Radio hobbyists proudly call themselves hams, a word that began as a telegraph insult
In 19th-century wired telegraphy, professionals mocked clumsy Morse senders as ham-fisted, or simply hams. When hobbyists started tinkering with wireless, professional operators on land and at sea used the same jab against these amateur nuisances. The amateurs adopted it as a badge of pride, and by the middle of the 20th century the sting had gone.
Amateur radio means using set-aside slices of the radio spectrum for non-commercial talk, experiments, training, contests and emergency help. A craze for radio tinkering early in the 20th century forced authorities to reserve bands for non-professionals, and in 1927 an amateur was defined as someone interested in radio purely for personal reasons, with no thought of payment. A 1909 directory of wireless stations in Canada and the United States already listed 89 amateur ones.
Getting on the air requires a licence, earned by passing an exam on radio theory, electronics and national rules. Each licensee receives a unique call sign, which has to be announced no less than once every ten minutes and again as each conversation closes. In the United States there are three tiers, Technician, General and Amateur Extra. Morse code was long compulsory for lower frequencies under international rules; that requirement lapsed in 2003, and the United States dropped it in 2007.
Morse survives anyway, because it gets through when signals are faint and uses internationally shared shorthand, and its transmitters are simple enough for hobbyists to build themselves. Operators also use voice, digital modes that software now handles, and even amateur television. Some bounce signals off the Moon, the northern lights or meteor trails, talk through amateur satellites with a handheld set, or reach licensed astronauts aboard the International Space Station.
The hobby has real payoffs. Amateurs are credited with discovering skywave propagation, and their experiments with quartz resonators between 1924 and roughly 1934 helped found a new industry. With battery or generator power, they often keep communication open after natural disasters when commercial networks fail. In 2011 the American Radio Relay League estimated about 2 million people worldwide were active, with the Americas hosting the most stations.
Source: Amateur radio
