In article , Leo
writes:

On 11 Feb 2004 02:00:07 GMT, (N2EY) wrote:

In article , Leo

writes:

On Tue, 10 Feb 2004 23:32:40 GMT, "Dee D. Flint"
wrote:

"Leo" wrote in message
m...
On 10 Feb 2004 09:52:50 -0800, (N2EY) wrote:

snip

Without the ARRL, do you think we'd still have amateur radio? I don't.

Um, the rest of the planet does not have the ARRL, and amateur radio
is still going strong there.....

snip

73 de Jim, N2EY

73, Leo

Without the ARRL, US amateur radio would have remained permanently closed
after World War I. The other countries did not have enough amateurs to
justify keeping the frequencies and it is highly probably that they would
have all gone to commercial interests. Everyone wanted the shortwave
frequencies at that time and without the US, the foreign amateurs would
not
have had enough leverage to have held on to the spectrum.

Dee,

Perhaps, but I'm not comfortable that it is fact. In 1917 (or 1916,
depending on the source), there were some 6,000 amateurs operating in
the US - not sure how many there were when amateur radio was turned
back on in 1919, but it was probably less than that, due to losses in
the war.

About 4,000, from various accounts.

Now, how many amateurs were there in the rest of the world back then?

Dunno - you tell me!

Even at 6,000, though, would that constitute a sufficient
number of amateurs to influence policy on a global scale?

Yes.

Heh. In the renowned historian's view, just three would do it. :-)

Meanwhile, heedless to the Americans, the first witnessed and
documented demonstration of radio as a communications medium
took place in Italy and Russia in 1896.


Keeping in
mind that the US, as a member of the ITU, has voting privileges but
not an overwhelming influence.

Was there even an ITU back then?

No. The CCITT.


Founded on 17 May 1865, according to their history page. Just a
couple of weeks after the Civil War ended!

The American Civil War, that is. :-)

Actually, the old National Bureau of Standards (now a part of NIST)
started up then with the first international conference in Yurp on
weights and measures and the like. That's in the history of NBS
in "Measures for Progress" published by the US Government Printing
Office nearly three decades ago, authored for the NBS.

The CCITT was mainly concerned with international interfacing of
telegrams. Commercial landline telegraphy was then 23 years old
in the USA and spreading rapidly worldwide.

Foreign stations still boom over here
today on part of our 40 meter band - because the ITU agreements say
they can.

That's because of a compromise worked out in 1938.

Which apparently could not be vetoed by just one country in a global
union

The "40m issue" of SWBCs v. hams hasn't been fully settled in
25 years and won't see the first separation until a couple years
from now.


The Americas can request, and debate, and vote upon, but not
control ITU policy. I doubt very much that they could back then,
either.

The point is that the cause of truly "amateur" radio was largely the work
of Americans. In fact, amateur radio was not recognized as a separate
radio service by international treaty until 1927. That recognition was
due in large part to the work of Maxim, Stewart, Warner and others at
the various conferences, including Paris in 1924 and 1925.

According to The Wayback Machine, it wasn't commercial interests that
wanted control of these bands post-WWI (all radio bands, actually!) in
the US - it was the US Military.

Yep, most notably the Navy.

he ARRL did a fine job of lobbying
the US government to have the frequencies reopened to US amateurs -
but I don't think that the rest of the world would have walked away
from amateur radio forever if the ARRL had been unsuccessful.

I think they would have. Most of the rest of the world had very few if any
amateurs. Many countries could not understand why anyone would want to
pursue radio as an end in itself. Many also wanted total government control
of radio. Very few outside the US thought amateurs needed more than a few
small
bands and more than a few watts.

And, in
the absence of the ARRL, other alliances may have been formed to lobby
for this right - just like they did in the rest of the world.

Unlikely without the help of the IARU.

That was well after opeating privileges were restored in 1919, though
- the IARU came along in 1925. We had been on the air for six years by
then...

In fact, your happy ham neighbours to the North were legally
transmitting again as of May 1, 1919 - a full 5 months before the US
amateurs were allowed back on the air on October 1st of that year.

And there were how many of them?

Infinitely more than in the US, until October! Point was, our
privileges were restored well before the ARRL was able to get that in
place in the US.

Numbers don't always carry the greatest influence in political
decisions - there is also sovereignty, and little things like that...


As I recall from history class, the US military hasn't attemped to
enforce US policy up here since 1814 - and never successfully prior to
that 0

Source: http://www.ve4.net/history/part1.txt

Does anyone have any further documentation pertaining to this subject?
I know that the Netherlands didn't regain operating privileges until
the early 1920s - Alun, old son, what was the history of this over the
pond?

Start with "200 Meters And Down"

That's mostly US history, though - I was looking more for what other
countries were doing around that time.....

Not only that, it is "radio history" somewhat filtered by the ARRL to
emphasize their "importance" even though they were a late-comer
among USA amateur radio organizations. Sigh.

For a more balanced view of early radio history, mostly in the USA,
see the "White Pages" (as I call this collection by Thomas H. White) at -

http://earlyradiohistory.us/index.html

There are 24 principal sections there, #23 having early radio regulation.
Section #12 covers "pioneering hams." In section #12 one can find out
that the Radio League of America and the United American Relay Club
were there before the ARRL. The very first USA radio club was RCA,
the Radio Club of America founded in 1909, five years before the ARRL.

Section #12 will also recount a couple of trans-continental amateur
relay failures which probably aren't in the "official" history book titled
"200 Meters and Down." :-)

LHA / WMD