subject: The Magic Of Cb Radio [print this page] Famous author Arthur C Clarke once said that any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. Since Clarke was the first to propose the satellite technology which underlies modern day communications, it may be safe to assume that ourunderstanding of electromagnetic waves was one of the prompts for his famous quote. In the twenty first century we spend our lives bathed in radiation, but although the existence of radio wave was predicted 150 years ago by Scottish Physicist James Clerk Maxwell,it wasn't until 1887 that Hertz generated the first artificial radio waves in the laboratory. For you, CB radio is a fabulous way to communicate, for your great great grand-mama pulling voices from thin air would have seemed like magic.
The precursor to radio communication was the telegraph which was first installed (commercially) on the Great Western Railway between Paddington and West Drayton in Surrey, England.The telegraph was installed in 1839, and in 1845 was responsible for the arrest of one John Tawell, who had just murdered his mistress.When Tawell was hanged, the future of the telegraph was secure and it's use spread rapidly.
But the telegraph depended in wires. Radio, on the other hand, was a means of wireless communication, which meant that as long as there was a transmitter and a receiver, there was no need to lay miles and miles of wiring between them. All that was needed in order to pluck radio signals magically from the air was a radio antenna; and since the antenna would receive thousands of signals at once, you also needed a tuner in order to listen to a specific frequency or frequency band. As an indication of the complexity of early radio systems, consider the origin of the word antenna. It comes from the early radio experiments of Marconi. Antenna is the Italian word for pole.
The first radio sets had no power source and operated headphones only. They were cheap to build and cost nothing at all to run but those early crystal sets weren't able to distinguish between stations and if there were several local stations broadcasting they were all received at once. More sophisticated sets were available, but these were complex and expensive. The First World War pushed technology along and eventually valves were used so that radios had to 'heat up' before they could be used.
All amateur radio use was banned in the USA during the First and Second World Wars, but immediately after World War II the FCC began to divide the airwaves, and at that point CB radio was born. Al Gross, who had invented the walkie-talkie, opened Citizen's Radio Corporation to sell hand held CB radios to the public, but it wasn't until 1958 one year after the beginning of the 'space race' that CB radio moved to the 27Mhz band where it can be found today.
So next time you ratchet on your CB rig, don't take it for granted. Your antenna has literally plucked information from the air, the signals are swirling, invisibly around you. And if that's not magic, I don't know what is.
