Tag: history

  • What Is ARRL? History, Hiram Percy Maxim, and the 2024 Controversy

    ARRL is amateur radio’s largest membership organization. Here’s who founded it, what it actually does, and why the 2024 ransomware attack still stings.

  • 1901: The Wireless Pioneers Who Started It All

    Part of our The Evolution of Amateur Radio timeline series. There was no such thing as a licensed amateur radio operator in 1901. There was no FCC, no call signs, and no rules about who could key up on what frequency. What there was, was a small group of obsessive tinkerers who believed you could…

  • 1912: The Radio Act and the Birth of Licensed Amateur Radio

    Part of our The Evolution of Amateur Radio timeline series. The sinking of the Titanic in April 1912 is usually credited as the tipping point that forced Congress’s hand, though the interference problems from a decade of unregulated wireless had already been building pressure for years. Whatever the final push was, the result was the…

  • 1923: The HF DX Breakthrough That Changed Everything

    Part of our The Evolution of Amateur Radio timeline series. Remember that the government handed amateurs the shortwave spectrum above 1.5 MHz back in 1912 because they figured it was useless for anything but local contacts. In 1923, hams proved everyone wrong, and in the process turned amateur radio from a local curiosity into a…

  • 1934: How the FCC Took Over Amateur Radio Regulation

    Part of our The Evolution of Amateur Radio timeline series. By the early 1930s, amateur radio had already changed regulatory hands once, from the Department of Commerce to the newly formed Federal Radio Commission under the Radio Act of 1927. That arrangement didn’t last long either. In 1934, Congress passed the Communications Act, creating the…

  • 1945: How WWII Shut Down Amateur Radio, and How It Came Back

    Part of our The Evolution of Amateur Radio timeline series. This is the second time in this timeline that a world war forced amateur radio off the air entirely. It happened in WWI, and it happened again in WWII, only this time the shutdown lasted longer and the technology amateurs came back to was completely…

  • 1946: The 2 Meter Band Opens and VHF Takes Off

    Part of our The Evolution of Amateur Radio timeline series. The HF bands reopened in late 1945, but the bigger long-term shift for amateur radio happened just after, when the FCC reshuffled the VHF spectrum and handed hams the band that would eventually become the backbone of local and regional communication: 2 meters. A new…

  • 1950s-70s: 70cm Opens and Repeaters Change Local Ham Radio

    Part of our The Evolution of Amateur Radio timeline series. Two meters got amateurs into VHF in 1946, but the real transformation of local ham radio took another three decades to arrive, once hams pushed into UHF and figured out what to do with repeaters. This period covers a lot of ground, from new band…

  • 1987: GMRS Established as a Licensed Family Radio Service

    Part of our The Evolution of Amateur Radio timeline series. Not everyone who wants a two-way radio wants to study for an amateur license or learn Morse code or memorize band plans. The FCC recognized that gap decades ago, and GMRS is one of the results: a licensed service on UHF frequencies near amateur’s 70cm…

  • 2000: MURS Opens Up License-Free VHF for the Public

    Part of our The Evolution of Amateur Radio timeline series. FRS gave the public a license-free option on UHF in 1996. Four years later, the FCC did essentially the same thing on VHF, opening the Multi-Use Radio Service in 2000 and rounding out the trio of personal radio services that sit alongside amateur radio today:…

  • 1996: FRS Launches, No License Required

    Part of our The Evolution of Amateur Radio timeline series. By the mid 1990s, the FCC had already created GMRS as a licensed family service, but it still required an application, a fee, and a wait. In 1996, the Family Radio Service arrived to close that gap completely: no license, no fee, no waiting. Just…

  • 2001: D-STAR Published, the First Ham-Specific Digital Voice Mode

    Part of our The Evolution of Amateur Radio timeline series. Every digital voice mode I operate today, D-STAR on my FTX-1, DMR on my AnyTone, all traces back to a research project the Japanese government funded in the late 1990s. The result was D-STAR, and it holds a distinction none of the other digital voice…

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