[CQ-Contest] 200 Meters and Down

[ktfrog007 at aol.com]

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