Wax nostalgic about and learn from the history of early electronics. See articles
from QST, published December 1915 - present (visit ARRL
for info). All copyrights hereby acknowledged.
I
have often stated that some of the most enthusiastic and capable
engineers and technicians I have had the honor working with were
Hams. As evidenced by this ad in the February 1941 edition of QST,
heads of corporations hold the same view. None other than the president
of Zenith Radio Corporation, Mr. E.J. MacDonald, Jr., thought enough
of the talent residing within the amateur radio community to appeal
directly to them with this full-page ad titled, "Amateurs - Your
Thoughts May Be Worth Money." What makes this advertisement even
more interesting is that it specifically wanted Hams with ideas
about the newfangled thing called Frequency Modulation.
ZENITH RADIO CORPORATION
AMATEURS - Your Thoughts May Be
Worth Money
-- 6001 DICKENS AVENUE -- CHICAGO
Office of E. F. McDonald,
Jr. President
January 15, 1941
TO
RADIO AMATEURS:
Frequency modulation is here - but where
are the amateurs?
For 25 years this company, founded
by amateurs, has encouraged the "hams" of the United States to bring
their ideas.
As recently as the summer of 1939 we invited
the entire fraternity to give us ideas on loops and we have sent
reprints of the best published information on receiving loops available
in the world today to hundreds of amateurs who wrote in for further
information. We did not receive back very many useful ideas but
after all the loop, which revolutionized radio last year, was old
in the art and its sudden importance was due to rediscovery by the
radio industry.
Now we have frequency modulation which
is a really more important and more difficult field to furrow. This
new art was introduced to the world in 1936 after 13 years of development
in Major Armstrong's Laboratories. It has been introduced to the
receiver buying public during the past year and many of its features
have been publicized by the amateur magazines for many months. But,
where are the amateurs?
Only a handful of frequency modulation
receivers are known to us to be operating in Chicago and we have
kept a very worthwhile program on the air for more than 17 hours
a day and will continue to broadcast this program from now on. Other
programs are being broadcast in other parts of the country and it
is all high frequency experimental broadcasting.
In
the last 3 months we have made 3 startling new discoveries about
frequency modulation and the features of these inventions have been
incorporated into our radio sets. But everyone of these inventions
originated in our own laboratories because we haven't heard a peep
out of any "ham" on the subject.
This field is new and is
wide open. Where are the amateurs?
RF Cafe began life in 1996 as "RF Tools" in an AOL screen name web space totaling
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the time and bandwidth was a scarce commodity. Dial-up modems blazed along at 14.4 kbps
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