In article , Leo
writes:

This follows on the lines of the thread that Mike and I have commented
on previously, so here goes:

On 18 Jan 2004 20:34:05 GMT, (Len Over 21) wrote:

Alternative Universe Probable Truisms - [continued]

8. The Federal Communications Commission would still exist on
approximately the same scale and still trying to privatize
commercial operator testing to save money. Radio use by
non-hams after 1934 grew sufficiently large to require the
agency to continue.

I believe that they would, along with IC and all of the other national
regulatory agencies. It's a vast spectrum, and most of their energies
are directed towards management of the commercial sector.

That's where the majority of users exist and that is how it should
be (to me).

9. "CB" would have been created anyway, a fore-runner of the
license-free personal radio wave of the future. [it is 46 years
old in our universe which already has FRS, R-C, cordless
telephones and wireless gizmos of all kinds]

Probably - people love to communicate! Folks would have seen the
cabbies, police and other commercial operators using 2-way radio
equipment, many ex-military guys would have experienced using the
technology first hand, and would have wanted the same type of system
for themselves. (in the pre-cellular telephone days, anyway...). And,
if there's a market, somebody would have developed it!

Did you say "market?" :-)

One in three Americans has a cell phone subscription; according
to our Census Bureau. Yet, a decade earlier we all got along just
fine with a relative handful of cell users. With the marketing blitz
still on-going for cell phone handsets, various user plans, all sorts
of attachments (including a little hands-free earphone-microphone
with its own little two-way radio), I'd say the marketeers have
pretty well established that side of telephony.

One in three Americans means a quantity of about 100 million.
At the end of 2004 some forecasters have predicted a worldwide
cellular telephone useage of over 2 billion units!

Think of it...2 billion little two-way radios...and not a single user
is required to test for any license or know morse code. :-)

And NONE of them "owe" any technology even remotely to
"amateur radio pioneering or innovation." Many U.S. hams speak
with contempt of the VHF and above region ("shack on the belt"
is a typical comment of our remaining newsgroupie bus driver).
Cell phones (in the U.S.) run at 900+ MHz.

People DO love to communicate, obvious to anyone at an airport
(among many venues)...even in supermarkets. Should be nothing
wrong with that except for the few that insist, nay demand, terrible
adherence to HOW the communication is done...along with
"official granting" of license, a permission to communicate. :-)

10. Tens of thousands of electronic/radio hobbyists would be
bereft of Title, Status, Privilege of the Royal-equivalent.
Amateur Radio License that allowed them to add a callsign
behind their names to show how good and expert they were in
"radio." That would make it a bitter scene with many more
fights of the amateurs (minority) with professionals (majority).

Personally, I don't view my license as a measure of my expertise in
the art of radio. As my examiner told me when he shook my hand after
I passed the test - it's a license to learn.

Nothing more.

I think that is a mentally healthy outlook on a recreational activity.

Obviously some Ham Lifestylers in here will disagree. Those love
to endlessly self-enoble themselves as "members of a service,"
apparently thinking they are an asset to the nation. They are simply
making an asset of themselves.

I am greatly amused by the U.S.A. population's apparent NEED for
royal titles of any kind, status, position, quasi-nobility, and all other
alphabet soup kinds of name add-ons. Was only 228 years ago that
the U.S.A. declared itself "free" of royalty. Yet, here we are now with
some desperately clinging to a "higher royal class" of labeling. :-)

For those cling-ons, the U.S. amateur radio "incentive plan" was a
godsend establishing all those classes of license. To them the
incentive was to "upgrade" so they could sneer with contempt at all
the lower forms of ham life. Many still do, more's the pity. [some
have a visceral need to attack the preceived inferior ones, a mental
sickness which I doubt will cease in any form of human activity...:-( ]

Nice discussing something with you, Leo. [others will disagree...:-) ]

LHA / WMD

In article , Leo
writes:

This follows on the lines of the thread that Mike and I have commented
on previously, so here goes:

[continued from previous start - ]


6. Radio broadcasting would have become successful and tele-
vision broadcasting even more so. "Overseas radiotelephone"
would still exist via the first HF SSB radios in the 1930s. The
first VHF FM mobiles would still be tested by various police

Agreed - commercial and military radiocommunications would have grown
anyway. Although some developments came from amateur radio, many more
did not.

A few years ago, I attended a Lucent course on their CDMA (spread
spectrum, code division multiple access) cellular base station radio
equipment. A Qualcomm engineer (CDMA is their patented technology)
started off his presentation by asking us if we knew who invented the
concept of CDMA. Bell Labs? MIT? The military? No. It was a
German actress named Hedy Lamarr! She propsed it as a method of
secret communications back in the 40s - obviously the technology
(powerful computers) to implement it did not exist at the time. He
went on to further amaze the group by informing us that she also
devised the concept of frequency hopping (which I believe was used
during the war - please correct me if I am wrong). Definitely a good
thing that she got out of Germany prior to the war! Hedy was not an
amateur, and had no interest in radio.

That's been distorted from the original. IEEE Spectrum did a piece
on Hedy's (Hedwig Markey is the name on the patent) and George
Antheil's patent for a torpedo guidance device. Antheil was a friend
of Hedy's and involved in automated pianos such as an updated
player piano. Hedy had been married in Germany to a German
industrialist who was a munitions maker; one of the products was a
torpedo. Hedy wasn't a brainless actress and could grasp ideas.
Antheil already had some inventions going in music and they traded
some thoughts and concepts. Hedy had adopted the USA (or the
other way around) and wanted to help the war effort any way she
could (besides USO tours). The end result was an idea of a
secure torpedo guidance system using programmable audio tones
sent over a wire umbilical. It was doable with vacuum tube
technology then.

The patent was granted but never used by anyone! Eventually it
expired. The USN and other nations using submarines and torpedos
eventually developed wireline guidance of some torpedos but not with
the system proposed by Markey and Antheil. For communications
security, the USA already had AT&T to help in eventually developing
a good voice scrambler so that the Germans lost their ability to
eavesdrop on FDR's and Churchill's radiotelephone chats. That
scrambler used shifting voice sub-bands and took up a small tow-
behind trailer. Think of that as a parallel development in audio tone
things.

Hedy Lamarr inventing CDMA? I don't think so. The origin of that
myth lies with some magazine or wire-service staffer who didn't know
enough about electronic systems but probably saw a trade magazine
article. Code Division Multiple Access is an eventual descendant of
pulse-position modulation multiple voice channel radio relay
equipment. The 8-voice-channel AN/TRC-6 that we signalmen in
microwave radio relay school at Fort Monmouth used as a training
system has much more in common to the eventual digitized voice
comm systems than a torpedo guidance system. General Electric
had already designed a 24-voice-channel microwave radio relay
system for commercial use and that was purchased by the US Army.
The later evolution of digital pulse trains in telephony circuits was a
direct predecessor to CDMA.

For that matter, the "rotor" encryption teleprinters of WW2 have more
in common with CDMA. Those scrambled the teleprinter character
code according to the rotor settings (actually multiple-pole rotary
switches) to yield encryption without changing the basic nature of the
5-bit character code. The "Sigaba" of WW2 is an example, never
compromised until the capture of the Pueblo years later. Spread-
Spectrum techniques came out of work on developing encryption
electronics along with Information Theory that had begun with things
like "Shannon's Law" of 1948.

Aligning a material object with an exceptionally beautiful woman of
considerable intelligence is totally terrific PR. In truth, a stretch of
the imagination that makes bungee cords break. Hedy and George
came up with a TORPEDO GUIDANCE SYSTEM...that was never
used as such. The original story has been told. Distortion came
later.

Good ideas come from everywhere.

Absolutely. Even gorgeous actresses or handsome newsgroupies...:-)

A question: what would not have been invented, or delayed, had the ARS
not existed?

Ham Radio Outlet, the chain, would never exist. :-)

Newington, CT, would have a museum only of local artifacts.

This and several other newsgroups would be about something entirely
different...but just as concrete-headed in its patrons as the others.

QSL card printers would have to go back to making picture postcards
for sale at drug stores and supermarkets.

TVI in urban neighborhoods would have a different flavor. Ed Hare
might have to go out and work for a living... :-)

The possibilities in any alternate universe are infinite. Everyone's
ideas would be as "correct" as any other since there is nothing to
base them on for "proof." :-)

LHA / WMD

In article , Leo
writes:

Some good thoughts there, Leo. I'll add to my previous comments.

