radio tech nerds! your bat signal!
October 21, 2016 2:23 PM Subscribe
Hi. I have a question about the FCC assignment of radio frequencies in the early 20th c. U.S. I know three things that I can't resolve, probably because I have only dipped into this lightly (and really can't get stuck in right now).
I know that in 1928, the FCC extended the mediumwave AM band to the range 550 kHz to 1500 kHz.
I also know that in 1931, the FCC licensed a frequency above 1700 kHz to a public safety agency.
But I also thought that the FCC did not license dedicated noncommercial stations until after 1936—was that AT ALL, or on the commercially available bands?
What does that all mean, exactly?
Am I missing something crucial?
Like: this is about police radio in the 1930s. I don't understand how the FCC could keep anyone from USING freq. above 1500 kHz for broadcast in the first place, and I'm trying to understand if the expected constraint—the thing that would keep civilians with consumer sets from tuning in—was that the sets were manufactured so they wouldn't receive anything higher. The frequency was always "there," right, and it was a question of . . . what, building receivers with the capacity to tune in to it? And why was assigning above 1500 not a violation of the prohibition on dedicated noncommercial frequencies?
This is going to end up as one sentence in my dissertation, BUT IT IS AN IMPORTANT ONE!!! So . . . help?
I know that in 1928, the FCC extended the mediumwave AM band to the range 550 kHz to 1500 kHz.
I also know that in 1931, the FCC licensed a frequency above 1700 kHz to a public safety agency.
But I also thought that the FCC did not license dedicated noncommercial stations until after 1936—was that AT ALL, or on the commercially available bands?
What does that all mean, exactly?
Am I missing something crucial?
Like: this is about police radio in the 1930s. I don't understand how the FCC could keep anyone from USING freq. above 1500 kHz for broadcast in the first place, and I'm trying to understand if the expected constraint—the thing that would keep civilians with consumer sets from tuning in—was that the sets were manufactured so they wouldn't receive anything higher. The frequency was always "there," right, and it was a question of . . . what, building receivers with the capacity to tune in to it? And why was assigning above 1500 not a violation of the prohibition on dedicated noncommercial frequencies?
This is going to end up as one sentence in my dissertation, BUT IT IS AN IMPORTANT ONE!!! So . . . help?
Best answer: Sorry if this rambles; it's a broad question and I'm struggling with some of your assumptions.
Might need to start with this assumption:
But I also thought that the FCC did not license dedicated noncommercial stations until after 1936
Not sure why you think this. The FCC was chartered in 1934; its predecessor the Federal Radio Commission was formed in 1927. Prior to that time, radio was bleeding edge technology; and kind of like the internet it started out with little to no regulation and not much anticipation that it would need to be licensed, regulated, etc.
So the Radio act of 1927 is what puts licensing of broadcast stations on the map. That range of 550 to 1500 kHz continues to this day with little alteration for the AM broadcast band. Your confusion about the timeline may be due to:
- confusing the FCC with its predecessor?
- confusing BROADCAST licensing (radio for entertainment) with COMMUNICATIONS (licensed or non-licensed)? Is "dedicated noncommercial" stations a term for public safety and other 2-way radio?
The tendency in radio licensing and frequencies (which has more or less continued to this day) is that as technology improves, higher frequencies become viable. So it may be that some unlicensed operations were permitted at 1700 kHz or above in those days - and then the FCC stepped in to say "those are now licensed; those without a license must stop using them." This kind of thing still happens, except now we're dealing with microwave bands.
Permitting of RECEIVERS to pick up police or other communications bands was never really an issue until the cellular era. Until the 1990s or so, there were no constraints on owning receivers in this country on any band you wanted to try to pick up. Police understood that they were using their radios "in the clear" (one reason the 10 codes were and are used).
So to answer your last question - yes, the frequency was always "there," of course - licensing tended to catch up with higher and higher frequencies as equipment got more and more able to make use of it. That requires better circuitry, more stable frequency control, and more precise controls.
To address this phrase specifically:
And why was assigning above 1500 not a violation of the prohibition on dedicated noncommercial frequencies?
What you may be misunderstanding is that the FCC granting a license or permitting use in a certain way is not a grant forever. So the FRC or FCC may well have said in an earlier time that 1500 and up was kind of "free for all," but once equipment came along that would allow, for example, mobile police two-way radio sets, the FCC came back and said "this frequency is now reserved for this use." The FCC giveth and taketh away. Just recently, the VHF and UHF television stations surrendered frequencies they had used for decades, since they are now all broadcasting digitally at higher frequencies.
Just occurred to me that if "dedicated noncommercial" frequencies is in fact a reference to amateur (ham) radio usage -- the FCC has bargained with them for decades. They constantly have lost some bands and been given other ones. Again, the tendency is they get bands that are less commercially valuable, and as technology changes, they tend to lose those bands and get others.
Hope this helps...
posted by randomkeystrike at 2:49 PM on October 21, 2016 [2 favorites]
Might need to start with this assumption:
But I also thought that the FCC did not license dedicated noncommercial stations until after 1936
Not sure why you think this. The FCC was chartered in 1934; its predecessor the Federal Radio Commission was formed in 1927. Prior to that time, radio was bleeding edge technology; and kind of like the internet it started out with little to no regulation and not much anticipation that it would need to be licensed, regulated, etc.
