World Short Wave Time-Table
August 1938 Radio News

August 1938 Radio News

[Table of Contents] Wax nostalgic about and learn from the history of early electronics. See articles from Radio & Television News, published 1919-1959. All copyrights hereby acknowledged.

I know a guy who began in radio back in the 1960s as a short wave listener (SWL), and then earned his Amateur Radio license in order to be able to send messages as well as listen to them. Short wave listening was a very popular pastime for many people - not just technical types - back before advances in communications made the world, to cite a cliché, "a much smaller place." Being just a "listener" was much less expensive and less involved that setting up a transmitting station (often requiring huge cabinets of vacuum tube equipment). Prior to around the 1960s, the only personal exposure most people had to the rest of the world was while serving in the military service. Movies, television documentaries, and magazines like National Geographic provided insight into foreign cultures. As with radio itself, existence outside your local town was a mystery so fantastical stories told by cosmopolitan travelers garnered troves of interested listeners. "All-Wave" radios tuned the AM (and later FM) bands and also included one or more shortwave bands. Under ideal radio wave propagation conditions, even a simple set could pick up broadcasts half a world away. Immigrants could listen to happenings in their home countries, people striving to learn foreign languages got to hear native speakers conversing and singing, and curious short-wave listeners just enjoyed the thrill of actually eavesdropping on other's transmissions. Electronics magazines regularly published current tables of short-wave frequencies and their locations of origin.

World Short Wave Time-Table

Compiled by the Editors of Radio News

Hours of transmission for the World's Short Wave Broadcast Stations

Posted February 11, 2021