This follows on the lines of the thread that Mike and I have commented
on previously, so here goes:

On 18 Jan 2004 20:34:05 GMT, (Len Over 21) wrote:

Alternative Universe Probable Truisms -

1. There would be NO ARRL to provide "guidance" and direction.
That expired before St. Hiram expired. [in this alternative
universe] Newington, CT, would have no museum.

True - no AR, no ARRL. Mr. Maxim would be remembered only as the
inventor of the Maxim Silencer for explosive weapons, and for his work
on automobile silencers (mufflers, I assume).

However, following along with the subject of the thread - the startup
of a "new" Amateur Radio Service" would concievably attract a lot of
people to it - an organization starting up to represent them and their
interests (and take their money) seems like a given.

In the wider world of early radio organizations (see Thomas H.
White's very notable web pages as well as print history), ARRL
was a relative latecomer in amateur radio. The one thing they
can claim is having survived the early competition in the USA.

[I'll have to use the USA as a reference here, no slight intended
against Canada, only against my meager knowledge of Canadian
amateur activities of earlier times]

ARRL, by their own history, began as a local New England radio
club largely organized for relaying telegraphy messages
quicker than was provided by commercial carriers. In reality that
is a form of "hacking" hardly different than the CD music stealing
that went on through the Internet in modern times. So, the 3-man
club got more locals and "organized" in 1914. The Radio Club of
America had already existed for 5 years and some of the RCA
members were very involved in amateur radio activities. [first to
use acronym 'RCA' but not aligned with RCA Corporation that once
was] The local ARRL club was small in 1914 and many national
clubs for amateur radio were much larger in membership.

The "League" effectively used PR and promotional techniques to
expand, slowly adding on news and technical publications. It had
very little of what it eventually became. Intense self-promotion
(League publications themselves are excellent vehicles to do such
things) kept their name/organization in everyone's mind. It fostered
an image in many minds to make up for the generally solitary
activity of one amateur listening for hours to static in hopes of
capturing a weak telegraphic signal. Technology of radio was still
quite primitive. The first two attempts at trans-national (USA)
message relay were disappointing failures. Nonetheless, the ARRL
kept up the PR and eventually made it through the competition for
"national amateur representation." Competition included the
formidable base of Hugo Gernsback's little publishing empire and
his own attempts at building an amateur radio organization.

The key element in establishing the ARRL was Maxim's own
funded lobbying in DC after WW1 to restore U.S. amateur radio.
That worked, amazingly enough, and became the stuff of legend
in much later League self-promotion...even 86 years later.
Maxim became "president for life" of the ARRL and "served"
until the 1930s. Sort of a private little empire which happens in
all organizations eventually. That's not to decry Maxim's
efforts but, in order to be fair, one cannot pin 'altruism' on Maxim's
"service to the League." He was instrumental in starting it and no
doubt was self-possessive about it.

With radio technology still not climbing the steep walls of
exponential leaps and bounds in electronics technology in 1920,
ARRL publications were about the only trade news available to
the everyman hobbyist at that time. There was very little of the
information media bonanza we all enjoy today. Knowledge took
time to spread. League publications helped that since they weren't
involved in patent disputes (many, many in the 1920s, 1930s) or
various groups' attempts to control radio or trade secret
developments that industry was jealously guarding. ARRL pubs
were an EXCELLENT vehicle, a medium for self-promotion and the
League didn't hesitate one bit to keep on promoting itself.

2. There would be NO morse code test since no other radio
service except Maritime Radio used morse code. There
would be NO need to keep a "pool of trained morse radio
operators" for any national need.

True enough - if amateur radio were invented today, it's pretty
unlikely that Morse Code would be a mandatory requirement or play any
significant role - it's a dead technology in the commercial and
military world today (just spies and some covert military ops remain
professional users of morse signalling today). I believe that it
would be a 'special interest' thing for people who wanted to play
around with it.

There are MANY and varied groups of hobbyists involved in
electronics today and many of those existed before personal
computers began. "High fidelity" music/sound was one though it has
shrunk to a niche market now. Robotics in general seems to be
the latest in interest, merging microcontrollers and machinery in lots
of different forms. Keyboard synthesizers had been a big thing with
the first of the lower-cost personal computers, but now simplified into
commercially-available programmable music machines. A close
look into the availability of parts and materials at various smaller
merchandizers on websites will show that there is great interest in
electronics-oriented experimentation and hobby work besides just
radio communications. Merchants are a good barometer of where
the hobby work goes on...it's a cruel market where only the larger
interests survive (regardless of individual favorites)...merchants can't
pay bills with altruism. :-)

I wonder, though, if in the absence of Amateur Radio, something else
might have evolved to meet the need of having extra trained people
available? Perhaps an auxillary (and voluntary) communications corps,
mobilized by the military or local government during times of need?
They might even provide the equipment and training...wouldn't be free,
though - Amateur Radio doesn't cost them much (if anything) to
mobilize.

I personally doubt it on scales larger than local, urban groups.
Radio - on the larger scale of human activities - is an established
medium of communications used by government and business on
a large scale. It's not a mystery or magic that it once appeared to
be in the 1920s or 1930s. Radio is far more widespread in society
of the USA than all of amateur radio in North America.

Use of a radio is ridiculously easy with existing radio equipment of
the 1960s era, not just that of the 2000s. Government and business
HTs on VHF-UHF are more numerous than amateur HTs in the USA
and have been so for more than 30 years. What is needed, if anything,
is the coordination of groups involved in "needy operations," the
control-and-response protocols, organizational structures to get the
various tasks done. That doesn't need specialized "radio training,"
just group organization. Police and fire people use radios every day
without any special classes in radio innards, often with just a few
minutes of personalized instruction.

3. There would be NO tales of olde-tyme ham doings because
there would be no old-timers left to tell the tales...only
pretenders who longed for a simpler (mythical) life way back
before they were born.

Well, there would still be old timers telling tales - just not ham
radio ones

Of course! That's a given. :-)

Especially those bitter about not having the opportunity to do big-
leagues communications on HF a half century ago. bseg, lol

4. The Titanic would have sunk anyway and several movies made
about that tragedy.

Unfortunately, yes. And many other unfortunate events may well have
become much disasters or have increased in magnitude, as there would
have been far less people monitoring the bands and detecting /
relaying emergency traffic if the ARS had not existed.

Would there be? That MIGHT be true in 1912, 92 years ago and 2
years before the ARRL existed. The international martime distress
frequency of 500 KHz had not yet been implemented in 1912. The
distance to land was not that great and the radios of that time were
not sensitive in receiving although some of the spark transmitters
where "high power." Had that happened in the much larger Pacific,
farther from land, or in the southern Atlantic or Indian Ocean, it
might have been a whole different story.

Pro-coders are quick on the trigger to trot out OLD tales of "need
to relay traffic" when there is NO need to relay any traffic today or
even four decades ago. GMDSS was implemented by the Maritime
Community to replace the old 500 KHz Autoalarms. That there
haven't been that many maritime disasters since is a tribute to
modern day shipbuilding and education/experience of ship masters.
The highly-touted 500 KHz frequency didn't save the Andrea Doria
from sinking back in 1956...or prevent the collosion with the
Stockholm. The international civil aviation community has had
121.5 MHz as an emergency frequency since 1955, several SSB
voice frequencies on HF since then for over-ocean flights.

Here in Los Angeles we just had the 10th anniversary of the Northridge
Earthquake. Widespread destruction and 60 deaths as a result. The
entire primary electrical power distribution was cut off for hours. The
area IS organized, trained, drilled for this sort of thing and it functioned
very well using the infrastructure of government-utilities-business
communications, both wireline and radio. Amateur radio did not aid
in that until about two days later. Utility crews had their hands full
trying to restore power (successful), repair damaged lines and streets,
clearing away some toppled buildings. Fire departments rolled as
needed, their stations and vehicle communications functioning fine.
Hospitals and care centers all had emergency electrical power, more
needed than "health and welfare message traffic." We survived.

"Independence Day" would have been
made anyway as a comic science-fiction vehicle for Will Smith
who would later wear black suits and shades.

Uh-huh...even the ARS was unable to save the world from this.

From Hollywood? :-) Try the movie "Frequency."