So the Radio act of 1927 is what puts licensing of broadcast stations on the map. That range of 550 to 1500 kHz continues to this day with little alteration for the AM broadcast band. Your confusion about the timeline may be due to:
- confusing the FCC with its predecessor?
- confusing BROADCAST licensing (radio for entertainment) with COMMUNICATIONS (licensed or non-licensed)? Is "dedicated noncommercial" stations a term for public safety and other 2-way radio?
The tendency in radio licensing and frequencies (which has more or less continued to this day) is that as technology improves, higher frequencies become viable. So it may be that some unlicensed operations were permitted at 1700 kHz or above in those days - and then the FCC stepped in to say "those are now licensed; those without a license must stop using them." This kind of thing still happens, except now we're dealing with microwave bands.
Permitting of RECEIVERS to pick up police or other communications bands was never really an issue until the cellular era. Until the 1990s or so, there were no constraints on owning receivers in this country on any band you wanted to try to pick up. Police understood that they were using their radios "in the clear" (one reason the 10 codes were and are used).
So to answer your last question - yes, the frequency was always "there," of course - licensing tended to catch up with higher and higher frequencies as equipment got more and more able to make use of it. That requires better circuitry, more stable frequency control, and more precise controls.
To address this phrase specifically:
And why was assigning above 1500 not a violation of the prohibition on dedicated noncommercial frequencies?
What you may be misunderstanding is that the FCC granting a license or permitting use in a certain way is not a grant forever. So the FRC or FCC may well have said in an earlier time that 1500 and up was kind of "free for all," but once equipment came along that would allow, for example, mobile police two-way radio sets, the FCC came back and said "this frequency is now reserved for this use." The FCC giveth and taketh away. Just recently, the VHF and UHF television stations surrendered frequencies they had used for decades, since they are now all broadcasting digitally at higher frequencies.
Just occurred to me that if "dedicated noncommercial" frequencies is in fact a reference to amateur (ham) radio usage -- the FCC has bargained with them for decades. They constantly have lost some bands and been given other ones. Again, the tendency is they get bands that are less commercially valuable, and as technology changes, they tend to lose those bands and get others.
Hope this helps...
posted by randomkeystrike at 2:49 PM on October 21, 2016 [2 favorites]
Response by poster: yes, it does!
Just occurred to me that if "dedicated noncommercial" frequencies is in fact a reference to amateur (ham) radio usage
Noncommercial here means like, dedicated public interest stuff, including but not only police dispatch. In 1928, the Detroit PD (really, ANY PD) could only share airtime with a commercial frequency (in this case, it was KOP; in New York it was WNYC), meaning the dispatcher could break in to the normal broadcast at random. Because KOP was licensed for entertainment, it was required that the police calls also have some form of "entertainment," and in this case they played "Yankee Doodle Dandy" before each call. At some point the FRC denied the Michigan State Police a license for a dedicated police frequency, but clearly by 1931 this other licensing is happening, just above the commercial band—can't figure out why it couldn't have happened before, speculate that it was because Commerce Dept under Hoover wouldn't create a restraint that could disrupt business, am not sure if this was just an informal restraint or codified. I also know the AM commercial band wasn't expanded past 1500kHz until the early 1940s & it wasn't related to 2-way radio.
But also: the complicating thing is that there WAS legislation in place prior to 1927—the Radio Act of 1912, which put all of this under the Commerce Dept's supervision but was otherwise very vague. So I am sort of wondering if there's a specific change in 1927 or not, and I am p sure that there were no, like, education programming-only frequencies before the FCC was formed or for a time after. AND i know that Congressional hearings about police radio in 1934 were related to this, but can't figure out if anything HAPPENED as a result.
(If I have another long clarification, I will take it to memail!)
(yes, this is how I spend entire days right now, lol)
posted by listen, lady at 5:21 PM on October 21, 2016
Just occurred to me that if "dedicated noncommercial" frequencies is in fact a reference to amateur (ham) radio usage
Noncommercial here means like, dedicated public interest stuff, including but not only police dispatch. In 1928, the Detroit PD (really, ANY PD) could only share airtime with a commercial frequency (in this case, it was KOP; in New York it was WNYC), meaning the dispatcher could break in to the normal broadcast at random. Because KOP was licensed for entertainment, it was required that the police calls also have some form of "entertainment," and in this case they played "Yankee Doodle Dandy" before each call. At some point the FRC denied the Michigan State Police a license for a dedicated police frequency, but clearly by 1931 this other licensing is happening, just above the commercial band—can't figure out why it couldn't have happened before, speculate that it was because Commerce Dept under Hoover wouldn't create a restraint that could disrupt business, am not sure if this was just an informal restraint or codified. I also know the AM commercial band wasn't expanded past 1500kHz until the early 1940s & it wasn't related to 2-way radio.
