LEARNING CURVE
This month marks CQ’s 75th anniversary issue! Seventy-five years ago, World War II was ending, the Atomic Age was being ushered in, V2 rocket technology (Photo A) initiated a space race between the Soviet Union and the USA that culminated 24 years later when the USA successfully landed men on the moon (Photo B).
USA amateur radio operation was suspended by Congress during WWII and after the war, hams were slowly allowed to resume communications on the ham bands. Tubes were found in every radio, but American physicists Bardeen, Brattain, and Shockley, working at Bell Labs, were busy inventing the transistor. Three years later, its “unveiling” initiated an electronic technology revolution. The surplus market was flooded with WWII radios, like the ARC-5 (), and hams made good use of them. Frequency selection back then was controlled by crystals (), but not for long. CW (continuous wave) and AM (amplitude modulation) were the primary operating modes of the day. After the war, hams traveled by car and by train. Commercial aviation was primarily prop-propelled, but jet engines (another WWII invention) would eventually replace them. A lot of technology has changed
