Hello,
I hope everyone who's interested took time to watch Frank's (W3LPL)
presentation on the history of transoceanic communications. Fascinating and
informative.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=pLN0MMxCvlc
When I got interested in ham radio back in 1957 I heard of a book called "200
Meters and Down" about the early days before WW II.
I didn't read it until recently. Each year the ARRL sends me a $10 birthday
coupon for their store and this year I used it toward the $16 quality paperback
book, published in 1936.
It's been very interesting reading. Many of the issues were different back
then, but some are still the same (builders/experimenters versus appliance
operators, for example). And the author, Clinton DeSoto, was remarkably
prescient about distant future developments.
In the final chapter, "Whither Ham Radio?" he mentions things like single
sideband and television. And he says this:
"Many writers prophesy that one day you will be able to see what is going on
anywhere in the world at any moment. They say, too, that one day you will be
able to converse, instantaneously, with any person anywhere on earth, be he on
a street corner in Marseilles ... on an air freighter hovering above
Vladivostok ... in the wilds of Sierra de Leone ... on an ice floe near Little
America ... aboard a spaceship bound for Venus."
Well, we haven't gotten to the Venus excursions yet (back then they thought
Venus had an Earth-like climate), but the rest is already history. He didn't
realize that satellites or broadband submarine cables would be needed, but he
was on the right track. And I doubt if he had iPhones in mind. No one did
except maybe Dick Tracy.
73,
Ken, AB1J
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