But also: the complicating thing is that there WAS legislation in place prior to 1927—the Radio Act of 1912, which put all of this under the Commerce Dept's supervision but was otherwise very vague. So I am sort of wondering if there's a specific change in 1927 or not, and I am p sure that there were no, like, education programming-only frequencies before the FCC was formed or for a time after. AND i know that Congressional hearings about police radio in 1934 were related to this, but can't figure out if anything HAPPENED as a result.
(If I have another long clarification, I will take it to memail!)
(yes, this is how I spend entire days right now, lol)
posted by listen, lady at 5:21 PM on October 21, 2016
Tip: the folks over at the antiqueradios.com forum will probably be able to explain (with specific examples, counterexamples, exceptions, supporting evidence, and the usual forum disagreements ;)) more than you ever wanted to know about this. The clubhouse section is probably the best place to post this specific question.
posted by Pinback at 8:25 PM on October 21, 2016 [2 favorites]
posted by Pinback at 8:25 PM on October 21, 2016 [2 favorites]
Best answer: that and ham (amateur) radio forums. There are a lot of "FCC regs" buffs in that community. Amateur radio as a licensed service was born out of this era because the government realized they were going to need to provide structure and rules for people who were experimenting with and using radio for personal communications (and just to tinker with radios, just as people tinker with electronics today).
that is some really wild info about how the police were trying to share frequency with broadcasters. That must have been pretty disruptive to listeners.
1927 was the year that put the FRC in place, so yes, it was a big sea change. Again, a comparison with the internet is really apt. It's hard to imagine radio just being considered some kind of novelty/toy/weirdness that no one could figure out how to use. Consider the weirdness that goes on today when law enforcement tries to use Twitter, for example, and you've got a taste of what was happening.
Commerce Department just got this thing in their lap, and struggled to figure out how to regulate it, or IF to regulate it.
The early radios at the turn of the 20th century were REALLY crude, by the way. Ships sending morse code were using radios that splattered RF all over the frequency and interfered with anything and everything within range. 20+ years later, they were much improved and the commercial and communications usage was becoming much more important.
posted by randomkeystrike at 8:42 PM on October 21, 2016 [1 favorite]
that is some really wild info about how the police were trying to share frequency with broadcasters. That must have been pretty disruptive to listeners.
1927 was the year that put the FRC in place, so yes, it was a big sea change. Again, a comparison with the internet is really apt. It's hard to imagine radio just being considered some kind of novelty/toy/weirdness that no one could figure out how to use. Consider the weirdness that goes on today when law enforcement tries to use Twitter, for example, and you've got a taste of what was happening.
Commerce Department just got this thing in their lap, and struggled to figure out how to regulate it, or IF to regulate it.
The early radios at the turn of the 20th century were REALLY crude, by the way. Ships sending morse code were using radios that splattered RF all over the frequency and interfered with anything and everything within range. 20+ years later, they were much improved and the commercial and communications usage was becoming much more important.
posted by randomkeystrike at 8:42 PM on October 21, 2016 [1 favorite]
Best answer: Seconding randomkeystrike — at the early part of the time you're interested in, spark gap radios were just going away and you had the novelty of a radio you could tune with a superhet. And annoy neighbours with sympathetic oscillations …
Splatter was part of the problem that caused the Titanic's communication to be so erratic: Marconi owned the airwaves, and much of the Titanic's outgoing messaging was it telling other ships to get off the air and quit interfering with commercial ($$$, radiogram traffic to/from rich people) activity with your chatter about iceberg warnings, don't you know we're unsinkable bonk argh glub …
posted by scruss at 9:16 AM on October 22, 2016
Splatter was part of the problem that caused the Titanic's communication to be so erratic: Marconi owned the airwaves, and much of the Titanic's outgoing messaging was it telling other ships to get off the air and quit interfering with commercial ($$$, radiogram traffic to/from rich people) activity with your chatter about iceberg warnings, don't you know we're unsinkable bonk argh glub …
posted by scruss at 9:16 AM on October 22, 2016
Response by poster: I think I figured it out: early on, there were the Class A (360m), Class B (400m), and Government (485m) broadcasting wavelengths and police were only issued Class A licenses, with the stipulation that they could break into the wavelength when necessary (whereas most station licenses stipulated the days/times they could broadcast). They PROBABLY wanted to broadcast at 485m but weren't allowed to.
Whew.
Thanks for your help, all!
posted by listen, lady at 12:17 PM on October 22, 2016
Whew.
Thanks for your help, all!
posted by listen, lady at 12:17 PM on October 22, 2016
This thread is closed to new comments.
If there are complaints that someone is broadcasting on a frequency that they are not licensed to use, the FCC (or the Federal Radio Commission in those early days) would investigate it by using triangulation to find the location of the illicit transmissions and shut down that transmitter.
The police bands have always been free to listen to by those with receivers that pick up those bands. It's illegal for civilians or the non-police to broadcast on the police bands, but it's not illegal to receive the police bands. The short answer to your question is that civilians could and still can tune in if they have the right kind of receiver (ie, "police scanners").
posted by I EAT TAPAS at 2:46 PM on October 21, 2016 [1 favorite]