5. Hallicrafters and National Radio and Heathkit would have gone
belly-up anyway. Collins Radio would have continued on into
the military and commercial radio market without making any
overpriced fancy amateur radios. Yaesu, Kenwood, Icom
would still have been successful in the commercial and
government market. SGC might still exist but in the personal
sailing market. Ten-Tec might not exist.

Without the ARS, one indeed wonders how long companies like
Hallicrafters and National would have survived - after WWII, amateur
radio was a large part of their market.

Not as much as you would believe. Bill Halligan's Chicago company
was busy with both prime and subcontracts for radio equipment,
including the famous BC-610 used in the SCR-299 mobile HF
station. Hallicrafters was busy with making HF radios for the
commercial and government market, not seen in popular ham
magazine ads. National Radio made a name for itself with the HRO
receivers sold also to commercial and government buyers, again not
that much advertisement in magazines. Very unlikely makers of
things got into the radio manufacture arena during WW2, such as
Lewyt Vacuum Cleaner Company who made some of the BC-339
1 KW HF transmitters I QSYed a half century ago! [name was on
the ID tag riveted to the frame...:-) ]

Paul Galvin's Motorola-to-be (also in Chicago) was cranking out
the BC-1000 walkie-talkies (backpack VHF transceiver) of WW2
after stealing Dan Noble from Link, Link doing pioneering in mobile
FM radio for police departments...which led to widespread use of
mobile, channelized FM transceiver for land vehicles. Galvin was
also organizer/central-point for the number 2 priority of all U.S.
WW2 manufacturing (second only to the Manhattan Project) of
quartz crystal units. Better than a half million crystal units a
month made by over 30 U.S. companies for the last three years
of WW2...all for the military communications needs of the USA
and Great Britain.

Could they have hung on by
just selling radio equipment to SWLs listening to foreign commercial
broadcasts?

No. No need. After WW2, there was a big (but not widely advertised)
push in other areas. Motorola went after the police and government
mobile FM radios along with other makers. Collins Radio, already big
enough in military-commercial radio, got a boost from SAC contracts
for single-channel SSB and various military land radios. RCA also got
into the single-channel SSB race, designed some, eventually dropped
out of much of the military market. Civil aviation got going on VHF AM
comm-nav and UHF radionav radios for aircraft after 1955 and the ICAO
decisions-allocations. Military TACAN had morphed into DME for civil
aviation, civil folks having develped VOR for bearing to ground stations.
National Radio Company continued for years to build radio systems
for the USN, past 1970. Collins continues to be a standard for
excellence in aircraft systems.

Many of the makers of today's radios for commercial-government use
aren't advertised in "popular" magazines because that's not a target
market area. ITT in Fort Wayne, Indiana, designed (and redesigned)
the SINCGARS basic small-unit land forces radio...between them and
the former Land Division of General Dynamics in Florida, a quarter
million sets were produced beginning in 1989. That's more than about
a hundred thousand AN/PRC-25s and -77s made since the early 60s
(VHF, channelized, voice only, used in Vietnam and elsewhere). One
of the Hughes Aircraft divisions designed and made a bunch of the
standard HF R/Ts for land forces (AN/PRC-104 for manpack version,
20 W PEP, automatic antenna tuner) beginning in 1984. There's a
whole heaping glob of various military electronics produced by many
since the end of WW2, too many to recount here.

Very little of that is evidenced by ads in ham magazines. Hams
don't buy the stuff new and surplus radios don't generate money for
the original manufacturers. It WILL be familiar to those of us who
have worked in the electronics industry.

Nearly all the "radio" makers of 1945 tried their hand at TV sets for
civilians. Hallicrafters did (with a push-button channel selector!), so
did National Radio (I bought a 7-incher in 1949). Most dropped out
in the intense competition. Eventually all the U.S. makers of TV
sets went belly-up although the Indianapolis division of Thompson-
CSF (the old RCA Corporation plant there) still makes some color
TVs on-shore. General Radio, who long ago quit making radios in
favor of precision instruments, eventually dropped out. I don't know
why Hallicrafters quit or what happened to National Radio other than
concentrating solely on government stuff. Collins Radio is alive and
well but long out of amateur markets.

Icom, Yaesu, and Kenwood probably make more commercial-
government radios than amateur equipment. Those are the triad
from the Far East that beat the commercial pants off North American
communications radio producers...except for some specialty
divisions of General Electric and Motorola (two as an example in
mobile radio market). Some of their commercial, non-amateur
market radios are being sold through chains like HRO, but otherwise
few amateurs get input from ham publications on that side of their
business. All three do good in design and manufacture, are
innovative and dare to hit the market with new things.

Some companies may never have started up in the first place, as their
beginnings were entirely in amateur radio.

Before or after WW2? Bill Halligan was a ham, also Art Collins, just
two early examples. Collins Radio survived and prospered, Halli-
crafters didn't. The reasons aren't simplistic. Business, to survive
and grow, needs a lot of things and niche markets aren't successful
for the ambitious growth plans of some. Diversification may be
necessary as was the growth of General Electric Company and its
many divisions...RCA Corp was spun out of some of those and
eventually GE bought RCA back (irony!). :-)

Whether or not specialty or niche-market companies survive depends
on the founders and what they want to do. They may develop a
fantastic reputation through clever PR and create an intense, loyal
following, but the eventual color of bookkeeping ink can catch up to
them. Adulation of customers doesn't pay bills...customers have to
keep buying, write checks, not write peans of praise. Business is
TOUGH.

[ to be continued... ]

LHA / WMD

On 20 Jan 2004 23:24:20 GMT, (Len Over 21) wrote:

In article , Leo
writes:

This follows on the lines of the thread that Mike and I have commented
on previously, so here goes:

On 18 Jan 2004 20:34:05 GMT, (Len Over 21) wrote:

Alternative Universe Probable Truisms - [continued]

8. The Federal Communications Commission would still exist on
approximately the same scale and still trying to privatize
commercial operator testing to save money. Radio use by
non-hams after 1934 grew sufficiently large to require the
agency to continue.

I believe that they would, along with IC and all of the other national
regulatory agencies. It's a vast spectrum, and most of their energies
are directed towards management of the commercial sector.

That's where the majority of users exist and that is how it should
be (to me).

9. "CB" would have been created anyway, a fore-runner of the
license-free personal radio wave of the future. [it is 46 years
old in our universe which already has FRS, R-C, cordless
telephones and wireless gizmos of all kinds]

Probably - people love to communicate! Folks would have seen the
cabbies, police and other commercial operators using 2-way radio
equipment, many ex-military guys would have experienced using the
technology first hand, and would have wanted the same type of system
for themselves. (in the pre-cellular telephone days, anyway...). And,
if there's a market, somebody would have developed it!

Did you say "market?" :-)

One in three Americans has a cell phone subscription; according
to our Census Bureau. Yet, a decade earlier we all got along just
fine with a relative handful of cell users. With the marketing blitz
still on-going for cell phone handsets, various user plans, all sorts
of attachments (including a little hands-free earphone-microphone
with its own little two-way radio), I'd say the marketeers have
pretty well established that side of telephony.

One in three Americans means a quantity of about 100 million.
At the end of 2004 some forecasters have predicted a worldwide
cellular telephone useage of over 2 billion units!

Think of it...2 billion little two-way radios...and not a single user
is required to test for any license or know morse code. :-)

And NONE of them "owe" any technology even remotely to
"amateur radio pioneering or innovation." Many U.S. hams speak
with contempt of the VHF and above region ("shack on the belt"
is a typical comment of our remaining newsgroupie bus driver).
Cell phones (in the U.S.) run at 900+ MHz.

People DO love to communicate, obvious to anyone at an airport
(among many venues)...even in supermarkets. Should be nothing
wrong with that except for the few that insist, nay demand, terrible
adherence to HOW the communication is done...along with
"official granting" of license, a permission to communicate. :-)

10. Tens of thousands of electronic/radio hobbyists would be
bereft of Title, Status, Privilege of the Royal-equivalent.
Amateur Radio License that allowed them to add a callsign
behind their names to show how good and expert they were in
"radio." That would make it a bitter scene with many more
fights of the amateurs (minority) with professionals (majority).

Personally, I don't view my license as a measure of my expertise in
the art of radio. As my examiner told me when he shook my hand after
I passed the test - it's a license to learn.

Nothing more.

I think that is a mentally healthy outlook on a recreational activity.

