Some Aspects of American Shortwave Radio Development

Abstract

The following pages are abstracted from a somewhat unique association with radio development. During the last twenty years the writer has been so fortunate as to be instrumental in experiments which have modified the radio art rather basically. The reference is in particular to the abandonment of the Marconi antenna, through series of organized shortwave communication tests which rearranged the whole radio communication tests which rearranged the whole radio organism thru the discovery of the day-night reversal and the skip effects and finally to the ultra-short-wave tests which are not complete and which give strong indications of need for another thorough revision of our transmission theory.

Some aspects of the various matters which have arisen are the basis for the great bulk of our recent radio literature. These require no re-discussion, being available in the appended file or in the references. The space has instead been given to subjects which have not been much treated.

The slightly autobiographical nature of the account is intentional. No writer has succeeded in presenting the complete story of shortwave development with adequacy or with fairness. The attempt is not repeated here. The account is frankly written from an individual viewpoint. Personal experiences presented as such, seem preferable to any further additions to radio’s large stock of dogmatic generalizations.