMARC an airplane or a rocket? If it is an airplane, then it is the
pilotless type (aka "drone"). If it is a rocket, then it is the ultimate in
controlled trajectory hardware - at least in its day. The DoD referred to it as
a surface-to-air guided missile. The name is a combination of "BOeing
Airplane Company" and "Michigan Aeronautical
Research Center." Clever, non? If memory
serves me correctly (it's been 30+ years), the AN/TPX-42 IFF (Identification
Friend or Foe) secondary radar system (built by Gilfillan) I maintained as an
air traffic control radar technician reserved a special "X" bit in its data
packet to designate the BOMARC - and maybe other guided missiles. That might
have been a military secret at the time...
 Amateur radio station operators seemed to
always be amongst the first to lose their rights in time of war. Governmental power
brokers - from unelected local bureaucrats on up to presidents - love to demonstrate
their influence over citizens when the opportunity arises. The
Radio Act of 1912 revoked the rights of amateur radio stations
to operate, and in some cases authorized the confiscation of radio equipment for
use by the government. Permission was not restored until 1919, after World War I.
Amateurs took it on the chin again in World War II with revocation of licenses.
In this 1917 article in The Electrical Experimenter publisher Hugo Gernsback
makes the case for permitting "our red-blooded boys be trusted to assist our officials
in running down spies." "...we realize how absurd it is to close all privately owned
radio stations during the war..." |
