HIST620/Early radio/Draft

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Producing the "amateur" in pre-regulation U.S. radio, 1899-1912

Contents 1 Introduction 2 Early radio and histories of regulation 2.1 The sensory experience of early radio 3 Histories of regulation 4 Hobbyist discourse about radio regulation, 1909-1914 5 Exploring the gap between the Radio Act of 1912 and its implementation 6 Conclusion 7 Random stuff

Introduction

In 1909, Popular Electricity ran a short human-interest story about a new radio club at Princeton, the first of its kind at a college or university (TODO cite). Accompanied by a photo of several boys operating a wireless telegraphy set in what appears to be a dormitory lounge (TODO include image), the article describes a heated on-air chess rivalry between the Princeton undergrads and the enlisted men at the Navy Yard TODO miles away in Brooklyn. The students expressed hope that other colleges would soon start up radio clubs so that they could create a network to discuss "athletic matters" and share information among debating societies. Though their friendly connection to the Navy men suggests that radio contact might help diminish the barriers of socio-economic difference, the students seem to regard it as little more than a disposable convenience. They cheerfully imagine a day when they will be able to "drop the Jack Binnses of the harbor and converse only with our own" (36). (fn Jack Binns was a popular hero of early radio who was celebrated in the press for saving the lives of everyone aboard a sinking ship by fearlessly operating his wireless telegraph for 30 hours straight while the water rose around his ankles. See Douglas, 1987 204.)

The image of Ivy League students and Navy recruits exchanging chess moves over the air offers a productive point of entry into the early radio period. In the years between Marconi's first public demonstrations of wireless at the America's Cup (TODO double check) in 1899 and the passage of the Radio Act of 1912, the technologies, economies, norms, discourses, and practices of radio communication were inclusive of a wide variety of different stakeholders and modes of participation. In contrast to wireline telegraphy and telephony, which were already domesticated for business and personal use, early radio was considered a quirky technology of little practical value outside of ship-to-ship and ship-to-shore maritime communication. (TODO cite; For more discussion of the domestication of the telegraph see Standage) As a result, radio, then referred to as "wireless," was left to the hobbyists, experimenters, and entrepreneurs, an amorphous population occasionally described as "amateurs."

Rising in tandem with the professionalization of many areas of work during the late-19th century (TODO reword?), the term "amateur" was used to describe the creative practices pursued by non-professionals during their leisure time. (footnote? TODO) Popular magazines and how-to books provided guidance for countless electro-mechanical interests: photography, film-making, telegraphy, telephony, electric lighting, automobiles, and x-rays. Although few of these hobbies promised immediate commercial gain, amateur activity offered hands-on experience and practical skill, two generalizable assets increasingly in demand among both the military and private sectors. While the meaning of "professional" was fairly rigid in the early radio period, the "amateur" category remained comparatively open-ended. Off-duty Navy men using their ship's radio apparatus to play chess, for example, could be described as "amateur" operators for the duration of their game.

In addition to the thrill of learning to operate a new technology, amateur radio promised access to the semi-exclusive social world of the "ether," a mysterious and invisible communicative space penetrating walls and ceilings that could only be discerned by a skilled operator manipulating an visually impressive arrangement of sparks, coils, wires, crystals, and antennae. The use of wireless transmitters to broadcast news and entertainment programming-what is now generally referred to as "radio"-was not yet widely adopted and radio of this time was primarily a medium for the transmission and reception of Morse code. The propagation of wireless signals was unpredictable and operators could never be certain who might overhear the messages they sent out over the air. While this lack of privacy limited the commercial potential of wireless, it provided a lively discursive space for hobbyists to make contact outside of the conventional boundaries of geographic and social hierarchy.

As the cost and complexity of building a working radio set fell during the early radio period, reliable wireless communication became an increasingly crucial tool for maritime safety. Navy officials worried that amateur activity might interfere with distress signals and began to petition Congress for military authority over the ether as early as 190TODO. Calls for government intervention eventually culminated in two pieces of legislation on the subject of radio: the Wireless Ship Act (TODO check name) of 1910 and the Radio Act of 1912. With the passage of the Radio Act, the Department of Commerce required everyone operating a radio station in the U.S., no matter how small, to obtain a license. Under the new policy, the term "amateur" was no longer a catch-all description for any non-military, non-commercial radio activity. Instead, it indicated a specific, bounded population of licensed operators running low-power equipment on shortwave frequencies.

The transformation of the term "amateur" was mirrored in the popular discourse of hobby radio operators. Although synchronous wireless communication, the central activity of amateur radio, is essentially ephemeral and left few material traces, an accompanying written discourse survives in the pages of hobbyist periodicals such as Popular Electricity and the Electro-Importing Company Catalog. Hobbyist opinion on the subject of radio regulation reveals a gradual shift in attitude regarding the term "amateur" and the possibility of government intervention.(footnote TODO evidenced here by a series of articles published in Popular Electricity from 1909-1914) Whereas early articles seldom described readers as "amateurs" without qualification, the looming threat of regulation prompted some hobbyists to strategically adopt "amateur" as a unifying identity marker. By rallying around a single term, the diverse population of amateur operators became a recognizable political constituency that needed to be addressed in the production of legislation. On one hand, this tactic was successful as it lead to the production of the "amateur radio operator," the only class of technical hobbyists explicitly protected by an act of Congress. Yet, at the same time, the newly narrowed definition of "amateur" effectively un-named all of those who would not (or could not) adhere to the bureaucratic requirements of the circumscribed category.

Conventionally, early radio amateurs are thought to have been primarily white, middle class, and male. This characterisation is soundly supported by government records of licensed amateurs, archives of early amateur radio clubs, and the photographic representation of radio hobbyists in the popular press. At best, however, these archives do not represent the total potential population of early radio culture nor the variation within it. The prevalence of ethnically-marked surnames, especially of Jewish, Irish, and Italian descent, recalls the instability of whiteness as a racial category in the U.S. at this time. (TODO working toward whiteness.) Furthermore, the "un-named" operators-those hobbyists, tinkerers, and experimenters not included in the newly rationalized "amateur" class-will not be found among these artifacts. They either operated one of the countless "receive-only" stations that were exempt from the licensing requirement or they refused to participate (or were prevented from participating) in the rituals required to obtain a license.

TODO image ("Waiting for the first message", Popular Electricity, December, 1909, pp. 487)

A photograph published in the December 1909 issue of Popular Electricity magazine depicts an aerial antenna strung in the branches of a tree on Middle Island in Lake Superior near Marquat, Michigan (TODO fig n). The antenna is connected to an experimental receiving-only station operated by an "inventor" and his "friend" who is described simply as being "also a wireless enthusiast" (487). Although the person in the photograph is dressed and coiffed in conventionally female attire, the article says nothing about her gender. The text details the exciting achievements being made by the male inventor but makes no mention of how the station might serve the interests of his friend. What are her wireless practices and how are they enriched by the construction of a new station?

TODO image ("Wireless on Mule Back", Popular Electricity, November, 1909, pp. 411)

In the November issue of the same magazine, another intriguing image appeared alongside an article about the use of portable wireless apparatus "in the field" by military personnel (410-412) (TODO fig n). The photograph depicts a mule laden with a large wooden box containing a wireless radio set. Standing off to the side of the animal but still posing for the photograph, is a apparently African-American man holding the mule's reins. He is dressed in a workman's coat and hat and appears to be squinting in the sunlight. No mention is made of the man in the text. His relationship to the animal and its wireless equipment is not clear. Is he an engineer, a wireless operator, an assistant, or just someone nearby who could keep the mule still while the photographer captured its image?

The presence of these two individuals in the pages of Popular Electricity provokes questions that cannot be easily answered by materials generally available in an archive. The black man with the mule may have been an active operator, taking to the air on a regular basis to converse with other amateurs around the country, the identifying markers of race and class obscured by the transformation of speech into electro-magnetic code. The woman on Middle Island may have been a dedicated aural explorer, spending countless hours strapped into a pair of headphones listening in on the aetherial chatter detected by her towering antenna. Whether or not these speculative descriptions are true, neither person is likely to be found on the membership roll of any wireless club or the licensing records of the Department of Commerce. They are the unquantifiable, invisible, and often inaudible radio operators who were effectively un-named by the Radio Act of 1912. And yet it is the promise and possibility of their undetected presence that charged the ether with a sense of mystery and power.

