‘Wireless Vistas: how amateur experimenters made sport of Marconi’s dream.’

‘Wireless Vistas: how amateur experimenters made sport of Marconi’s dream.’

When Guglielmo Marconi was granted the first patent for his wireless telegraphy in 1896 he saw it only as a telecommunication technology - a direct replacement for the existing point-to-point technology of wired telegraphy. He saw the benefits of wireless being used whilst mobile and not needing long runs of costly cable. Marconi made his fortune by selling his technology to shipping lines, newspapers, and other commercial customers. However, the new medium of wireless was not like wired telegraphy in two important respects. Unlike the wired telegraph, Marconi’s wireless had deficiencies in secrecy and reliability. These may have been problems for Marconi, but for other amateur radio experimenters around the world they became sport. Amateur experimenters challenged Marconi’s vision of a private point-to-point wireless and instead used wireless for recreation and competition, to contact as many people as they could. The problems that amateur experimenters caused for official broadcasts highlighted the broadcast nature of radio waves and pushed wireless towards acceptance as a mass medium. To this day amateur radio operators, ‘play radio’ – seeking as many contacts as they can and trying to achieve the best transmission distances possible across the variable radio bands with their mercurial propagation qualities. Sports, competitions, and awards are all based on these ‘faults’. When an amateur operator transmits ‘CQ’ (calling all stations) they do not know who, if anyone, will come back to them and where they will be located. Using a mix of interviews and archival research I show how transgressing boundaries of privacy and distance formed the basis of amateur radio practice.

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