In the good old days, the pioneering days of radio, people built their own equipment. This included transmitters, receivers, power supplies, aerial tuning units… in fact, everything! There were no black boxes, no transceivers off the shelf or ready made aerials. They even constructed their own Morse keys.
Long before the BBC, before regular radio broadcasting, and even before the word radio became part of everyday language, a small number of experimenters were exploring the possibilities of communication without wires.
During the closing years of the nineteenth century and the opening decades of the twentieth, these pioneers began building and operating their own wireless apparatus. Working in bedrooms, garden sheds, and makeshift workshops, they constructed transmitters, wound tuning coils, erected aerials and experimented with electromagnetic waves that could carry signals through the air.
Their transmitters often produced noisy electrical sparks, their receivers were crude and temperamental, and their aerials might consist of little more than lengths of wire suspended between chimneys and trees. Yet these determined individuals laid the foundations of what would eventually become one of the world's most enduring technical hobbies: amateur radio.
The Scientists Who Inspired a Generation
Guglielmo Marconi (1874-1937)
Although Italian by birth and not a radio amateur in the modern sense, Guglielmo Marconi played an enormous part in the development of British wireless communication. Arriving in Britain in 1896, Marconi demonstrated that electrical signals could be transmitted and received without physical connecting wires. His early experiments attracted considerable public attention and helped transform wireless telegraphy from a scientific curiosity into a practical means of communication.
For the young British experimenter, Marconi's achievements were nothing short of astonishing. The idea that a message could travel invisibly through the air, without a connecting cable, opened up an entirely new world of possibilities. Before long, enthusiastic amateurs were attempting to reproduce his experiments, constructing miniature spark transmitters and primitive receivers from whatever components they could obtain.
Sir Oliver Lodge (1851-1940)
Another towering figure in early British wireless development was the physicist Sir Oliver Lodge. In 1894, Lodge publicly demonstrated the detection of electromagnetic waves, building upon the pioneering discoveries of Heinrich Hertz. His work on coherer detectors, resonance and electrical tuning made an important contribution to the development of practical wireless systems.
Lodge was primarily a scientist rather than a hobby operator, but his demonstrations and published research provided invaluable inspiration to the first generation of British wireless enthusiasts. At a time when the behaviour of radio waves was still poorly understood, scientists such as Lodge helped establish the principles upon which amateur wireless experimentation would develop.
The First British Wireless Enthusiasts
By the early 1900s, wireless experimentation was becoming increasingly popular among technically minded young men. Electrical components could sometimes be obtained from scientific suppliers, but many experimenters made their own apparatus using materials salvaged from discarded electrical equipment. Induction coils, Leyden jars, coherers, homemade condensers and lengths of copper wire formed the basis of many early installations.
Communication was almost entirely by Morse code, and even the successful reception of a signal from a few hundred yards away could be regarded as a major achievement. Unlike modern amateurs, these pioneers had little reliable information about propagation, aerial efficiency or frequency selection. Much of their knowledge came from trial and error, careful observation and the exchange of experimental results.
Leslie McMichael - 2MI, Later G2FG
Among the most important early British radio amateurs was Leslie McMichael, a dedicated experimenter whose name would later become familiar throughout the British radio industry. McMichael began experimenting with wireless around 1903, using apparatus that he had constructed himself. One of his earliest transmitters employed a ten-inch induction coil to produce the high-voltage sparks necessary to generate electromagnetic waves.
Using a homemade coherer receiver, consisting of metallic filings enclosed in a small glass tube, he reportedly succeeded in receiving signals over a distance of approximately 200 yards. Such a distance may seem insignificant today, but in the early years of wireless it represented a considerable achievement for a young amateur working with relatively simple equipment.
McMichael was not content merely to experiment in isolation. He recognised the importance of bringing wireless enthusiasts together to exchange information and encourage further development. In 1913, he became one of the six founders of the London Wireless Club, serving as its vice-chairman.
Following the First World War, McMichael played an important part in efforts to restore amateur transmitting privileges. He subsequently established a successful radio manufacturing business. The McMichael name became associated with high-quality British domestic wireless receivers during the 1920s and 1930s.
His career provides a particularly good example of how early amateur experimentation helped create Britain's emerging radio industry.
René H. Klein - 2HT, Later G8NK
If one individual deserves recognition for bringing Britain's early wireless enthusiasts together, it is René H. Klein. An enthusiastic experimenter living in West Hampstead, London, Klein realised that amateur wireless operators needed an organisation through which they could exchange ideas, discuss technical problems and promote their interests.
In the summer of 1913, he invited fellow experimenters to meet at his home. On 5 July 1913, six wireless enthusiasts gathered there and established the London Wireless Club. Klein became its first honorary secretary, while Leslie McMichael was appointed vice-chairman. It was a modest beginning, but the organisation they created would eventually become the Radio Society of Great Britain.