Speculation about these individuals and the unknown population they represent demands a circuitous path beginning with an exploration of the period's technology. What was the sensory experience of sending and receiving wireless communication in the pre-regulation era? What specific affordances might have contributed to the regulation of the amateur radio operator as a special protected class of technical hobbyist? What possibilities did this arrangement of technologies afford for different modes of participation? Reading the popular and legal discourses leading up to the regulation of the amateur in the context of this technology reveals several productive gaps, absences, and blindspots where the un-named operators might be found.

Of course, identifying areas of potential and promise in early radio is not meant to suggest that the ether was in practice a more radically democratic space than is currently known. In fact, as the Princeton students make clear, a temporary transgression of social boundaries through radio does not necessarily lead to a transformative experience for all operators. Even after many games of chess with their counterparts at the Naval Yard, the students still looked forward to a day when they could ditch the seamen and converse solely with "their own." (TODO cite.) Even in the face of rich possibility, traditional structures of power remained strong. Ambivalence cuts both ways, however, and the promises of early radio also seem to undermine the authority of government regulation. As forcefulness as the legal language may have been, the unruly wireless signal itself evades total control, even if its operators attempt to fully comply with the law. (TODO revise this paragraph.)

(( TODO return to this introduction -- do I follow up on the many promises made here? ))

Early radio and histories of regulation

In 1909, radio did not look or sound like what has generally been called "radio" in the U.S.. The use of wireless technology to broadcast news and entertainment programming that arose in the mid-1920s marked the beginning of large-scale, synchronous "mass" media. In the conventional broadcast paradigm, a small number of high-powered stations transmit signals that can be detected using low-cost receive-only apparatus designed to be operated by an untrained user. Multiple such stations can operate in the same area because their signals are restricted to specific frequencies on the electromagnetic spectrum. A governing body divides up the spectrum and assigned stations to specific frequencies with the goal of maximizing the number of stations that can broadcast in the same geographic region without interfering with one another. This arrangement describes over-the-air television broadcasting as well as AM and FM radio. Although the methods for coding and decoding signals are different for each of these technologies, the underlying principles remain the same.

Early radio differs from the broadcast paradigm along several critical dimensions. First, early radio was a many-to-many communication medium in which most stations were capable of sending as well as receiving wireless signals. Whereas the conventional broadcast station transmits a signal around the clock and is the sole occupant of its assigned frequency, early radio operation was a fundamentally multi-vocal activity in which operators took turns transmitting messages and listening to the transmissions of others. For the most part, these exchanges were carried out in Morse code. Wireless technology was not generally used to transmit or reproduce voices and music until the late-1910s, a transition that ultimately enabled the emergence of broadcast programming. (fn "It is claimed that wireless telephony will soon become as useful as wireles telegraphy," Popular Electricity, December, 1909, pp. 482-5. "Many wireless experimenters have their own wireless telegraph stations but comparatively few have constructed wireless telephone apparatus", Popular Electricity, February, 1910, pp. 646.) Finally, the ability to "tune in" or "tune out" specific frequencies was an area of considerable innovation during the early radio period and interference presented a constant challenge. Until Congress empowered the Department of Commerce to oversee radio operation in the U.S., any arrangements regarding the use of certain frequencies for one or another activity had to be negotiated on a case-by-case basis and were still vulnerable to unexpected interruption.

The sensory experience of early radio

Although "wireless" was the generic term in widest circulation from 1899-1912, the use of "radio" in this paper is a slight anachronism meant to connect this period to the long history of radio that includes both AM/FM radio broadcasting as well as such specialized apparatus as the mobile telephone, Bluetooth headset, and wi-fi transceiver. The prevalence of the term "wireless" in the early radio period reflects the subordinate position of radio among more familiar communication technologies such as the telegraph and telephone that had already been in use for decades (TODO See Standage, etc.). By some accounts, these technologies were already sufficiently domesticated that any sense of wonder associated with them had given way to quotidian irritation. As early as 1899, scientific journals expressed concern that the promises of wireless were being oversold in response to complaints about the proliferation of unsightly wires and poles (TODO footnote Preece 523? 253?). A later experiment in providing wireless communication to business travelers aboard railway cars was abandoned because the passengers valued rail travel as a respite from the nuisance of telecommunications (TODO Thompson, 455).

Early radio culture drew heavily from the social and material legacy of the telegraph and for many years existed alongside it. (fn The Electric Journal Vol LXI October 1908 has separate subsections for "telegraphy", "telephony", and "wireless telegraphy.") Wireless transmitters were typically operated from a repurposed telegrapher's key and the skills required to transmit messages in Morse code were directly transferable from wireline to wireless telegraphy. (TODO insert image of a shack with visible telegrapher's key) Although the technologies differed in significant ways, the basic architecture of a wireless station was laid out like a telegraphy set and included distinct devices for sending and receiving signals. This division lowered the material barrier for amateurs interested in radio because they could build receiving apparatus and begin listening before completing a working transmitter.

The professionalization of the telegraph operator likewise contributed to the production of an amateur/professional distinction among operators of wireless equipment. Though the telegraph operator was a "lower middle class profession" with "lower middle income [and] prestige," the concrete skills required were in short supply and offered working class boys an opportunity for social mobility (TODO Sterne 98, 137). While his or her peers might be working long hours in a warehouse or on a farm, the comparably comfortable lifestyle of the telegraph operator was often the result of auto-didactic dedication to learning Morse code. Although the basic alphabet could be found in countless books and magazines, the specialized auditory skills required to discern and accurately transcribe an incoming signal could not be learned from a textbook or in a classroom. Developing this ability required access to a live telegraphy set in order to practice (TODO Sterne 138). One of the surest paths into the telegraph profession was by working as a short-distance messenger carrying "telegrams" between various businesses and the local telegraph office (TODO Standage, 64; http://books.google.com/ebooks/reader?id=vJQhAQAAMAAJ&printsec=frontcover&output=reader&pg=GBS.PA381 395). Those who managed to master the telegraph set in one way or another became part of an "exclusive fraternity" who could repair the technology, communicate in code, and find work in offices around the country (TODO Douglas, 1989, xxii).

Being able to transmit code was, in many ways, less critical than being able to accurately perceive incoming code in noisy conditions (TODO Sterne 154). The specialized auditory skills wielded by telegraph operators were not native to the technology. Initially, the telegraph wire terminated in a printing apparatus that impressed dots and dashes onto a thin role of paper to be interpreted later by a human reader working from a code book. Over time, dedicated telegraph operators learned to interpret incoming messages as they were printed from the sound of the printer (TODO Sterne 146; Standage 65). Not only was this an impressive feat, it considerably increased the efficiency of telegraph communication. Soon the printers were replaced by "sounders" that either physically hammered out an audible message or transformed the incoming signals into a series of buzzing tones (TODO Sterne 151). The most effective telegraph operators developed a discerning audile attention so that they could carefully follow a single sounder amid the din of a crowded office (TODO Sterne 149; Sometimes attention to the aural was thought to come at the expense of the visual, upending the typical hierarchy of the sense. For example, see TODO comics about people catching fire because they don't see visual stimuli.)

To accommodate multiple operators in the same office, headphones were added to the receiving apparatus, creating a "private acoustic space" between the headphone's speaker and the operator's ear. (TODO Sterne 138) This integration of the operator's body with the telegraphy set formed a closed-circuit system in which the telegrapher was physically connected to a network of geographically-dispersed peers. Though the telegraph did not transmit voices from one place to another, the sounds that an operator heard in his or her earphone represented the synchronous occurrence of remote events. And while the exact nature of electrical current continued to confound and mystify many observers, the presence of a wire leading out of the operator's headphone, into the receiving apparatus, and out of the building kept telegraphy fundamentally grounded in a tangible, material world (TODO Standage recounts several examples of confusion regarding the material technology of the telegraph 66-67). That radio was initially regarded as merely a "wire-less" form of telegraphy belies the fundamental change that the absence of wires represented.

