You will notice in the first assigned prefixes, the letter tended to be the
first letter of that countries name, although this was not an absolute
policy.

i.e.
f- france
i- Italy
D- Germany (Duetschland)
G-Great Britain
E-Eire (Ireland)
J-Japan
R-Russia
etc.....

Another funny fact which may or may not have any bearing on this subject. In
high speed morse there is a premium on reducing "code weight" ( less dit and
dahs mean more through-put on the circuit). Letters that partly sound alike
would be easier for an operator to recognize and allow him to pay more
attention or disregard the following traffic as appropriate.( pay atention
to any callsign that starts with dit-dah or dah-dit).
In the US prefixes the letters are subsets of each other in Morse Code:

A-W dit-Dah dit-dah-dah
N-K Dah-dit Dah-dit-dah

73
Dan Yemiola
AI8O

Thierry To answer me in private use
http://www.astrosurf.com/lombry/post.htm wrote in message
...
Hi,

I am currently writing a long article about the history of ham radio for
my
website (growing...).
Can someone tell me who :
- What committee or association assigned the first prefix to callsigns in
the middle of 1920's, ITC (future ITU) ?
- On what base (I suppose location) US stations were assigned A, K, N or W
letters and who decided for the other countries ?
- Who currently manage these prefixes at a worldwide scale ? ITU-R (ex
CCIR)
?

Thanks in advance

Thierry, ON4SKY
http://www.astrosurf.com/lombry