Obviously some Ham Lifestylers in here will disagree. Those love
to endlessly self-enoble themselves as "members of a service,"
apparently thinking they are an asset to the nation. They are simply
making an asset of themselves.

I am greatly amused by the U.S.A. population's apparent NEED for
royal titles of any kind, status, position, quasi-nobility, and all other
alphabet soup kinds of name add-ons. Was only 228 years ago that
the U.S.A. declared itself "free" of royalty. Yet, here we are now with
some desperately clinging to a "higher royal class" of labeling. :-)

For those cling-ons, the U.S. amateur radio "incentive plan" was a
godsend establishing all those classes of license. To them the
incentive was to "upgrade" so they could sneer with contempt at all
the lower forms of ham life. Many still do, more's the pity. [some
have a visceral need to attack the preceived inferior ones, a mental
sickness which I doubt will cease in any form of human activity...:-( ]

Nice discussing something with you, Leo. [others will disagree...:-) ]

Len, I must admit that I fully agree. It took me over a half hour to
read through and absorb all of the information that you presented in
your three replies on this subject. That's an excellent depth of
knowledge you have there...

I learned a great deal, stand corrected on a couple of points, and am
following up on the Web on some of your referencess for more
information - fascinating stuff!

Much appreciated!


LHA / WMD

73, Leo

On 20 Jan 2004 23:24:27 GMT, (Len Over 21) wrote:

In article , Leo
writes:

Some good thoughts there, Leo. I'll add to my previous comments.

This follows on the lines of the thread that Mike and I have commented
on previously, so here goes:

On 18 Jan 2004 20:34:05 GMT, (Len Over 21) wrote:

Alternative Universe Probable Truisms -

1. There would be NO ARRL to provide "guidance" and direction.
That expired before St. Hiram expired. [in this alternative
universe] Newington, CT, would have no museum.

True - no AR, no ARRL. Mr. Maxim would be remembered only as the
inventor of the Maxim Silencer for explosive weapons, and for his work
on automobile silencers (mufflers, I assume).

However, following along with the subject of the thread - the startup
of a "new" Amateur Radio Service" would concievably attract a lot of
people to it - an organization starting up to represent them and their
interests (and take their money) seems like a given.

In the wider world of early radio organizations (see Thomas H.
White's very notable web pages as well as print history), ARRL
was a relative latecomer in amateur radio. The one thing they
can claim is having survived the early competition in the USA.

[I'll have to use the USA as a reference here, no slight intended
against Canada, only against my meager knowledge of Canadian
amateur activities of earlier times]

None taken - I haven't found much historical information on amateur
radio up here, so my own knowledge in this area is in the meager
department as well....

ARRL, by their own history, began as a local New England radio
club largely organized for relaying telegraphy messages
quicker than was provided by commercial carriers. In reality that
is a form of "hacking" hardly different than the CD music stealing
that went on through the Internet in modern times. So, the 3-man
club got more locals and "organized" in 1914. The Radio Club of
America had already existed for 5 years and some of the RCA
members were very involved in amateur radio activities. [first to
use acronym 'RCA' but not aligned with RCA Corporation that once
was] The local ARRL club was small in 1914 and many national
clubs for amateur radio were much larger in membership.

The "League" effectively used PR and promotional techniques to
expand, slowly adding on news and technical publications. It had
very little of what it eventually became. Intense self-promotion
(League publications themselves are excellent vehicles to do such
things) kept their name/organization in everyone's mind. It fostered
an image in many minds to make up for the generally solitary
activity of one amateur listening for hours to static in hopes of
capturing a weak telegraphic signal. Technology of radio was still
quite primitive. The first two attempts at trans-national (USA)
message relay were disappointing failures. Nonetheless, the ARRL
kept up the PR and eventually made it through the competition for
"national amateur representation." Competition included the
formidable base of Hugo Gernsback's little publishing empire and
his own attempts at building an amateur radio organization.

The key element in establishing the ARRL was Maxim's own
funded lobbying in DC after WW1 to restore U.S. amateur radio.
That worked, amazingly enough, and became the stuff of legend
in much later League self-promotion...even 86 years later.
Maxim became "president for life" of the ARRL and "served"
until the 1930s. Sort of a private little empire which happens in
all organizations eventually. That's not to decry Maxim's
efforts but, in order to be fair, one cannot pin 'altruism' on Maxim's
"service to the League." He was instrumental in starting it and no
doubt was self-possessive about it.

With radio technology still not climbing the steep walls of
exponential leaps and bounds in electronics technology in 1920,
ARRL publications were about the only trade news available to
the everyman hobbyist at that time. There was very little of the
information media bonanza we all enjoy today. Knowledge took
time to spread. League publications helped that since they weren't
involved in patent disputes (many, many in the 1920s, 1930s) or
various groups' attempts to control radio or trade secret
developments that industry was jealously guarding. ARRL pubs
were an EXCELLENT vehicle, a medium for self-promotion and the
League didn't hesitate one bit to keep on promoting itself.

2. There would be NO morse code test since no other radio
service except Maritime Radio used morse code. There
would be NO need to keep a "pool of trained morse radio
operators" for any national need.

True enough - if amateur radio were invented today, it's pretty
unlikely that Morse Code would be a mandatory requirement or play any
significant role - it's a dead technology in the commercial and
military world today (just spies and some covert military ops remain
professional users of morse signalling today). I believe that it
would be a 'special interest' thing for people who wanted to play
around with it.

There are MANY and varied groups of hobbyists involved in
electronics today and many of those existed before personal
computers began. "High fidelity" music/sound was one though it has
shrunk to a niche market now. Robotics in general seems to be
the latest in interest, merging microcontrollers and machinery in lots
of different forms. Keyboard synthesizers had been a big thing with
the first of the lower-cost personal computers, but now simplified into
commercially-available programmable music machines. A close
look into the availability of parts and materials at various smaller
merchandizers on websites will show that there is great interest in
electronics-oriented experimentation and hobby work besides just
radio communications. Merchants are a good barometer of where
the hobby work goes on...it's a cruel market where only the larger
interests survive (regardless of individual favorites)...merchants can't
pay bills with altruism. :-)

I wonder, though, if in the absence of Amateur Radio, something else
might have evolved to meet the need of having extra trained people
available? Perhaps an auxillary (and voluntary) communications corps,
mobilized by the military or local government during times of need?
They might even provide the equipment and training...wouldn't be free,
though - Amateur Radio doesn't cost them much (if anything) to
mobilize.

I personally doubt it on scales larger than local, urban groups.
Radio - on the larger scale of human activities - is an established
medium of communications used by government and business on
a large scale. It's not a mystery or magic that it once appeared to
be in the 1920s or 1930s. Radio is far more widespread in society
of the USA than all of amateur radio in North America.

Use of a radio is ridiculously easy with existing radio equipment of
the 1960s era, not just that of the 2000s. Government and business
HTs on VHF-UHF are more numerous than amateur HTs in the USA
and have been so for more than 30 years. What is needed, if anything,
is the coordination of groups involved in "needy operations," the
control-and-response protocols, organizational structures to get the
various tasks done. That doesn't need specialized "radio training,"
just group organization. Police and fire people use radios every day
without any special classes in radio innards, often with just a few
minutes of personalized instruction.

3. There would be NO tales of olde-tyme ham doings because
there would be no old-timers left to tell the tales...only
pretenders who longed for a simpler (mythical) life way back
before they were born.

Well, there would still be old timers telling tales - just not ham
radio ones

Of course! That's a given. :-)

Especially those bitter about not having the opportunity to do big-
leagues communications on HF a half century ago. bseg, lol

....caught that


4. The Titanic would have sunk anyway and several movies made
about that tragedy.

Unfortunately, yes. And many other unfortunate events may well have
become much disasters or have increased in magnitude, as there would
have been far less people monitoring the bands and detecting /
relaying emergency traffic if the ARS had not existed.

Would there be? That MIGHT be true in 1912, 92 years ago and 2
years before the ARRL existed. The international martime distress
frequency of 500 KHz had not yet been implemented in 1912. The
distance to land was not that great and the radios of that time were
not sensitive in receiving although some of the spark transmitters
where "high power." Had that happened in the much larger Pacific,
farther from land, or in the southern Atlantic or Indian Ocean, it
might have been a whole different story.