In a 1926 article titled "Breaking into the wireless game," James Baskerville, then the dean of a vocational school for radio technicians, recalled his career's trajectory from electrician's apprentice to globe trotting wireless operator. (TODO citation http://www.archive.org/stream/radiobroadcast09gardrich#page/19/mode/1up/search/breaking+into) Baskerville's recollection highlights the lingering influence of telegraphy in several areas and clearly describes the outsider status of early radio among more domesticated electrical trades. For the purposes of this project, this story is especially valuable for its rich description of the sights and sounds produced by early radio apparatus. Raised in the South, Baskerville moved to New York in 1905 and began to pursue work in wireless in the hope that it might save him from having to work outdoors in the cold and snow. Prompted by an encouraging letter from his father, Baskerville visited the offices of the Wireless Telegraph Company, convinced them of his general aptitude with electricity, and was invited to tour the company's state of the art wireless facility. (footnote the Wireless Telegraph Company was founded by Lee De Forest, a pioneering early radio engineer who designed several critical pieces of the conventional radio apparatus. CITE TODO)

(TODO include image from the Baskerville article?)

Baskerville's account of this first encounter with wireless evokes the romance and passion that colors the recollections of many early radio amateurs. On the roof of the office building, Baskerville opened the door to a small shack and found a room full of "delicate and peculiar looking instruments" connected to a "hundred-foot mast" supporting a "mass of wires." (TODO CITE) The shack itself was cold and windy and Baskerville initially confused the wireless operator's headphones for earmuffs. The operator, a man named Birchard, welcomed Baskerville into the station, explained the receiving circuit, demonstrated tuning the station ("like tuning a violin") and traced the transmitter signal path:

"Action [travels] from d.c. to a.c. to key, to transformer primary; from secondary to spark gap, to helix, to anchor gap, to antenna, and on to ships at sea" (TODO Baskerville 20)

After the violin tuning metaphor, Baskerville jokingly remembers "half-expecting to hear some music" when he put on the headphones but he found that he couldn't make out any signals. (TODO CITE) Birchard laughed at him and said he needed to develop "wireless ears." (TODO CITE) With some instruction, Baskerville managed to make out "a faint something" that grew "distinctly into buzzes,"

"This wasn't music. These buzzes were telegraphic code, and appeared very different from the clicks of a telegraph sounder. I was developing 'wireless ears.'" (TODO CITE)

Although Baskerville worked in electricity, he could not yet interpret Morse code and handed the set back to Birchard to issue a reply. Running a spark-gap transmitter, Baskerville remembers being startled when Birchard "crashed that bare 2kW spark" two feet away from him. In the windowless shack on a cold winter day, each tap on the telegrapher's key would have produced a bright flash and loud bang like a tiny lightning bolt illuminating the station's apparatus. Baskerville compared the sound to "a steam siren, two fire engines, a fog horn, and a couple of factory whistles all exploding at once" (TODO 20). Conveniently forgetting to warn him in advance, it turned out, was a prank that Birchard liked to play on the uninitiated.

Sufficiently intrigued by the wireless station and its oddball crew, Baskerville continued to hang around during his free time until a job opened up and he was put to work. In the absence of sophisticated tuning apparatus, he describes the early ether as a crowded and noisy space in which operators struggled with their own "natural handicap" to focus on a single coherent line of code (TODO 21). His colleague Birchard is remembered as a Morse virtuoso whose "snappy, rhythmic Morse chopped its way through Navy and Marconi interference" (TODO 22). When communicating with ships at sea, he recounts a frustrating experience in which "every word had to be sent three times" through a dense static fog (TODO 22).

Baskerville's story reveals several important details about the sensory experience of operating and maintaining early radio equipment. From the moment Baskerville approached the radio shack, he was struck by the scale and complexity of the wireless apparatus. Simply witnessing the "delicate-looking instruments," "mass of wires," and "hundred-foot mast" provided a degree of visual pleasure to the curious visitor (TODO cite.) Recognizing the enthusiast's desire for technical imagery, popular science magazines solicited photographs of their readers' homemade sets and reproduced images of the latest military and commercial gear (e.g. Chicago amateur G. D. Henderson's "interesting amateur equipment" in "What A Club Member Is Doing", Popular Electricity, July 1909, 264; "Naval Wireless as a Young Man's Opportunity", Popular Electricity, December 1909, pp. 566; "What One Can Do Others Can Do", Popular Electricity, February, 1910, pp. 648). These print images gave radio geeks an opportunity to trace the signal path with their fingertips and admire the craftsmanship of their fellow hobbyists. For these enthusiasts, the design and presentation of one's station was an important source of pride and letters to the editor frequently included snapshots of the letter writer's workbench. (TODO include image) Incidentally, many of these photos also depicted the operators themselves, typically with eyes closed, headphones snugly in place, and hands poised on the telegraph key mid-transmission. (e.g. Clayton R. Gerstenslager of Cleveland, OH, Popular Electricty, March, 1910, pp. 735).

For Baskerville, the visual appeal of the wireless apparatus was accompanied by a visceral thrill at the "crashing" arc of the spark-gap transmitter (TODO BASKERVILLE) As the name implies, the transmitter circuit included a small gap of just a few inches between the ends of two opposing wires. (TODO include a figure!) On one end, the telegraph key connected a battery to a capacitor. On the other end, a second capacitor was wired to an induction coil and an antenna. When Birchard pressed down on the telegraph key, voltage built up on one side of the circuit until it was high enough to ionize the air between the two wires. With a brilliant flash of light and a loud bang, current began to flow across the gap and a resonant circuit was formed between the inductor and capacitor. The resonant circuit generated oscillating energy that was radiated out through the attached antenna for remote radio stations to detect. (TODO For a technical discussion of the design of resonant circuits see Horowitz & Hill, 33-34; For an discussion of the limitations of inductor coils, see H & H 150) To the observer with no knowledge of radio communication, this contraption would have been a bizarre sight. The operator would appear to be using a telegraph key to control a lightning bolt generator for his own amusement. Nothing about the spark-gap transmitter or the antenna would have indicated that a signal was being sent out of the station. From the street, the fifty-foot mast on the roof of the Wireless Telegraph Company would have seemed as inert as a flag pole. (TODO The visible arc of the spark-gap transmitter might be one reason for the prevalence of "flash" as a metaphor for radio transmission. As early as 1899, Preece compared radio signals to light waves that "flashed" messages through space. Also, comics?)

Although the spark-gap transmitter was likely the most immediately arresting feature of early radio operation, it was ultimately the transmission and detection of invisible signals through the intangible "ether" that set radio apart from other hobby technologies of its day. (TODO footnote a poem ... ?) "Ether" was the term used to describe the medium that carried radio signals and without the proper apparatus for detecting "aetherial" signals, they were not only invisible but inaudible. (TODO cite "aetherial") While telegraph operators could access their exclusive communicative space only when wired into the network, the wireless operator was invited to fully re-imagine his world blanketed in an omnipresent, penetrating ether, the knowledge of which transformed every space, no matter how remote, into a potential site of communication. Furthermore, unlike the considerable capital required to erect and maintain the telegraph network, the ether appeared to be a wholly natural communication infrastructure, freely available for the amateur to discover and explore. (TODO cite this.)

Signals sent out by a station with a spark-gap transmitter were described as "disturbances" in the ether. (TODO cite?) By adapting the low-bandwidth symbolic system of Morse code, two stations needed only detect the presence and absence of each other's disturbances in order to exchange intelligible messages. The coherer, a delicate glass tube filled with a pile of metal filings, was the first widely used device for detecting these disturbances. (TODO cite include image.) When exposed to a radio signal of sufficient strength, filings inside the tube would stick together, allowing current to flow through the device and trigger some other event such as ringing a bell. (TODO cite) Each time the filings clung together, the tube needed to be gently tapped in order to shake them loose again, a task that was soon automated as part of the coherer itself. Like the telegraph's mechanical "sounder," the coherer was a binary instrument and could not represent variations within signals; either a signal passed the threshold required to bring the metal filings together or it did not. As a result, code sent from different sources might vary in rate, tempo, cadence, or swing but tone and timbre stayed constant. The hammer on the sounder produced the same "click" regardless of the sending station.