Klein was also an active wireless experimenter in his own right. In October 1913, he obtained permission from the Post Office to transmit experimental wireless signals from his home to a receiving installation at the Model Engineer Exhibition in Westminster.
The arrangement used a wavelength of approximately 250 metres, corresponding to a frequency of about 1.2 MHz, with a transmitter input of around 40 watts. The signals were transmitted by wireless telegraphy, using Morse code rather than speech. This was one of the earliest notable public demonstrations of British amateur wireless activity.
The achievement is particularly interesting because the transmitting station was operated by an ordinary wireless enthusiast, rather than a large commercial organisation or government establishment.
Klein's contribution extended far beyond a single experimental transmission. His determination to unite amateur experimenters helped establish an organisation that continues to represent British radio amateurs more than a century later.
The Formation of the Radio Society of Great Britain
The meeting at René Klein's home on 5 July 1913 was a defining moment in British amateur radio history. Before the establishment of organised clubs, many enthusiasts had worked independently, relying on technical magazines, personal correspondence and occasional meetings to exchange information.
The London Wireless Club provided an opportunity for like-minded individuals to share their experiences and encourage one another. Members could discuss receiver design, compare transmitter arrangements, exchange circuit diagrams and investigate the increasingly important subjects of aerial design and tuning. Other notable figures associated with the early organisation included Frank Hope-Jones, L. F. Fogarty and the distinguished electrical engineer A. A. Campbell-Swinton.
The new club quickly attracted interest beyond London. In September 1913, its name was changed to the Wireless Society of London, reflecting its widening membership and influence.
Finally, in November 1922, the organisation adopted the name by which it remains known today: the Radio Society of Great Britain (RSGB). Although the London Wireless Club became the best-known early organisation, it was not Britain's first gathering of wireless enthusiasts. The Manchester Wireless Society had already been established in 1911. The development of these societies demonstrated that wireless experimentation was rapidly becoming an organised and increasingly sophisticated activity.
Inside an Early Amateur Wireless Station
To appreciate the achievements of these pioneers, it is worth considering the equipment they had available.
An amateur wireless station in the years immediately preceding the First World War would have looked very different from the familiar radio shack of today.
A typical installation might have included:
- Spark-gap transmitter: Usually powered by an induction coil or other high-voltage source, producing electrical sparks that generated damped radio-frequency oscillations.
- Coherer detector: An early receiver detector employing metallic filings whose electrical resistance changed in the presence of radio waves.
- Crystal detector: A more sensitive alternative used increasingly during the early twentieth century, often employing galena and a fine-wire contact.
- Hand-wound tuning coils: Large coils of copper wire, sometimes with sliding contacts or interchangeable sections, used to adjust the operating wavelength.
- Morse key: The essential means of transmitting messages. Amateur speech transmission was still in its infancy.
- Wire aerial: Frequently suspended between chimneys, trees, masts or convenient nearby structures.
- Earth connection: Often forming an essential part of the transmitting and receiving aerial system.
The limitations of early spark transmitters were considerable. Their signals occupied relatively broad portions of the radio spectrum, while the primitive tuning arrangements of many early receivers offered little protection against interference from other stations. Frequency stability and selectivity were nothing like the standards that would later become commonplace.
Nevertheless, successful communication was possible, and every improvement in equipment offered the prospect of greater range and reliability.
The development of the thermionic valve would eventually revolutionise wireless communication, providing more sensitive receivers and making sustained-wave transmission increasingly practical. For amateur experimenters, the arrival of valve technology opened the door to an entirely new era.
The First World War - Experimentation Interrupted
The outbreak of the First World War in August 1914 brought a sudden interruption to the development of British amateur wireless. The government imposed strict controls on privately owned wireless apparatus, and amateur transmitting was prohibited. Stations that had previously been used for peaceful experimentation fell silent.
For many enthusiasts, however, their accumulated knowledge of wireless technology was to prove extremely valuable. Wireless communication had become increasingly important to military operations, particularly in naval and army communications. The practical experience gained by amateur experimenters made some of them well suited to technical and communications duties during the conflict.
When peace returned in 1918, British amateurs were eager to resume their activities. The restoration of transmitting licences did not happen immediately, and considerable effort was required by wireless societies and individual enthusiasts to regain the right to experiment.
By the early 1920s, amateur activity was beginning to flourish once more. The next few years would produce achievements that astonished the professional wireless community.
Across the Atlantic - The Great Breakthrough
During the early years of wireless, long-distance communication generally relied on very long wavelengths, enormous aerial systems and powerful transmitters. Many professional engineers believed that shorter wavelengths were of limited practical value for communication over great distances. Amateur experimenters were about to challenge that assumption.