Pro-coders are quick on the trigger to trot out OLD tales of "need
to relay traffic" when there is NO need to relay any traffic today or
even four decades ago. GMDSS was implemented by the Maritime
Community to replace the old 500 KHz Autoalarms. That there
haven't been that many maritime disasters since is a tribute to
modern day shipbuilding and education/experience of ship masters.
The highly-touted 500 KHz frequency didn't save the Andrea Doria
from sinking back in 1956...or prevent the collosion with the
Stockholm. The international civil aviation community has had
121.5 MHz as an emergency frequency since 1955, several SSB
voice frequencies on HF since then for over-ocean flights.

Here in Los Angeles we just had the 10th anniversary of the Northridge
Earthquake. Widespread destruction and 60 deaths as a result. The
entire primary electrical power distribution was cut off for hours. The
area IS organized, trained, drilled for this sort of thing and it functioned
very well using the infrastructure of government-utilities-business
communications, both wireline and radio. Amateur radio did not aid
in that until about two days later. Utility crews had their hands full
trying to restore power (successful), repair damaged lines and streets,
clearing away some toppled buildings. Fire departments rolled as
needed, their stations and vehicle communications functioning fine.
Hospitals and care centers all had emergency electrical power, more
needed than "health and welfare message traffic." We survived.

"Independence Day" would have been
made anyway as a comic science-fiction vehicle for Will Smith
who would later wear black suits and shades.

Uh-huh...even the ARS was unable to save the world from this.

From Hollywood? :-) Try the movie "Frequency."

5. Hallicrafters and National Radio and Heathkit would have gone
belly-up anyway. Collins Radio would have continued on into
the military and commercial radio market without making any
overpriced fancy amateur radios. Yaesu, Kenwood, Icom
would still have been successful in the commercial and
government market. SGC might still exist but in the personal
sailing market. Ten-Tec might not exist.

Without the ARS, one indeed wonders how long companies like
Hallicrafters and National would have survived - after WWII, amateur
radio was a large part of their market.

Not as much as you would believe. Bill Halligan's Chicago company
was busy with both prime and subcontracts for radio equipment,
including the famous BC-610 used in the SCR-299 mobile HF
station. Hallicrafters was busy with making HF radios for the
commercial and government market, not seen in popular ham
magazine ads. National Radio made a name for itself with the HRO
receivers sold also to commercial and government buyers, again not
that much advertisement in magazines. Very unlikely makers of
things got into the radio manufacture arena during WW2, such as
Lewyt Vacuum Cleaner Company who made some of the BC-339
1 KW HF transmitters I QSYed a half century ago! [name was on
the ID tag riveted to the frame...:-) ]

I have always been amazed at the versatility of some of the companies
engaged in WWII production - it would be no small feat for a company
manufacturing vacuum cleaners to retool their lines and train / hire
staff to build a 1 KW radio transmitter to mil spec.

....or the Rock-Ola Jukebox Company cranking out M1 Carbines.

Incredible!


Paul Galvin's Motorola-to-be (also in Chicago) was cranking out
the BC-1000 walkie-talkies (backpack VHF transceiver) of WW2
after stealing Dan Noble from Link, Link doing pioneering in mobile
FM radio for police departments...which led to widespread use of
mobile, channelized FM transceiver for land vehicles. Galvin was
also organizer/central-point for the number 2 priority of all U.S.
WW2 manufacturing (second only to the Manhattan Project) of
quartz crystal units. Better than a half million crystal units a
month made by over 30 U.S. companies for the last three years
of WW2...all for the military communications needs of the USA
and Great Britain.

Could they have hung on by
just selling radio equipment to SWLs listening to foreign commercial
broadcasts?

No. No need. After WW2, there was a big (but not widely advertised)
push in other areas. Motorola went after the police and government
mobile FM radios along with other makers. Collins Radio, already big
enough in military-commercial radio, got a boost from SAC contracts
for single-channel SSB and various military land radios. RCA also got
into the single-channel SSB race, designed some, eventually dropped
out of much of the military market. Civil aviation got going on VHF AM
comm-nav and UHF radionav radios for aircraft after 1955 and the ICAO
decisions-allocations. Military TACAN had morphed into DME for civil
aviation, civil folks having develped VOR for bearing to ground stations.
National Radio Company continued for years to build radio systems
for the USN, past 1970. Collins continues to be a standard for
excellence in aircraft systems.

Many of the makers of today's radios for commercial-government use
aren't advertised in "popular" magazines because that's not a target
market area. ITT in Fort Wayne, Indiana, designed (and redesigned)
the SINCGARS basic small-unit land forces radio...between them and
the former Land Division of General Dynamics in Florida, a quarter
million sets were produced beginning in 1989. That's more than about
a hundred thousand AN/PRC-25s and -77s made since the early 60s
(VHF, channelized, voice only, used in Vietnam and elsewhere). One
of the Hughes Aircraft divisions designed and made a bunch of the
standard HF R/Ts for land forces (AN/PRC-104 for manpack version,
20 W PEP, automatic antenna tuner) beginning in 1984. There's a
whole heaping glob of various military electronics produced by many
since the end of WW2, too many to recount here.

Very little of that is evidenced by ads in ham magazines. Hams
don't buy the stuff new and surplus radios don't generate money for
the original manufacturers. It WILL be familiar to those of us who
have worked in the electronics industry.

Nearly all the "radio" makers of 1945 tried their hand at TV sets for
civilians. Hallicrafters did (with a push-button channel selector!), so
did National Radio (I bought a 7-incher in 1949). Most dropped out
in the intense competition. Eventually all the U.S. makers of TV
sets went belly-up although the Indianapolis division of Thompson-
CSF (the old RCA Corporation plant there) still makes some color
TVs on-shore. General Radio, who long ago quit making radios in
favor of precision instruments, eventually dropped out. I don't know
why Hallicrafters quit or what happened to National Radio other than
concentrating solely on government stuff. Collins Radio is alive and
well but long out of amateur markets.

Icom, Yaesu, and Kenwood probably make more commercial-
government radios than amateur equipment. Those are the triad
from the Far East that beat the commercial pants off North American
communications radio producers...except for some specialty
divisions of General Electric and Motorola (two as an example in
mobile radio market). Some of their commercial, non-amateur
market radios are being sold through chains like HRO, but otherwise
few amateurs get input from ham publications on that side of their
business. All three do good in design and manufacture, are
innovative and dare to hit the market with new things.

Some companies may never have started up in the first place, as their
beginnings were entirely in amateur radio.

Before or after WW2? Bill Halligan was a ham, also Art Collins, just
two early examples. Collins Radio survived and prospered, Halli-
crafters didn't. The reasons aren't simplistic. Business, to survive
and grow, needs a lot of things and niche markets aren't successful
for the ambitious growth plans of some. Diversification may be
necessary as was the growth of General Electric Company and its
many divisions...RCA Corp was spun out of some of those and
eventually GE bought RCA back (irony!). :-)

Whether or not specialty or niche-market companies survive depends
on the founders and what they want to do. They may develop a
fantastic reputation through clever PR and create an intense, loyal
following, but the eventual color of bookkeeping ink can catch up to
them. Adulation of customers doesn't pay bills...customers have to
keep buying, write checks, not write peans of praise. Business is
TOUGH.

[ to be continued... ]

LHA / WMD

In article , Leo
writes:

Subject: If Ham Radio Were Invented Today (reprise)
From: Leo
Date: Wed, 21 Jan 2004 01:40:38 GMT

On 20 Jan 2004 23:24:27 GMT, (Len Over 21) wrote:

In article , Leo

writes:

Some good thoughts there, Leo. I'll add to my previous comments.

This follows on the lines of the thread that Mike and I have commented
on previously, so here goes:

On 18 Jan 2004 20:34:05 GMT, (Len Over 21) wrote:

Alternative Universe Probable Truisms -

1. There would be NO ARRL to provide "guidance" and direction.
That expired before St. Hiram expired. [in this alternative
universe] Newington, CT, would have no museum.

True - no AR, no ARRL. Mr. Maxim would be remembered only as the
inventor of the Maxim Silencer for explosive weapons, and for his work
on automobile silencers (mufflers, I assume).

However, following along with the subject of the thread - the startup
of a "new" Amateur Radio Service" would concievably attract a lot of
people to it - an organization starting up to represent them and their
interests (and take their money) seems like a given.