The gradual adoption of crystal detectors beginning around 1906 reinforced the sense of alchemical mystery in wireless operation. (TODO cite adoption?) Occasionally referred to as a "cat's whisker" detector, the crystal detector apparatus consisted of a thin wire lightly touching the face of a semiconducting crystal. (TODO include image) In contrast to the visually apprehendable physical effect that the radio signal had on the coherer's metal filings, the crystal detector exploited physical principles that were not yet widely understood. Instructions for adopting the new technology were uncharacteristically vague. A June 1909 article in Popular Electricity encouraged readers to purchase a set of different crystals and to systematically experiment with different combinations in order to choose the best pair (TODO complete cite 113). Nevertheless, the crystal detector was less expensive, simpler to construct, and yielded a "telephonic" signal rather than a mechanical one, a distinction that would later enable the transmission of voices and music. (TODO Walter, 1908, 2) By 1908, amateur radio operators widely favored the crystal detector over the coherer. (TODO Douglas, 1989, 195)

The binary sensitivity of the coherer had imposed a crude filter on incoming signals-selecting some and rejecting others-a task better suited to a human interepreter. (footnote TODO The coherer was also liable to register false positives. For example, etheric disturbances caused by passing trolley cars or electrical appliances might be reproduced amid incoming signals. "Translation of the tape [from experimental automated receivers] frequently required a brilliant imagination [to decode]." TODO cite Morehead?) Connected to a set of headphones, the crystal detector rendered the ether as a diverse sonic space in which different sending stations varied in amplitude, tone, and aural color. The specific combination of operator and apparatus produced a unique voice for each station that could be repeatedly identified by an experienced listener. In a speculative paper from 1899 about the practical implementation of "aetheric telegraphy", Preece emphasized that reception would be the central challenge in wireless communication. "There is nothing wonderful" about transmitting signals, he wrote, the "wonder is that they can be received." (TODO 521) A decade later, in an article about the failure of any inventor to realize a reliable automated reception device, Lodge and Morehead marveled at the audile virtuosity of skilled wireless operators, remarking that "nothing short of an instrument with the selective power of the human ear could be successfully used in the process of receiving as it is frequently practiced today" (TODO Lodge Morehead 1). Incoming signals could have been represented in any number of ways: flashing lights, marks on paper, small shocks against the operator's skin, or puffs of air against his or her face. Though the initial use of sound-based receiving apparatus was an artifact of wireline telegraphy, its persistence reflects a productive cybernetic division of labor enabled by sound.

The transition to telephonic reception of wireless telegraphy presented new auditory challenges to the early radio operator. In many ways, receiving code over the air was even more demanding than receiving code over a telegraph wire. Without effective tuning apparatus for isolating certain signals, the ether was becoming a crowded, chaotic space in which operators were likely to encounter "unearthly sounds" that Susan Douglas describes as "static, blasting, [and] feedback." (TODO Douglas, 1999, 6) If telegraphy felt like an intimate conversation between two people, early radio was more like trying to carry on a conversation across a crowded subway car. Inexperienced operators, as Baskerville recounts, would have trouble making out anything meaningful from all the noise until they developed a set of "wireless ears," the colloquial term for the habits of close listening that Jonathan Sterne would later describe as "audile" practice (TODO cite Baskerville; TODO Sterne 93).

The need for effective tuning apparatus rose alongside the popularity of wireless communication in the late 1900s. (TODO cite?) In addition to the growing community of amateur operators, wireless had also become an essential resource for both maritime safety and a small number of commercial messaging services. (TODO For more on Marconi's commercial wireless services, see Streeter 71.) Baskerville's admiration at the way his colleague's code "chopped its way through Navy and Marconi interference" reflects the extent to which operators in densely-settled areas jostled for space on the ether during this period (TODO 22). Early tuning devices could not eliminate interference altogether but instead augmented the discerning auditory practices of the human operator by amplifying or suppressing signals oscillating at certain frequencies. In the absence of any central governing authority, stakeholders in early radio either negotiated local norms for the shared use of spectrum or pursued new technological approaches to for filtering out unwanted interference. (TODO Streeter discusses "informal time-sharing arrangements" among amateurs on Streeter 74. Douglas describes a similar agreement reached by operators in Chicago in 1910 on Douglas, 1989, 209. For archival evidence of such cooperation among amateurs and entrepreneurs, see Electrical World 56, no. 3 (1910): 139.)

Interference among stations was further complicated by the essential unruliness of the wireless signal itself. As Thomas Streeter makes central in his analysis of early radio, signals spread outward from the radiating antenna in all directions. Unlike telegraphy, which was fundamentally a point-to-point form of communication, it was not possible for a wireless transmitter to directly target a single receiving station to the exclusion of all others. While this "omnidirectionality" stymied the adoption of wireless for business communication, it had the opposite effect on hobbyists and maritime operators (TODO Streeter, 61). In a moment of crisis, unpredictable propagation increased the chances that another ship or a shoreline station might hear an imperiled ship's distress signal. Likewise, for hobbyists sending signals simply to test their homemade apparatus, a helpful peer or new friend might emerge out of the unknown audience.

On the receiving end of early radio, the promiscuous spread of audible radio communication invited operators into a mode of "exploratory listening," a technologically-mediated leisure activity akin to the aimless dérive of the urban flâneur (TODO Douglas, 1999, 346; TODO dérive, "A mode of experimental behavior linked to the conditions of urban society: a technique of transient passage through varied ambiances." Knabb, K, 1981, 45.) With their headphones strapped on, they wandered through the ether each night "listening in" on the many threads of conversation detected by their aerial antennas. (TODO Douglas, 1999, 330) Chance encounters with snippets of military and commercial communication offered the transgressive thrill of hearing something they were not supposed to hear. (Douglas, 1999 331) Overhearing added a moral dimension to the practice of exploratory listening as amateurs were occasionally prompted to either act or remain quiet depending on the content of the signals they received. At the same time that newspapers reported on the heroism of radio hobbyists who helped the Coast Guard locate ships in danger, operators overhearing information that was not intended to be made public faced the moral dilemma of secrecy and disclosure. (TODO cite Douglas?)

Histories of regulation

Much of the existing scholarship on the regulation of radio grows out of an interest in mass communication and focuses on the regulation of radio as a broadcast medium in 1927. (TODO offer list.) But as Sandra Braman argues, the history of information policy in the U.S. begins much earlier with the Wireless Ship Act of 1910. (TODO cite Braman.) Anticipating the rising problem of interference, the Navy advocated for military control of the ether as early as 1904 (TODO Streeter 68). The use of radio to broadcast news and entertainment did not begin until nearly 1920 so the Navy's early call for state control was based on the use of radio to maintain strategic communication with ships at sea. (TODO Douglas 1999) Authority over radio communication would empower the Navy to implement restrictions to limit interference and reduce the threat of snooping. (TODO Streeter 69)

Congress was hesitant to interfere with the nascent medium and their reluctance to regulate likely contributed to the frustration evident in this brief but forceful complaint from the Navy's 1909 annual report:

The great increase in wireless business along the coasts and on account of the many seemingly semi-intelligent and wholly irresponsible operators employed or otherwise engaged in this occupation, who at any time through carelessness or stupidity may render hopeless the case of a shipwreck, it seems imperative that laws governing the conduct of all wireless stations should be passed. (TODO Navy annual report, 1909 file:///home/driscoll/docs/archive/earlyradiohistory.us/navy2.htm)

By this point, the Navy had installed wireless sets onboard most of its fleet, but it was unable to keep pace with the rate of innovation among hobbyists and experimenters. As a result, amateur homemade apparatus routinely surpassed military equipment in terms of clarity, strength, and tuning. (TODO Douglas, 1989, 207.) The conflict between private and naval interests might have seemed like a stalemate until a number of maritime disasters were averted due to the availability of wireless communication. The visibility of of these events enabled the Navy to reintroduce the issue of wireless regulation to Congress as a matter of public safety. (TODO For more details on the specific maritime calamities that motivated Congress to act, see Douglas 1989 219)

Surprisingly, the resulting Wireless Ship Act of 1910 did not address the issue of interference at all. On the contrary, it contributed to the overcrowding of the ether by requiring that all marine vessels over a certain size be outfitted with an onboard wireless telegraphy station. (TODO Douglas, 1989, 220) Not only were there to be hundreds of new stations on the airwaves, but the Act also provided a new path to professionalization for the radio enthusiast. A vocational school advertisement published shortly after the passage of the Act ensured readers that the pending legislation created an "opportune time" to enroll as there would soon be hundreds of jobs available aboard steamships for those who wished to travel "first-class" and "see the world" (TODO Hoppo 1912 244-249). Self-trained experimenters who could pass a basic skills test were at an advantage and could begin seeking employment immediately, license in hand. (TODO Footnote the rest of Baskerville's recollection...)