The Historic 5WS Transmissions - December 1922
In December 1922, the Radio Society of Great Britain established a special experimental station at Wandsworth, South London. Operating under the callsign 5WS, the station took part in organised transatlantic transmission tests. On 24 December 1922, its signals were successfully received and verified by amateur listeners in North America.
This became the first confirmed reception of a European amateur transmitting station on the western side of the Atlantic. It was an extraordinary achievement. The Atlantic Ocean, previously regarded as an immense obstacle to relatively low-powered amateur communication, had effectively been crossed by signals from a British experimental station.
There had not yet been a completed two-way amateur contact across the ocean, but the successful reception of 5WS demonstrated that such communication might soon become possible.
Jack Partridge - 2KF
On 8 December 1923, British amateur Jack Partridge, operating station 2KF from Merton in South London, achieved another important milestone. He established successful two-way Morse communication with the American amateur station 1MO in Connecticut. The American station was associated with Fred Schnell and the American Radio Relay League. Partridge's contact was the first successful two-way amateur radio communication between Britain and the United States.
It followed the pioneering transatlantic contacts made only weeks earlier by French amateur Léon Deloy, 8AB, and American operators. For British amateurs, the achievement of 2KF was particularly significant. Using equipment that was modest by professional standards, Partridge demonstrated that an individual experimenter could exchange messages across the Atlantic without relying on the enormous transmitting stations previously considered necessary.
The success helped establish the enormous potential of shorter wavelengths for long-distance communication. It also marked the beginning of a new enthusiasm among British amateurs: working distant stations, an activity that would become universally known as DX.
Cecil Goyder - 2SZ: Reaching the Other Side of the World
If crossing the Atlantic was remarkable, an even more extraordinary achievement followed in October 1924. Cecil Goyder was a young wireless enthusiast and pupil at Mill Hill School in North London. Operating the amateur station 2SZ from the school, he had become deeply interested in the possibilities of long-distance communication using short wavelengths.
Thousands of miles away, in New Zealand, another enthusiast named Frank Bell was conducting similar experiments from his station 4AA. On 18 October 1924, the two operators established successful two-way Morse communication between Britain and New Zealand. The distance involved was approximately 12,000 miles, making it one of the most remarkable achievements in the early history of amateur radio.
The contact is celebrated as the first successful two-way amateur radio communication between Britain and New Zealand. Here was a young experimenter at a London school communicating directly with another amateur on the opposite side of the world.
No international telephone network, no satellite and no internet were involved. The messages travelled by radio waves, reflected and refracted through the upper regions of the atmosphere. The scientific understanding of the ionosphere was still developing, but amateur operators were already demonstrating the remarkable long-distance possibilities of high-frequency radio.
Goyder and Bell's achievement helped prove that worldwide communication was possible using comparatively modest equipment. The era of global amateur radio had arrived.
A Timeline of Early British Amateur Radio
1894 Sir Oliver Lodge demonstrates the detection of electromagnetic waves.
1896 Guglielmo Marconi begins his pioneering wireless work in Britain.
1903 Leslie McMichael experiments with homemade spark transmitters and coherer receivers.
1911 The Manchester Wireless Society is established.
1913 Six enthusiasts establish the London Wireless Club on 5 July.
1913 The club becomes the Wireless Society of London.
1914 Amateur wireless transmitting is prohibited following the outbreak of the First World War.
1920 Amateur wireless activity begins to resume as post-war restrictions are eased.
1922 The Wireless Society of London becomes the Radio Society of Great Britain.
1922 Signals from British amateur station 5WS are successfully received in North America.
1923 Jack Partridge, 2KF, achieves the first successful two-way amateur contact between Britain and the United States.
1924 Cecil Goyder, 2SZ, communicates with Frank Bell, 4AA, in New Zealand.
The Legacy of Britain's Wireless Pioneers
Looking back at the achievements of these early enthusiasts, perhaps the most remarkable aspect of their story is just how much they accomplished with so little. Their equipment was crude by modern standards. Components were often difficult to obtain, measurement instruments were rudimentary, and much of the science of radio propagation remained unexplored. Yet they possessed the qualities that would come to define amateur radio: curiosity, ingenuity, patience and a determination to discover what might be possible.
They were far more than operators. They were constructors, inventors, experimenters and engineers. They wound their own coils, built their own transmitters, investigated unfamiliar wavelengths and erected aerial systems based largely on personal experience. They exchanged ideas freely, learned from their mistakes and celebrated one another's successes.
Their experiments helped challenge accepted theories about the usefulness of short wavelengths and contributed to the rapid development of modern wireless communication. Many of the activities enjoyed by radio amateurs today have their origins in those pioneering years.
Home construction, aerial experimentation, Morse communication, DX working, equipment modification and the exchange of technical information are all part of a tradition stretching back to the earliest days of wireless.
The desire to send a signal into the ether, discover where it might be heard and communicate with another enthusiast hundreds or thousands of miles away is as compelling today as it was more than a century ago.