In the wider world of early radio organizations (see Thomas H.
White's very notable web pages as well as print history), ARRL
was a relative latecomer in amateur radio. The one thing they
can claim is having survived the early competition in the USA.

[I'll have to use the USA as a reference here, no slight intended
against Canada, only against my meager knowledge of Canadian
amateur activities of earlier times]

None taken - I haven't found much historical information on amateur
radio up here, so my own knowledge in this area is in the meager
department as well....

ARRL, by their own history, began as a local New England radio
club largely organized for relaying telegraphy messages
quicker than was provided by commercial carriers. In reality that
is a form of "hacking" hardly different than the CD music stealing
that went on through the Internet in modern times. So, the 3-man
club got more locals and "organized" in 1914. The Radio Club of
America had already existed for 5 years and some of the RCA
members were very involved in amateur radio activities. [first to
use acronym 'RCA' but not aligned with RCA Corporation that once
was] The local ARRL club was small in 1914 and many national
clubs for amateur radio were much larger in membership.

The "League" effectively used PR and promotional techniques to
expand, slowly adding on news and technical publications. It had
very little of what it eventually became. Intense self-promotion
(League publications themselves are excellent vehicles to do such
things) kept their name/organization in everyone's mind. It fostered
an image in many minds to make up for the generally solitary
activity of one amateur listening for hours to static in hopes of
capturing a weak telegraphic signal. Technology of radio was still
quite primitive. The first two attempts at trans-national (USA)
message relay were disappointing failures. Nonetheless, the ARRL
kept up the PR and eventually made it through the competition for
"national amateur representation." Competition included the
formidable base of Hugo Gernsback's little publishing empire and
his own attempts at building an amateur radio organization.

The key element in establishing the ARRL was Maxim's own
funded lobbying in DC after WW1 to restore U.S. amateur radio.
That worked, amazingly enough, and became the stuff of legend
in much later League self-promotion...even 86 years later.
Maxim became "president for life" of the ARRL and "served"
until the 1930s. Sort of a private little empire which happens in
all organizations eventually. That's not to decry Maxim's
efforts but, in order to be fair, one cannot pin 'altruism' on Maxim's
"service to the League." He was instrumental in starting it and no
doubt was self-possessive about it.

With radio technology still not climbing the steep walls of
exponential leaps and bounds in electronics technology in 1920,
ARRL publications were about the only trade news available to
the everyman hobbyist at that time. There was very little of the
information media bonanza we all enjoy today. Knowledge took
time to spread. League publications helped that since they weren't
involved in patent disputes (many, many in the 1920s, 1930s) or
various groups' attempts to control radio or trade secret
developments that industry was jealously guarding. ARRL pubs
were an EXCELLENT vehicle, a medium for self-promotion and the
League didn't hesitate one bit to keep on promoting itself.

2. There would be NO morse code test since no other radio
service except Maritime Radio used morse code. There
would be NO need to keep a "pool of trained morse radio
operators" for any national need.

True enough - if amateur radio were invented today, it's pretty
unlikely that Morse Code would be a mandatory requirement or play any
significant role - it's a dead technology in the commercial and
military world today (just spies and some covert military ops remain
professional users of morse signalling today). I believe that it
would be a 'special interest' thing for people who wanted to play
around with it.

There are MANY and varied groups of hobbyists involved in
electronics today and many of those existed before personal
computers began. "High fidelity" music/sound was one though it has
shrunk to a niche market now. Robotics in general seems to be
the latest in interest, merging microcontrollers and machinery in lots
of different forms. Keyboard synthesizers had been a big thing with
the first of the lower-cost personal computers, but now simplified into
commercially-available programmable music machines. A close
look into the availability of parts and materials at various smaller
merchandizers on websites will show that there is great interest in
electronics-oriented experimentation and hobby work besides just
radio communications. Merchants are a good barometer of where
the hobby work goes on...it's a cruel market where only the larger
interests survive (regardless of individual favorites)...merchants can't
pay bills with altruism. :-)

I wonder, though, if in the absence of Amateur Radio, something else
might have evolved to meet the need of having extra trained people
available? Perhaps an auxillary (and voluntary) communications corps,
mobilized by the military or local government during times of need?
They might even provide the equipment and training...wouldn't be free,
though - Amateur Radio doesn't cost them much (if anything) to
mobilize.

I personally doubt it on scales larger than local, urban groups.
Radio - on the larger scale of human activities - is an established
medium of communications used by government and business on
a large scale. It's not a mystery or magic that it once appeared to
be in the 1920s or 1930s. Radio is far more widespread in society
of the USA than all of amateur radio in North America.

Use of a radio is ridiculously easy with existing radio equipment of
the 1960s era, not just that of the 2000s. Government and business
HTs on VHF-UHF are more numerous than amateur HTs in the USA
and have been so for more than 30 years. What is needed, if anything,
is the coordination of groups involved in "needy operations," the
control-and-response protocols, organizational structures to get the
various tasks done. That doesn't need specialized "radio training,"
just group organization. Police and fire people use radios every day
without any special classes in radio innards, often with just a few
minutes of personalized instruction.

3. There would be NO tales of olde-tyme ham doings because
there would be no old-timers left to tell the tales...only
pretenders who longed for a simpler (mythical) life way back
before they were born.

Well, there would still be old timers telling tales - just not ham
radio ones

Of course! That's a given. :-)

Especially those bitter about not having the opportunity to do big-
leagues communications on HF a half century ago. bseg, lol

...caught that


4. The Titanic would have sunk anyway and several movies made
about that tragedy.

Unfortunately, yes. And many other unfortunate events may well have
become much disasters or have increased in magnitude, as there would
have been far less people monitoring the bands and detecting /
relaying emergency traffic if the ARS had not existed.

Would there be? That MIGHT be true in 1912, 92 years ago and 2
years before the ARRL existed. The international martime distress
frequency of 500 KHz had not yet been implemented in 1912. The
distance to land was not that great and the radios of that time were
not sensitive in receiving although some of the spark transmitters
where "high power." Had that happened in the much larger Pacific,
farther from land, or in the southern Atlantic or Indian Ocean, it
might have been a whole different story.

Pro-coders are quick on the trigger to trot out OLD tales of "need
to relay traffic" when there is NO need to relay any traffic today or
even four decades ago. GMDSS was implemented by the Maritime
Community to replace the old 500 KHz Autoalarms. That there
haven't been that many maritime disasters since is a tribute to
modern day shipbuilding and education/experience of ship masters.
The highly-touted 500 KHz frequency didn't save the Andrea Doria
from sinking back in 1956...or prevent the collosion with the
Stockholm. The international civil aviation community has had
121.5 MHz as an emergency frequency since 1955, several SSB
voice frequencies on HF since then for over-ocean flights.

Here in Los Angeles we just had the 10th anniversary of the Northridge
Earthquake. Widespread destruction and 60 deaths as a result. The
entire primary electrical power distribution was cut off for hours. The
area IS organized, trained, drilled for this sort of thing and it
functioned
very well using the infrastructure of government-utilities-business
communications, both wireline and radio. Amateur radio did not aid
in that until about two days later. Utility crews had their hands full
trying to restore power (successful), repair damaged lines and streets,
clearing away some toppled buildings. Fire departments rolled as
needed, their stations and vehicle communications functioning fine.
Hospitals and care centers all had emergency electrical power, more
needed than "health and welfare message traffic." We survived.

"Independence Day" would have been
made anyway as a comic science-fiction vehicle for Will Smith
who would later wear black suits and shades.

Uh-huh...even the ARS was unable to save the world from this.

From Hollywood? :-) Try the movie "Frequency."

5. Hallicrafters and National Radio and Heathkit would have gone
belly-up anyway. Collins Radio would have continued on into
the military and commercial radio market without making any
overpriced fancy amateur radios. Yaesu, Kenwood, Icom
would still have been successful in the commercial and
government market. SGC might still exist but in the personal
sailing market. Ten-Tec might not exist.

Without the ARS, one indeed wonders how long companies like
Hallicrafters and National would have survived - after WWII, amateur
radio was a large part of their market.