The Wireless Ship Act soon proved inadequate as interference at sea undermined the legislation's very purpose. Effective wireless regulation required Congress to grapple with the abstract concept of the "ether." Existing legislative thought regarding the telegraph and telephone networks imported the metaphor of "common carriage" from railroad regulation; a metaphor that relied on the private ownership of infrastructure-be it wires and poles or rails and warehouses. (TODO Braman 47) Wireless infrastructure, by contrast, seemed as natural an inexhaustible as sunlight or a gust of wind but the ether was not an easy fit for a natural resource either. Although it was neither exhaustible nor exchangeable in the sense of timber or coal, it remained nonetheless scarce. (TODO for more on spectrum as common property, see Douglas 1989 218.) Guglielmo Marconi, the only early radio entrepreneur to establish a significant network of commercial wireless stations, organized his business around a metaphor of the ether as territory to be, in Streeter's words, "imperialized, colonized[,] fought over and staked out" (TODO Streeter 76) The metaphor that eluded Congress was spatial, less like sunlight and more like a fertile plot of common land. (TODO for a related discussion of the "enclosure of intangible commons," see Boyle TODO)

President Taft assembled a team to work on the issue of wireless regulation made up of seven people: three "experts" from industry, three navy operators, and one scientist. (TODO cite PE?) Absent from the team was a voice for the interests of hobbyists, experimenters, and other amateur operators. This absence may not have been driven by an intention to exclude. Even if an amateur representative were desired, how could he or she have been chosen? There were few organizations or institutions at the time that could reasonably speak for anything resembling a unified amateur community. At the start of 1910, the amateur was incomprehensible and thus inaudible to the bureaucratic order of the state.

Congress approved the Radio Act of 1912 (then occasionally referred to as the "Alexander Bill") on August 13, just a few months after the Titanic disaster, which was widely believed to have been avoidable. Although ships with wireless receivers onboard were within the vicinity of the Titanic and might have come to her aid, the ship's operators were off-duty and did not receive the Titantic's distress signals. Furthermore, noisy signaling conditions lead to confusion over the status of the ship's passengers and a number of newspapers printed inaccurate information regarding the number of survivors. (TODO For a detailed account of the role of wireless in the Titantic disaster, see Douglas, 1989, 226-229.) The gravity of these events allowed policymakers to constrain all non-professional wireless activities in the U.S. under the new legislation. Wireless was no longer subordinate to wireline communications but a critical component for maintaining the safety and security of American citizens.

The Radio Act of 1912 divided the electromagnetic spectrum into distinct bands by wavelength and distributed the bands among the different stakeholders in wireless communication. The 600-1600 meter band was reserved for exclusive Navy use while commercial stations were permitted to transmit on all other wavelengths provided they were engaged in "bona fide" commercial activity or a government-sanctioned experiment. All other stations, collectively referred to as "private" stations, were restricted to low power transmission at wavelengths below 200 meters, an undesirable frequency band that seemed to eliminate one of the central pleasures of radio culture: long distance contact. (TODO Radio Act text; TODO Streeter 78)

Charged with implementing the Act, the Department of Commerce and Labor assembled an impressively complex bureaucracy with full-time staff and offices in major cities throughout the country. Stations and operators were licensed separately, the former requiring approval from a "radio inspector" and the latter pending successful performance on a written exam. "Amateur" stations could be sub-classified as "special," "general," or "restricted" depending on their power and proximity to government facilities. Although the "special" designation allowed amateur stations to overstep the restrictions concerning power and wavelength, an applicant's "desire to experiment" was not sufficient to justify this classification. The government believed that most experiments could be made within the limitations of the general amateur license. To secure a "special" license, the applicant was required to demonstrate that "some substantial benefit to art and commerce apart from individual amusement seems probable." (TODO Need citation here) Joyfulness and fun, the motivating forces for many hobbyists, were no longer sufficient. In the interest of maximizing utility, efficiency, and public safety by reducing interference, the Radio Act of 1912 seemed to fundamentally change the ecology of radio in the U.S. The playful, social activities of hobbyists, inventors, and enthusiasts that had driven the technological development of radio through the previous decade were marginalized in favor of everyday business communication (TODO Streeter 79). By treating the ether like a piece of land that might be parceled out to different stakeholders, the government transformed access to the ether from a meritocratic into a privilege that could be revoked rather than a mysterious . (TODO footnote Radio Act of 1912 also gave government/military the ability to shut down or seize control of any radio station or apparatus in times of war for purposes of national security) And yet, the implementation of the Act by the Department of Commerce and Labor discursively produced the "amateur" as a specific class of radio operators that had a right-however marginalized-to access that ether.

The original Act explicitly named "military", "naval", "public", "governmental", "commercial", "experimental" and "private" stations but the "amateur" station did not appear until several months later when the Department of Commerce issued a document describing the various types of licenses. (TODO footnote http://earlyradiohistory.us/1914reg.htm#19120813act) How was the term "amateur" introduced into the regulatory discourse and why did the Department of Commerce choose to include it when the Congressional Act did not? The rationale for protecting experimental stations is easy to guess-the new legislation did not altogether solve the problem of interference and experimental stations might continue to produce more efficient means to exploit the ether as they had with the introduction of tuning apparatus-but the presence of the amateur is less clear. (TODO footnote and would continue to do with the development of single sideband (SSB) transmission (Cite ARRL?) and other modes which narrowed the range of dedicated frequency required for effective communication.) Streeter describes the early radio scene in terms of competition among four key stakeholder groups: hobbyist and amateur; inventor-entrepreneur; military, state, and government; and corporate. (TODO Streeter 63-64) Whereas membership in the military or employment aboard a ship are matters of bureaucratic clarity, "amateur" status is less clearly defined and not mutually exclusive with any other category. A radio operator aboard a Navy ship may very well be an amateur in his home. Likewise, an amateur may become a commercial operator should he encounter the right opportunity.

Notably, Baskerville's story is not the conventional narrative of an amateur operator. His initial encounter with wireless was motivated more by employment than curiosity. He was not a member of a club nor did he describe using wireless to socialize with friends. Yet Baskerville's description of early radio technology effuses with a passion for wireless and the romance with which he recalls the early "spirit of the thing" seems characteristic of the archetypical amateur. (TODO Baskerville cite) As we struggle to understand the amateur culture of the pre-regulation period, Baskerville's story reminds us that early radio operators cannot be easily categorized as either professional or amateur.

Hobbyist discourse about radio regulation, 1909-1914

The marginalization of hobbyist activity by the Radio Act of 1912 tempts an narrative of early radio in which an Edenic period of free experimentation was brought to an end by government intervention. Absent from this story are operators like Baskerville and his colleagues who do not fit neatly into any of the categories offered by the Department of Commerce. Magazines like Popular Electricity provided a forum for the stakeholders in early radio to assemble, exchange information, and negotiate a sense of shared identity. Although many of these magazines originated in NYC, they were distributed throughout the U.S. and read by military and commercial operators as well as electrical hobbyists. Returning to the pages of these publications during the years leading up to the Radio Act of 1912 reveals traces of a dispersed population coming to know itself as a coherent community. Of particular interest is the gradual transformation in the meaning of term "amateur" from a catch-all description of non-commercial operators to an identity marker around which the community might cohere.

