On Jun 28, 12:14?am, AF6AY wrote:

My point was about Who controls the
dissemination of news and information and, most importantly,
the subtle influence of a very very few on the vaster majority of
amateur radio licensees. The major income of the ARRL is from
publishing. RSGB does that to some extent and may someday
pose a real competition for League publications. With the virtual
monopoly on influence comes the clear and present danger of
youknowwhat of a certain fictional year.

Except that ARRL does not have a monopoly of any kind on publishing to
the amateur radio community. There's CQ, Worldradio, and other non-
ARRL periodicals. There are other publishers such as RSGB as well.

There are also the vast resources of the internet, where ARRL has one
website. (An extensive website, but still just one).

Before the internet there were more US amateur radio publications that
were independent of ARRL, such as 73, ham radio, and the Howard W.
Sams books, yet none of them ever reached the popularity of QST and
ARRL publications.

The population of the state of California is approximately that
of all Canada. Have you counted the number of licensees just
in California lately? Note that the ARRL's daily tally of licensees
doesn't lump California with Hawaii or other places of the USA
even though all must be in "six land."

What's the point? There are a lot of people in California, and a lot
of hams. Does California need its own amateur radio organization?

Well, "RDW," it is a matter of convenience for a SMALL group
of hobbyists. You stated not too long ago that amateur radio
in the USA was merely a fractional percentage of the population.

The Radio Club of America was incorporated five years before
the ARRL. They are still in existance.

How many members does the Radio Club of America have today?

What does that organization do for amateur radio?

While some members
of the RCA are licensed radio amateurs, their prime interest
focus is no longer on amateurism. Neither is RCA in the
publishing business simultaneous with membership doings.

No one has claimed that ARRL is older than the Radio Club of America.

If you have read Thomas H. White's remarkable history of
early radio in the USA, you will find out more about how the
ARRL got their first steps up the ladder.

I've read it, and it goes something like this:

In 1914, ARRL arose out of the Radio Club of Hartford, led by Hiram
Percy Maxim.

There were other amateur radio organizations then, such as Hugo
Gernsback's Radio League of America (RLA). Some were regional, some
were national. All were new, because radio itself was new.

The term "radio amateur" wasn't even well defined back then. To many,
anyone interested in radio that wasn't commercial or government was "a
radio amateur". This included folks with only receivers, folks who
were primarily experimenters, etc.

The coming of mandatory licensing for transmitters in 1912 had a major
effect, but the biggest effect was the 1917 WW1 shutdown of non-
government/commercial radio, including receiving. The shutdown could
have meant the end of amateur radio.

Most of the pre-WW1 radio organizations, including ARRL and RLA,
simply disappeared or continued to exist only on paper, as their
members and officers went to war, antennas were lowered, equipment was
sealed or confiscated, and even listening was banned.

When WW1 ended, some of the prewar radio organizations reappeared.
ARRL did, and sent people to Washington in order to get the bans on
receiving and transmitting lifted. Some other organizations did the
same thing. But in the post-WW1 broadcasting boom, none of the other
organizations remained strictly focused on amateur radio. Gernsback's
RLA focused more on broadcasting, for example, and quickly vanished
from the amateur scene.

What really cemented ARRL's position was what happened at the various
international radio conferences of the 1920s, culminating in the 1927
conference which made amateur radio a separate and distinct radio
service, with amateur bands as part of international treaty, rather
than at the mercy and good graces of national governments.

Did the Radio Club of America send anyone to represent the interests
of amateur radio operators at the Paris conferences of 1924, 1925 and
1927?

73 de Jim, N2EY