Not as much as you would believe. Bill Halligan's Chicago company
was busy with both prime and subcontracts for radio equipment,
including the famous BC-610 used in the SCR-299 mobile HF
station. Hallicrafters was busy with making HF radios for the
commercial and government market, not seen in popular ham
magazine ads. National Radio made a name for itself with the HRO
receivers sold also to commercial and government buyers, again not
that much advertisement in magazines. Very unlikely makers of
things got into the radio manufacture arena during WW2, such as
Lewyt Vacuum Cleaner Company who made some of the BC-339
1 KW HF transmitters I QSYed a half century ago! [name was on
the ID tag riveted to the frame...:-) ]

I have always been amazed at the versatility of some of the companies
engaged in WWII production - it would be no small feat for a company
manufacturing vacuum cleaners to retool their lines and train / hire
staff to build a 1 KW radio transmitter to mil spec.

...or the Rock-Ola Jukebox Company cranking out M1 Carbines.

Incredible!


Paul Galvin's Motorola-to-be (also in Chicago) was cranking out
the BC-1000 walkie-talkies (backpack VHF transceiver) of WW2
after stealing Dan Noble from Link, Link doing pioneering in mobile
FM radio for police departments...which led to widespread use of
mobile, channelized FM transceiver for land vehicles. Galvin was
also organizer/central-point for the number 2 priority of all U.S.
WW2 manufacturing (second only to the Manhattan Project) of
quartz crystal units. Better than a half million crystal units a
month made by over 30 U.S. companies for the last three years
of WW2...all for the military communications needs of the USA
and Great Britain.

Could they have hung on by
just selling radio equipment to SWLs listening to foreign commercial
broadcasts?

No. No need. After WW2, there was a big (but not widely advertised)
push in other areas. Motorola went after the police and government
mobile FM radios along with other makers. Collins Radio, already big
enough in military-commercial radio, got a boost from SAC contracts
for single-channel SSB and various military land radios. RCA also got
into the single-channel SSB race, designed some, eventually dropped
out of much of the military market. Civil aviation got going on VHF AM
comm-nav and UHF radionav radios for aircraft after 1955 and the ICAO
decisions-allocations. Military TACAN had morphed into DME for civil
aviation, civil folks having develped VOR for bearing to ground stations.
National Radio Company continued for years to build radio systems
for the USN, past 1970. Collins continues to be a standard for
excellence in aircraft systems.

Many of the makers of today's radios for commercial-government use
aren't advertised in "popular" magazines because that's not a target
market area. ITT in Fort Wayne, Indiana, designed (and redesigned)
the SINCGARS basic small-unit land forces radio...between them and
the former Land Division of General Dynamics in Florida, a quarter
million sets were produced beginning in 1989. That's more than about
a hundred thousand AN/PRC-25s and -77s made since the early 60s
(VHF, channelized, voice only, used in Vietnam and elsewhere). One
of the Hughes Aircraft divisions designed and made a bunch of the
standard HF R/Ts for land forces (AN/PRC-104 for manpack version,
20 W PEP, automatic antenna tuner) beginning in 1984. There's a
whole heaping glob of various military electronics produced by many
since the end of WW2, too many to recount here.

Very little of that is evidenced by ads in ham magazines. Hams
don't buy the stuff new and surplus radios don't generate money for
the original manufacturers. It WILL be familiar to those of us who
have worked in the electronics industry.

Nearly all the "radio" makers of 1945 tried their hand at TV sets for
civilians. Hallicrafters did (with a push-button channel selector!), so
did National Radio (I bought a 7-incher in 1949). Most dropped out
in the intense competition. Eventually all the U.S. makers of TV
sets went belly-up although the Indianapolis division of Thompson-
CSF (the old RCA Corporation plant there) still makes some color
TVs on-shore. General Radio, who long ago quit making radios in
favor of precision instruments, eventually dropped out. I don't know
why Hallicrafters quit or what happened to National Radio other than
concentrating solely on government stuff. Collins Radio is alive and
well but long out of amateur markets.

Icom, Yaesu, and Kenwood probably make more commercial-
government radios than amateur equipment. Those are the triad
from the Far East that beat the commercial pants off North American
communications radio producers...except for some specialty
divisions of General Electric and Motorola (two as an example in
mobile radio market). Some of their commercial, non-amateur
market radios are being sold through chains like HRO, but otherwise
few amateurs get input from ham publications on that side of their
business. All three do good in design and manufacture, are
innovative and dare to hit the market with new things.

Some companies may never have started up in the first place, as their
beginnings were entirely in amateur radio.

Before or after WW2? Bill Halligan was a ham, also Art Collins, just
two early examples. Collins Radio survived and prospered, Halli-
crafters didn't. The reasons aren't simplistic. Business, to survive
and grow, needs a lot of things and niche markets aren't successful
for the ambitious growth plans of some. Diversification may be
necessary as was the growth of General Electric Company and its
many divisions...RCA Corp was spun out of some of those and
eventually GE bought RCA back (irony!). :-)

Whether or not specialty or niche-market companies survive depends
on the founders and what they want to do. They may develop a
fantastic reputation through clever PR and create an intense, loyal
following, but the eventual color of bookkeeping ink can catch up to
them. Adulation of customers doesn't pay bills...customers have to
keep buying, write checks, not write peans of praise. Business is
TOUGH.

[ to be continued... ]

LHA / WMD

In article , Leo
writes:

Len, I must admit that I fully agree. It took me over a half hour to
read through and absorb all of the information that you presented in
your three replies on this subject. That's an excellent depth of
knowledge you have there...

Well, memory I still got...and a few years in the radio-electronics
industry. Glad to share it.

I learned a great deal, stand corrected on a couple of points, and am
following up on the Web on some of your referencess for more
information - fascinating stuff!

The Thomas H. White early (USA) radio history "papers" are
most interesting, putting into one place where I've seen it before
in many different texts...plus some oddities like the first radio
circuit to Catalina Island just off the Los Angeles coastline (not
seen before). White has lots of digitized photos to go with the
texts.

The Corning Frequency Control (quartz crystal making division)
website has a fascinating contributed paper (deep in its archives)
about the tremendous effort here to make quartz crystal units
during WW2. That one is written by a retired PhD who was part
of the war effort. Imagine being #2 on the national priority list for
strategic materials, second only to the atomic bomb! :-)

Motorola has supplied some of its history previously and reproed
some of that on its website. Paul Galvin's own book-biography
details more about the WW2 "handie-talkie" (in use before Dec 7
1941) and the "walkie-talkie" developed by Dan Noble. Noble was
lauded by the IEEE History Center for his pioneering design of
mobile and portable FM radio (the old SCR-300 was not crystal
controlled, but VFOed...a "calibrate" crystal oscillator checked the
dial hairline position...a bit tough on design considering the
environment it had to meet).

National Radio Co. put out a rather thick booklet of photos of its
first 50 years in the radio business...still have that along with a
"golden rule" (gold anodized 12" ruler) they gave away. Did you
know that one of the old National receivers was called a "Thrill
Box?!?" Yup. Ought to make the purists in here cringe all over!
[Bill Halligan should have thought of that...might have livened up
his Chicago works towards the end]

The "surplus restorer" fanatics have lots and lots of old information
that is fascinating although some ascribe uneven importance and
try to second-guess some of the reasons for doing designs the
way they were done. One of the U.S. cosmetic companies in
Noo Yawk Zitty once decided to make R-390 receivers on a mass
Request-For-Bid by the government on later production (legal, the
government owned the design originally done by Collins). Once
the production chiefs saw the complexity of it - and differences
from their cosmetics containers - they decided to simply buy some
R-390s from another source, change the nameplates, and sell those
at their too-low bid price. :-)

I've had the opportunity to meet with some of the engineering folks
in this corner of the country and hear about projects in the works.
One is Hughes Aircraft's design of the PRC-104 HF transceiver
(I've been a HAC employee twice, once at El Segundo, again at
Canoga Park) circa the early 1980s. That's still in service and
comes with a vehicular mounting power amplifier for greater PEP
and a higher-power antenna tuner. The manpack basic R/T
includes an automatic antenna tuner! I finally got my own copy of
the TM on it a few months ago...from, of all things, a U.S. Army
CD! The world and military all changing. :-)

I've had lots of opportunites to see (up close and personal) the
rest of the radio world...including the U.S. Army field comms for
regiment size units at Fort Irwin, CA, the Desert Warfare Training
Center. That was in 1989 and didn't have any idea of what lay
ahead for applying such training a year and a half later in the
first Gulf War.