The February 1910 issue of Popular Electricity featured a letter from E. F. Waits in Corinth, Mississippi (TODO PE 634). Waits' letter carefully detailed the equipment pictured in a photograph of his amateur station, all of which was made by hand with the help of "dear friend" Thomas Dalby. (TODO include image here) Waits admitted that they had never visited a working wireless station before attempting to construct their own and credited hobby magazines such as Modern Electrics, Popular Electricity, and Electrician and Mechanic for enabling the endeavor. With an antenna rising 125 feet above their station, Waits and Dalby were able to "listen in" on stations from distant locations like San Juan, Key West, and aboard ships off the Atlantic coast. He modestly noted that the two seldom transmitted from their station for fear that the high power would cause unnecessary interference and confusion for others. Waits included his full mailing address at the end of the letter and asked station operators to send information about their call signs and locations so that he could identify the far-flung transmissions he had been receiving.

Waits letter offers a snapshot of the early radio amateur ideal. His station was beautiful to behold, a source of considerable personal pride constructed by the cooperative labor and intellect of two friends. With the station primarily functioning as a receiver, he was able to feel a part of events and activities across North America and into the adjoining ocean. Waits even made a humorous remark about receiving transmissions from the Eastern time zone, "an hour before [they were] sent" (TODO 649). Many miles from Chicago, where Popular Electricity was published, Waits and Dalby were connected to the larger population of geographically-dispersed radio experimenters through the asynchronous medium of the hobby magazine.

In April 1910, a second letter from Waits was printed in the Wireless section of Popular Electricity. He reported his gratitude for the "dozens of letters" he received since the publication of his first letter and included some additional information and a photograph regarding the installation of a rooftop aerial. At the very end of the letter, Waits made an open inquiry after "two boys who were in Chester, PA" that he overheard one evening in November. Wishing to know more about their apparatus, he wrote, "If you were communicating with someone in Philadelphia[,] it seems you were wasting alot of energy, as I am over 900 miles away and heard you very plainly" (TODO 818).

Finally, in June 1910, a response was printed under the title "That Night in Chester." (TODO "That Night in Chester", Popular Electricity, June, 1910, pp. 165). Jerome Allen, the Navy operator aboard the U.S.S. Patuxent reported hearing the same transmission as Waits. He first dispelled the notion that the transmission originated with "two boys," writing "[it was] hardly an 'amateur' as most stations operated by other than government or commercial operators are generally called" (TODO 165). In fact, "Chester" was the name of a Navy ship docked at Fire Island in New York. The transmission overheard by Waits in Mississippi was actually off-topic "chatter" between the crew of the ship and a shore station in Chester, PA. Apparently, reported Allen wryly, the seamen were recently "shown a good time" by the folks in Chester and were on the air signalling their appreciation.

The story of Waits, Allen, and the clueless crew of the Chester highlights the fluidity of amateur culture in the pre-regulation period. Here we see a number of operators - amateur and professional - engaging in both synchronous and asynchronous communication over the air and in print. Waits initial letter to Popular Electricity represents the conventional amateur values: pride in craftsmanship, generosity to fellow amateurs, and a palpable pleasure at the opportunity to "listen in" on distant events. Allen's response, however, upends the rigid distinction between amateur and professional operators suggested by many historians. Allen was an enlisted man operating a wireless telegraph facility aboard a Navy tug boat-yet he is a reader and a contributor to Popular Electricity, a publication geared toward the amateur operator. Like Waits, Allen included his mailing information and welcomed contact from civilian readers interested in the equipment he commands while on duty.

Implicit in Waits' initial misunderstanding was an ambiguity regarding the source and propagation of coded messages in early radio. The transmission he assumed to be from a hobby station Chester, PA was actually being transmitted from a ship several hundred miles further up the coast. Because only the intended receiver would know the context of the message, the transmitting station left the term "Chester" ambiguous. It was only by chance and favorable atmospheric conditions that Waits happened to receive the transmission from a thousand miles away in Mississippi. Waits was unable to interpret that "Chester" referred to a Navy ship because the Navy operators were using their wireless equipment for an off-topic chat and not following the typical protocol of maritime operation.

Allen's response to Wait reveals a certain discomfort with the term "amateur." He was careful to distance himself from the word through the use of quotation marks and though he could not provide a clear definition for the amateur, he is clear that fellow Navy men could not be described as such, regardless of the content of their transmission. Allen's ambivalence is represents the diversity of the Popular Electricty readership of the time. Wireless stations could be adapted to many purposes and their operators might engage in a variety of professional and non-professional activities while on the air. Crucially, periodicals such as Popular Electricity addressed anyone enthusiastic about electrical technology-not only hobbyists or professionals. As Allen's letter reveals, the professional operator is as likely to be passionate about radio as his amateur peer. The imposition of government regulation necessarily meant introducing some degree of fixity into this productively unstable social situation.

Popular Electricity (also published as as Popular Electricity in Plain English and Popular Electricity and the World's Advance) (TODO italicize) was a monthly magazine published out of Chicago from roughly 1908 to 1914. As the title suggests, the magazine covered numerous topics related to electricity: from outdoor signage and kitchen appliances to home x-ray kits and electric trolley cars. Early issues were typically around 60 broadside pages with three columns of text each and this number of pages doubled by the end of the magazine's life. In addition to a special section on radio titled "The Popular Electricity Wireless Club," other recurring topics included "Electricity in the Home," "Junior Section," "Questions and Answers," "Electrical Men of the Times." The magazine attempted to attract a diverse readership in terms of age, gender, and technical savvy. Human interest stories ran alongside detailed, multi-part articles on the design and construction of complex electrical circuits. While other magazines may have more directly addressed the hobbyist radio operator, the more general appeal of Popular Electricity represents the broader context of amateur culture within which amateur radio emerged.

Between 1909 and 1913, a series of editorial columns concerning the possibility (and eventual reality) of government regulation of radio ran in the Wireless Club section of Popular Electricty, a recurring feature for those readers "who have constructed or are operating wireless apparatus or systems." (TODO 32) Reading the columns chronologically reveals a gradual shift in the attitude of editors toward government intervention. While the earliest articles scoff at rumors of wireless regulation, disbelief eventually gives way to arguments for self-discipline, calls for self-organization into local clubs, and cautiously optimistic compromise with the conditions of the Radio Act. Similarly, while "amateur" is used inconsistently in the place of words like "experimenter" and "hobbyist" in the earlier articles, the rise of amateur clubs and association seems to accompany a more general acceptance of the term in the later literature.

The first article appeared in the June 1909 issue under the title, "The Amateur and Professional Operator." The author scoffed at a piece of proposed legislation that would limit the "right of amateur operators to cast messages to the 'wilds' promiscuously," suggesting that such a policy would be found unconstitutional by the courts owing to the fact that the "all-penetrating and imponderable ether is free as the air" (TODO 114). Nevertheless, he cautioned readers to exercise self-discipline according to "certain ethical rules" (TODO 114). In particular, he urged them not to contact commercial and government facilities. Even though wireless operators "as a class" are generous and accommodating, he reminded readers that the professional operator is constrained by the expectations of his employer. On the job, he suggested, professional operators may not enjoy the same "joyous thrill" of contact as a hobbyist who has just finished building a home wireless set (TODO 115). By avoiding contact with professionals on the clock, amateur might be able to "get along without laws" (TODO 115).

A second article about regulation appeared six months later in the December 1909 issue and explicitly addressed "insistent" rumors that legislation was under consideration that would abolish amateur wireless activity (TODO 187). Although the piece was titled "Wireless Etiquette" and reiterated the earlier suggestion that amateurs should avoid contact with professional stations, the majority of the article's content addressed legislators regarding the value of amateur operation. Whereas "Wireless Club" section usually focused on the affective pleasures of aetherial communication, this article adopted a decidedly instrumental tack, positioning the amateur operators as a volunteer labor force. "In an art so young" as radio, wrote the author, the "sustained interest of thousands of amateur workers [...] cannot but result in good" (TODO 487). Furthermore, the author cautioned against squashing the nascent industry supplying amateurs with radio parts, tools, and components. In a final appear to amateur operators themselves, those living near to commercial or government facilities were urged to consider their interdependence and to avoid causing any interference for the sakes of their "amateur friends" (488).

