What changed
A short history of amateur radio — edited Aug 29, 2026 by Unknown editor
This is the first recorded version, so every line is shown as added. Note: Imported from content/wiki
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Amateur radio is older than broadcasting. Within a few years of Marconi turning Hertz's laboratory
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curiosity into a communication system in the 1890s, self-taught experimenters were building
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spark-gap stations at home from magazine plans, and by 1910 the airwaves over the United States
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were an unregulated free-for-all.
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## Beginnings, 1900–1912
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- Instructions for building simple wireless sets appeared in general-interest magazines from about
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1901 — *Amateur Work* published a Hertz-based system that November.
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- The press reported boys building working stations from scratch: two Boston eighth-graders with an
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eight-mile link in 1904, two Rhode Island teenagers operating from a chicken coop in 1906.
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- Commercially made transmitter/receiver sets reached American experimenters in 1905.
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- Columbia University students formed the Wireless Telegraph Club of Columbia University in 1908 —
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the earliest recorded amateur radio club. The Wireless Institute of Australia followed in 1910.
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By 1910 there were thousands of amateur transmitters, most of them broad, crude spark sets that
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smeared energy across the spectrum and interfered with commercial and naval stations.
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## The regulation that created the hobby
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The **Radio Act of 1912**, passed in the aftermath of the *Titanic* sinking, was the turning point.
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It began federal licensing of American operators and stations, and confined private stations to
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wavelengths of 200 metres and shorter — frequencies the commercial services of the day considered
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worthless. Estimates suggest the number of US hobbyists fell by as much as 88%.
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Those who stayed discovered that short waves refract off the ionosphere and travel around the
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world. Amateurs, not industry, opened the shortwave spectrum.
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## Where "ham" comes from
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The best-supported explanation is the least flattering: in wired telegraphy a "ham" was a
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heavy-handed, clumsy operator, and professional telegraphers applied the taunt to the amateurs
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crowding the spectrum. The amateurs kept the word.
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You will also hear a much-repeated story about a 1911 Harvard club station "HYMAN-ALMY-MURRAY"
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shortened to HAM; there is no contemporary evidence for it. And "ham" is not an acronym for
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anything, which is why it is properly written lower-case.
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## Wars, and the transatlantic tests
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- **1917** — Congress ordered all US amateurs off the air for the First World War, and required
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equipment to be dismantled. Amateur operation resumed on 1 October 1919.
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- **1921** — American amateurs challenged British counterparts to hear them across the Atlantic.
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US signals were copied in the UK, and in December 1922 a British amateur was heard in the US.
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- **27 November 1923** — the first two-way transatlantic amateur contact, between Fred Schnell in
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the US and Léon Deloy in France. Within a year, contacts spanned the Americas, New Zealand and
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Britain.
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- **1927–28** — the first International Radiotelegraph Conference in Washington established the
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amateur bands at 80/75, 40, 20 and 10 metres and the call-sign prefix system still in use.
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- **1933** — Robert Moore, W6DEI, began single-sideband voice experiments on 75 metres.
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- **1941–45** — amateur operation was suspended again for the Second World War; the War Emergency
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Radio Service used amateur skills at home, and afterwards surplus military sets such as the ARC-5
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filled thousands of shacks.
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## The modern service
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- **1950s** — amateurs pioneered single-sideband for HF voice, and kept US personnel in Antarctica
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in touch with home during the International Geophysical Year.
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- **1961** — OSCAR 1, the first amateur satellite, launched four years after Sputnik and started a
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worldwide series. See [satellites](/wiki/operating/satellites).
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- **1979** — the World Administrative Radio Conference added 30, 17 and 12 metres, still called the
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WARC bands.
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- **1970s–80s** — repeaters and FM handhelds made local operating routine, and packet radio put
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automated digital messaging on the air before most people had internet.
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- **1990s** — PCs and sound cards brought PSK31, DSP and software-defined radio into ordinary
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stations.
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- **2003–07** — the WRC allowed member countries to drop Morse testing; the FCC removed it for all
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US license classes effective 23 February 2007. Morse remains popular by choice — see
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[CW and Morse](/wiki/operating/cw-and-morse).
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- **2017 onward** — [FT8](/wiki/operating/digital-modes/ft8) made worldwide contacts practical from
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apartments and through solar minima.
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Through it all, amateurs have carried traffic when other systems failed: the September 11 attacks,
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Hurricane Katrina, the 2008 Sichuan earthquake, and Hurricane Maria, where the Red Cross requested
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50 amateur operators for Puerto Rico. See [emergency communications](/wiki/emergency).
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## The bargain
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The through-line is the same in every era: amateurs get spectrum in exchange for advancing the
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radio art, training operators, and providing communication when nothing else works. See
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[why get licensed](/wiki/getting-started/why-get-licensed) for how that bargain looks today.
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## Sources and further reading
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- [History of amateur radio](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_amateur_radio) — Wikipedia;
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the general overview this page draws its chronology from.
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- [Ham Radio History (W2PA)](https://w2pa.net/HRH/) — Chris Codella, W2PA: a century of amateur
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radio told from the original *QST* and contemporary sources, article by article.
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- [United States Early Radio History](https://earlyradiohistory.us/index.html) — Thomas H. White's
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archive of articles and primary extracts covering 1897–1927, including
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[Pioneering Amateurs (1900–1917)](https://earlyradiohistory.us/sec012.htm) and
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[Amateur Radio After World War One (1919–1925)](https://earlyradiohistory.us/sec015.htm).