The SINCGARS program is fascinating from a design standpoint
in that it pulled together some totally tough things for a nasty
environmental range...such as crystal stability and being able
to frequency hop 10 times per second and remain locked in the
net. ITT Fort Wayne did a tremendous job on that (in my book)
and did an encore when they improved it to more functions in
half the bulk. Harris up in NY state is doing a similar radio for
UK military, compatible with the PRC-119 family. It's outlined on
ITT's website. General Dynamics Land Division did some of the
production and they had a website on it once...that division went
bye-bye when they lost a production contract follow-on.

One only needs to keep eyes and ears open wherever one is.
Lots and lots of information on the Internet now and even more
in the other-than-ham-radio-history-by-a-large-US-club histories
such as the old Electronics magazine (a biweekly from McGraw-
Hill). It's surprising how MUCH information is available that is
totally cleared for public distribution!

Much appreciated!

If you need some links, let me know...preferrably in private...that
way it isn't messed up by the hecklers. :-)

LHA / WMD

The issue is it was not invented today. So, what's your point??? You could
say this statement about any subject. It's too, broad in texture. Narrow
your point or I won't give you a grade.
"Len Over 21" wrote in message
...
Alternative Universe Probable Truisms -

1. There would be NO ARRL to provide "guidance" and direction.
That expired before St. Hiram expired. [in this alternative
universe] Newington, CT, would have no museum.

2. There would be NO morse code test since no other radio
service except Maritime Radio used morse code. There
would be NO need to keep a "pool of trained morse radio
operators" for any national need.

3. There would be NO tales of olde-tyme ham doings because
there would be no old-timers left to tell the tales...only
pretenders who longed for a simpler (mythical) life way back
before they were born.

4. The Titanic would have sunk anyway and several movies made
about that tragedy. "Independence Day" would have been
made anyway as a comic science-fiction vehicle for Will Smith
who would later wear black suits and shades.

5. Hallicrafters and National Radio and Heathkit would have gone
belly-up anyway. Collins Radio would have continued on into
the military and commercial radio market without making any
overpriced fancy amateur radios. Yaesu, Kenwood, Icom
would still have been successful in the commercial and
government market. SGC might still exist but in the personal
sailing market. Ten-Tec might not exist.

6. Radio broadcasting would have become successful and tele-
vision broadcasting even more so. "Overseas radiotelephone"
would still exist via the first HF SSB radios in the 1930s. The
first VHF FM mobiles would still be tested by various police
departments in the late 1930s. The military would still be the
first HT user courtesy of Galvin (later Motorola)...and the back-
pack radio ("walkie-talkie" again from Galvin)...and the radio
relay (WW2) and VHF repeater (Korean War) uses...and single-
channel HF SSB (USAF, post WW2)...and aircraft VHF AM
(WW2). HF RTTY circuits would have been formed before WW2
and continued on in wide-bandwidth HF SSB, later to have
much higher data rates from transferrence of modem and
information theory techniques. Cross-country microwave radio
relay would still exist for hundreds of telephone circuits and
many TV circuits on a single link. Government and business
would still have tens of thousands of HT and mobile radios
courtesy of the military WW2 legacy and the invention of
transistors and integrated circuits. Communications satellites
would still exist as soon as rockets could put them up there
(first published paper on that by an up-coming science fiction
writer named Arthur C. Clarke, then a "boffin" in the RAF right
after WW2). All sorts of watercraft would have VHF radios in
harbors due to the success of small land VHF radios. Radio-
sondes by the hundreds of thousands would be used up
annually using simple one-tube (pencil triode in a sheet metal
cavity) transmitters in low microwave frequencies. The cellular
telephone (past legal age in our universe) would still exist by
the millions, morphed into a single-hand package with built-in
video capability. There would still be "headphone radio"
receivers for personal use, sometimes merged with CD players.
"Wireless" would take on a new meaning as hundreds of
thousands of data transceivers linked computers without wires.
"Shortwave" broadcasting would still be trying out digital
sound and finding out that it works despite dire warnings of
impossibility. The U.S. military would still be using digital VHF
manpack radios with encryption for voice and data for a total of
a quarter million sets. None of the preceding required any
"ham radio pioneering."

7. Arthur Godfrey would still get his TV show cancelled. Barry
Goldwater would still unsuccessfully run for U.S. President.
[the fate of Julius LaRosa is unknown in this universe]

8. The Federal Communications Commission would still exist on
approximately the same scale and still trying to privatize
commercial operator testing to save money. Radio use by
non-hams after 1934 grew sufficiently large to require the
agency to continue.

9. "CB" would have been created anyway, a fore-runner of the
license-free personal radio wave of the future. [it is 46 years
old in our universe which already has FRS, R-C, cordless
telephones and wireless gizmos of all kinds]

10. Tens of thousands of electronic/radio hobbyists would be
bereft of Title, Status, Privilege of the Royal-equivalent.
Amateur Radio License that allowed them to add a callsign
behind their names to show how good and expert they were in
"radio." That would make it a bitter scene with many more
fights of the amateurs (minority) with professionals (majority).

LHA / WMD

In article , "Dan Mattingly N0FQN"
writes:

The issue is it was not invented today. So, what's your point??? You could
say this statement about any subject. It's too, broad in texture. Narrow
your point or I won't give you a grade.

Oh, wow, another LITERALIST joins the group grope!

You really don't understand the context of the original subject
question or that alternate realities are INFINITE and that any and
all such alternatives are as valid, true, etc., as any other?

To sum it up, Mistah Supreme Grade Literalist, it can be said that,
in an ALTERNATE REALITY, the rest of the radio world would have
gone on, advanced, improved, innovated, invented, grown by leaps
and bounds WITHOUT amateur radio...just as it did in this present
reality when amateur radio does exist.

You want to "give me a grade" that is an "F" because you don't
like to hear about the Rest Of The Radio World?

Go ahead. The rest of the radio world doesn't really care because
it long ago TOOK OVER all of the innovation, invention, development,
pioneering, etc., etc., etc. You don't want to believe that? Look
around you past the League propaganda with its history of sinning by
omission in the "history of (amateur) radio," implying that amateurs
"pioneered" everything (they didn't).

ARRL wasn't even the first national radio club in the USA. That
"distinction" belongs to the Radio Club of America...still in existance
(as it was five years before the League was formed) but no longer
favoring amateur activities over other things in all of radio.

Back in the beginning of "radio," generally accredited by historians
to be 1896 (108 years ago), there were neither amateurs OR
professionals. Hardly anyone knew anything and it couldn't have
been a big business. Heck and darn (expletives are not allowed
in here lest the Puritans become offended and outraged), early
radio was hardly advanced in "radio" technology by 1920, two years
after WW1 ended...and Ed Armstrong received his superheterodyne
receiver patent (applied for 2 years earlier)...and ol' Hiram lobbied
for the return of amateur radio activity (thereby achieving immortality
and sainthood via the League).

The original question was conjecture on What Would Happen IFF
(thats "If and only If" in literary conjecture spelling) Amateur Radio
were "invented" TODAY instead of being shut down past 1919.

Try some concentration on CONJECTURE, not some "lecturing"
based on what happened in the present reality...with all the
ass-umptions of your "instructorship" and "ability to give grades."

I say the REST OF THE RADIO WORLD (a heckuva lot bigger
than amateur radio can ever be) would have gone on ANYWAY
because hardly any of that growth, innovation, invention, etc., is
NOT based on amateur activity. I've been IN that rest of the radio
world for half a century and have very little evidence that any of it's
growth was ever due to amateurism.

Prove me "wrong" about an ALTERNATE REALITY with your
"instructorship" and "teaching credentials" and "ability to 'give'
grades."

Pffft. Consider yourself fired from the class, the key to the teacher's
lounge taken away, your parking space eliminated. No pension.
Take it up with the Bored of Education in the Alternate Reality.

LHA / WMD

(Len Over 21) wrote in message ...
In article , Leo

Much appreciated!

If you need some links, let me know...preferrably in private...that
way it isn't messed up by the hecklers. :-)

Of course, "in private", Lennie...

What's "surprising" here?

An "anonymous" poster appears to "support" Lennie, and Lennie
"replies" to several of his posts by re-quoting the entie post without
comment.

Uh huh...Proabably first cousing to "MegHz", and "Harvey the
Rabbit", among others.

Lennie's slipping, folks...Let's bid him adieu while he's still
"aware" enough of his surroundings to appreciate it.

Steve, K4YZ