One tactic intended to obviate the need for government intervention was the formation of local clubs and wireless associations. Announcements of new clubs begin to trickle in during 1909 and by 1911 they were regular features on the Wireless Club pages. Their proliferation in Popular Electricity seems to support Hugo Gernsback's claim that his nationwide organization, the Wireless Association of America was able to attract as many as 10,000 members in its first year (Douglas, 1989, 205). In one early announcement, the Wireless Association of New Orleans explained that its formation was a pro-active response to concerns over interference and the threat of regulation. They hoped that a formal association might "put experimenters on the right footing with the commercial and naval stations" around the city (TODO 413). Notably, the term "amateur" was not yet embraced at the founding of this early organization.

In March 1910, a third article appeared in Popular Electricity titled "Give the Amateur A Square Deal" (TODO http://books.google.com/books/reader?id=ow7OAAAAMAAJ&printsec=frontcover&output=reader&pg=GBS.PA766 756). The tone is much more forceful than the previous two and specifically criticizes "legislation against the amateur" being considered by Congress (TODO 756). This piece stakes an explicit position that "the amateur" is becoming a scapegoat for the incompetence of professional operators and that claims of interference are "absolutely without founding" (TODO 756). Citing the formation of regional clubs and associations, the author argues that amateurs have become a self-disciplined force for the protection of public safety and are frequently the first responders in times of crisis. Admitting that some amateurs were once "indiscreet," the persistence of "absolutely inaccurate stories" threatens to do "incalculable harm" as unjust government intervention will stall the growth of radio by curbing the technological innovation of experimenters. (TODO 756)

By the autumn, the editorial position of the magazine had changed yet again. In the September 1910 issue, the lead article in the Wireless section began, "One of these days legislation is going to be passed by Congress regulating the operation of wireless telegraph instruments." (TODO) Citing the "trouble and annoyance" that rapid adoption was causing for all wireless operators, the authors argued that regulation had become an unfortunately necessity. Contrary to the position they held just one year before, the article stated that the romantic notion that "ether is free like the air" was an unproductive fallacy that no longer reflected the practical experience of contemporary radio communication. Regulation, they argued, would free "each class of operators" to pursue its interests without bothering one another. Although such a sharp categorization operators required lumping the majority of their readers into the "so-called 'amateur' class," they wished to "go on record as one group of amateurs ready and willing to co-operate with the government." Readers were urged to write to their representatives with positive stories about the activities of amateurs, especially in terms of practical inventions and technical discoveries. By cooperating, they hoped to discourage Congress from some of the more restrictive proposals under review, especially any provisions that would restrict amateur operators to certain wavelengths or artificially bar interstate communication. (TODO http://books.google.com/books/reader?id=mJIhAQAAMAAJ&printsec=frontcover&output=reader&pg=GBS.PA446 462)

For the next year, Popular Electricity was largely silent on the subject of regulation with the exception of simple fact-based reporting on the job opportunities that the Wireless Ship Act would create for skilled amateurs. Finally, in July of 1912, following the negative attention brought on wireless by the Titanic disaster, several articles attempted to defend the right of the hobbyist operator to remain on the air. Frank Parker Stockbridge asserted that the loss of life in the Titanic disaster was not due to interference but rather the tragic outcome of hiring badly-trained and poorly-disciplined operators. (TODO "What the Wireless Told" by Frank Parker Stockbridge http://books.google.com/ebooks/reader?id=vJQhAQAAMAAJ&printsec=frontcover&output=reader&pg=GBS.PA212 212) Arguing that the reputation of experimenters as a whole was being tarnished by the malicious behavior of a few "dilettantes who consider wireless a toy," Eugene Patterson called on amateurs of the "higher class" to self-police their etherial community and report badly behaved peers to the government. "The amateur's salvation," he claimed, "rests mainly with the amateur himself." (TODO "Regulation of Amateur Radio-Operation" by Eugene Patterson http://books.google.com/ebooks/reader?id=vJQhAQAAMAAJ&printsec=frontcover&output=reader&pg=GBS.PA286 296)

These calls for discipline and self-regulation were not sufficient to prevent the passage of the Radio Act of 1912 and the November, December and January issues dedicated several pages each to a detailed series of articles describing the adjustments that would be required for homemade equipment to comply with the law. Although Philip Edelman's articles appeared at first blush to be merely practical information, they continued several small paradoxical statements that offered frustrated readers and opportunity to read against the grain for a wry sense of commiseration. "As a direct result of considerable agitation, pro and con, wise and foolish," the series began, "a wireless bill has at last been enacted into law." Edelman went on to muse, perhaps sarcastically, that while the new licensing requirement would merely be painless for adults, it might, as a side benefit, provide teenaged operators with a sense of pride in accomplishment. Although he states that the short wavelength will provide an "advantage" for the amateur operator because he will not longer need to maintain the large apparatus required to generate longer waves, he laments the restrictions it will place on long distance communication. (TODO "How to Comply With the New Wireless Law" by Philip Edelman November 1912; "How to Comply With the New Wireless Law" by Philip Edelman December 1912; "Formalities to be Observed in Connection with the New Wireless Law" Edelman, January 1913; http://books.google.com/ebooks/reader?id=vJQhAQAAMAAJ&printsec=frontcover&output=reader&pg=GBS.PA719 741, 877, 994)

Although the editors of Popular Electricity seem cautiously optimistic about the seemingly light touch of the bill, the constraints it placed on amateur activity were socially, technically, and economically severe. Once the keeper of the frontier spirit, the amateur operator was effectively domesticated and given a marginalized position in the new bureaucracy. The inspection process undermined the individual autonomy of the amateur experimenter by requiring special permission to conduct various experiments. Curiosity, pleasure, amusement, and the thrill of discovery were explicitly rejected as reason for engaging with wireless technology. Without the additional promise of practical benefit, such motivations were seen as irrational and "insufficient" to justify special licensing. (TODO cite earlyradiohistory)

Amateur operators and their advocates were not the only ones to receive the new regulation with mixed feelings. A report from the Secretary of the Navy in late 1912 revealed a concern for the cost of complying with the new regulations. Aging Naval stations required immediate upgrades and hundreds of new telegraph operators would need to be trained or recruited to ensure round-the-clock operation on shore and at sea. The report concludes with a hesitantly optimistic note regarding cooperation and mutual appreciation among commercial and military stations. (TODO Report of George V. L. Meyer, Secretary of the Navy, Washington, D.C., November 20, 1912: Pages 38-39. file:///home/driscoll/docs/archive/earlyradiohistory.us/navy2.htm)

The discourse about radio regulation inscribed on the pages of Popular Electricity offers a pathway into the ephemeral conversations that must have taken place among wireless enthusiasts of the early radio period. The Department of Commerce did not produce the "amateur" operator out of thin air. Rather, its codification of the term "amateur" reflected a rise in colloquial usage among a subset of hobbyists willing (and able) to cooperate with government regulators. This embrace of "amateur" as an identity is evident both in the naming of local clubs and associations and the description of the Popular Electricity readership as "amateur class" operators beginning in the September issue of 1910. After the passage of the 1912 Act, Edelman assured his readers that the bill did not "deny, curb, or otherwise prohibit experimental stations," but merely "defined the rights of experimenters or amateurs." (TODO cite November 1912) Absent from this assurance, however, is an explication of these rights or the process by which they were identified. How could readers be sure they qualified as an "experimenter or amateur" and what would happen to those that were excluded?

