Amateur radio history

Throughout the history of amateur radio, amateur radio enthusiasts have made significant contributions to science, engineering, industry, and social services. Research by amateur radio operators has founded new industries, built economies, empowered nations, and saved lives in times of emergency.

Amateur radio is a hobby and, by law, completely non-commercial. Individual amateur "ham" radio operators pursue the avocation for personal pleasure through building their own radio stations and communicating with their fellows globally, and for self-improvement via study and practice of electronics, computers, and radio and TV wave behavior. Radio amateurs are, thus, "amateurs" in the true sense of the word: pursuit of an activity only for the love of it. Radio amateurs can not broadcast or transmit music and other general public entertainment programming. The amateur radio use of the air waves is for personal satisfaction and for forwarding the "state of the art" of electronics and communication techniques. Amateur radio operations can be detected in designated bands throughout the radio spectrum, using a variety of modulation methods including Morse code, voice and digital modes, and image modes such as television and facsimile.

Amateur radio came into being after radio waves (proved to exist by Heinrich Rudolf Hertz in 1888) were adapted into a communication system in the 1890s by the Italian inventor Guglielmo Marconi. In the late 19th century there had been amateur wired telegraphers setting up their own interconnected telegraphic systems. Following Marconi's success many people began experimenting with this new form of "wireless telegraphy". Information on "Hertzian wave" based wireless telegraphy systems (the name "radio" would not come into common use until several years later) was sketchy, with magazines such as the November, 1901 issue of Amateur Work showing how to build a simple system based on Hertz' early experiments. Magazines show a continued progress by amateurs including a 1904 story on two Boston, Massachusetts 8th graders constructing a transmitter and receiver with a range of eight miles and a 1906 story about two Rhode Island teenagers building a wireless station in a chicken coop. In the US the first commercially produced wireless telegraphy transmitter / receiver systems became available to experimenters and amateurs in 1905. In 1908, students at Columbia University formed the Wireless Telegraph Club of Columbia University, now the Columbia University Amateur Radio Club. This is the earliest recorded formation of an amateur radio club, collegiate or otherwise. In 1910, the Amateurs of Australia formed, now the Wireless Institute of Australia.

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