Exploring the gap between the Radio Act of 1912 and its implementation

The Radio Act of 1912 significantly constrained many of the activities that were central to amateur operation during the pre-regulation period, especially communication over long distances and the autonomous design and improvement of one's wireless apparatus. But the call for self-discipline in magazines like Popular Electricity prompted many amateurs to organize local clubs and associations that persisted long after the passage of the Act. These clubs could then act as institutional bodies and negotiate friendly spectrum-sharing arrangements with local commercial and maritime interests (CITE Streeter TODO). Wireless clubs also served as the first nodes in a nationwide radio network that enabled amateurs to relay messages coast-to-coast as early as TODO, long before any commercial or military service could boast the same. (CITE Douglas, 1989, 206) A volunteer body called the Amateur Radio Relay League was formed in TODO and charged with coordinating the network. As with the local clubs, the ARRL became an institution that could speak to large institutions of power on behalf of the amateur operator.(TODO CITE ANNOUNCEMENT FROM POP ELEC?). Although amateur operators continued to be marginalized, the existence of the ARRL gave amateurs a voice in future regulatory proceedings. (TODO footnote that the ARRL continues to serve this function.)

For those operators who fit the newly narrowed definition of "amateur," the circumstances leading up to the Radio Act of 1912 offered a number of unexpected social benefits that counterbalanced the regulatory constraints on their technical activities. Although individual amateur stations were restricted to low power transmission, the relay network allowed them to make contact with many more amateurs than was previously possible and the formation of local clubs presented another new venue to form fraternal bonds. The technical restrictions were eventually recast as challenges for ingenious amateurs to overcome.

Those operators who did not (or could not) become licensed amateurs, however, were absent from these new social formations. Excluded from the re-definition of "amateur," they were effectively un-named and un-namable within the new regulatory regime. "Unlicensed operators," the conventional way to refer to them, could only define the un-named operators in terms of their absence from the new bureaucracy. As the rest of radio grew increasingly visible in popular culture with the diffusion of broadcast programming, the obscurity of these operators formerly-known-as-amateurs seemed to deepen.

The Radio Act of 1912 was passed by Congress in August but the practical implementation of the law was delayed for several months while the Department of Commerce established a bureaucracy to enforce the policy's demands. A close reading of the Act and the documents produced by the Department of Commerce, reveals a number of gaps where we might pursue the memory of the un-named operators. First, licensing thousands of radio operators from around the country was no small task and considerable leeway was granted to operators who could not easily be licensed in person. Second, "receiving-only" stations were, for the most part, exempt from regulation. And, third, enforcement of the regulation would have been cumbersome and costly, creating a precarious safe harbor for the self-disciplined operator.

The ritual required to obtain a "first" class wireless operator's license involved three steps: appearing in person at once of the TODO offices established in major cities around the country, completing a written exam about the social and technical habits of wireless operation, and taking an oath of secrecy to never disclose the content of an overheard message except in the case of emergency (TODO radiohistory.) Although the policy document states that a license "may be granted" to any person who meets the technical requirements "without regard to sex, nationality, or age," little evidence was found that a single black operator was licensed during the early years of radio regulation. (TODO cite; discuss efforts to find black operators. By some accounts, the earliest known African-American hams were not licensed until the introduction of the Novice class license in 1951.) Although institutionalized discrimination and social exclusion likely kept many early radio operators from applying for a license in person, their apparent absence is not a totally reliable measure of the racial, ethnic, or gender distribution of licensed amateurs.

A "second" class license, which conferred all of the same rights as a first class license, was made available to applicants who could not appear in person at one of the regulator's offices. To obtain a second class license, the applicant needed only satisfy the nearest radio inspector by mail that they were qualified to hold a license and give a reasonable explanation for not appearing to take the examination in person. Edelman made special note in his final article about compliance with the law that an inability to travel to the inspector's office could be reason enough to pursue a second class license. (TODO January 1913 http://books.google.com/ebooks/reader?id=vJQhAQAAMAAJ&printsec=frontcover&output=reader&pg=GBS.PA719 994) Enterprising amateur operators might have exploited this second class option to circumvent the social and structural barriers of racism and sexism that would have otherwise complicated or blocked the process of obtaining a license in person. (TODO footnote Halper reminds us that because of segregation, African-American operators may have chosen to stay invisible.)

Edelmen's final article on compliance with the new laws concludes with an oddly brief comment that, "the receiving station needs no special comment." (TODO "How to Comply With the New Wireless Law" by Philip Edelman http://books.google.com/ebooks/reader?id=vJQhAQAAMAAJ&printsec=frontcover&output=reader&pg=GBS.PA719 741, 877, 994) In their correspondence with Popular Electricity, Waits and Dalby, the Mississippi amateurs with a 125 foot antenna, revealed that they seldom used their station to transmit, preferring instead the "exploratory listening" practices celebrated by Douglas, Sterne, and others. The receiving-only station was almost entirely absent from the law and yet listening constituted one of the core competencies and central pleasures of wireless operation. By exploiting the asynchronous forums provided by hobbyist magazines, the operators of receiving-only stations could be fully engaged with the amateur radio community without every "crashing" a spark.

Finally, the sheer complexity of the new radio bureaucracy promised a counterproductive degree of confusion and inefficiency. Enforcing the restrictions of the Radio Act required radio inspectors to track down offending operators, gain access to their homes, and inspect their radio apparatus. With amateurs spread across the entire country, this was surely a costly task. Unless an unlicensed operator was causing unwelcome interference, it seems unlikely that he would attract the attention of the regulatory authority. Whether they resented the imposition of regulation on political grounds or were unable to meet the demands of the licensing ritual, there may have been many un-named operators who continued to participate in on-air activities for years without engaging with the regulatory bureaucracy.

Thinking back to the photographs of the woman on Middle Island and the black man with the mobile radio (TODO insert images from PC)

Conclusion

During the first decade of radio (1899-1909), "amateur" was a catch-all term used to describe all wireless activity outside of a few military, maritime, and commercial applications. The looming threat of regulation (and rumors that amateur operation would be outlawed entirely) prompted some hobbyists to adopt the term "amateur" as a unifying identity marker. This adoption was reflected in the creation of the "amateur" class of radio licenses by the Department of Commerce in its implementation of the Radio Act of 1912. The production of a coherent population of amateur operators that might be quantified, named, and licensed enabled amateurs to grow into a powerful political, economic, and technological force in the years following the passage of the Act but the re-definition of "amateur" necessarily excluded operators who either would not (or could not) participate in the rituals of licensing or the local wireless clubs and associations. With the term "amateur" now narrowly-defined and no similar catch-all term forthcoming, the excluded operators were effectively un-named and un-namable in the new regulatory regime.

The central activity of early radio-wireless communication-is an essentially ephemeral activity. As a result, historians rely on the archives of related institutions for evidence of the early radio population. Absent from both the licensing records of the new government bureaucracy and the membership records of the local wireless clubs, the un-named operators are impossible to locate in the available archive. Evidence exists that the early ether may have been more diverse than printed records suggest but there is no way to be certain. On one hand, occasionally images appear in popular magazines depicting people outside of the normative description of the early radio amateur. The prevalence of Morse code and letters to hobby magazines as the communicative substrata offers means to engage with the community that could conceal visible markers of gender, racial, or ethnic identity. (TODO Footnote "there was no appearance, no voice to give away who he was - just the presence of code" (Douglas, 1999 334))

Just as the unpredictable propagation of radio signals means that radio operators can never be certain of the size of their audience, media historians can never be certain who was listening in on those early aetherial transmissions. And yet the recognition of this promising possibility is not evidence enough to say with confidence that either the black man leading the mule or the woman posed by a large antenna were active participants in early radio culture. In a population as small as amateur radio, systemic exclusion based on race and gender could have easily overwhelmed the presence of promise and potential.

Rather, the un-naming of some amateurs by others during the 1910-1912 is instructive for thinking about both the regulation and historicization of popular technologies. Regulation in the context of the unruly wireless signal is a only a promise, not a constraint. Unless restriction is encoded in the technology itself, a legal policy alone cannot constrain popular use. The regulation of radio amateurs in 1912 was effective only insofar as it addressed interference, a problem relevant to the regulated operators themselves. Otherwise, the unruly propagation of wireless communication evaded the reach of regulation intended to constrain it.

Finally, wireless telegraphy makes it possible for a person to be audible even if political forces keep them from being visible. If an operator caused no interference, operated ably, would they arouse attention?

Random stuff

Sources for images:

• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Crystal_radio_receiver_from_wireless_era.png

85% of hams were male, mainly all white in the 1940s and 50s (Douglas, 1999 332)