RCA’S 2021 TECHNICAL SYMPOSIUM WILL CELEBRATE
CENTENNIAL OF 1921 TRANSATLANTIC TESTS RCA’s annual Technical Symposium will return on Saturday, November 20, 2021. The full schedule is included in this issue of the Proceedings. The topics reflect the broad shift in the radio and wireless industry and will bring together a range of speakers and panelists who are at the forefront of change. We will also celebrate the centennial of the 1921 Transatlantic Tests made by RCA and ARRL members. These tests laid the foundation for viable commercial and amateur use of the shorter-wave radio bands under 200 meters. This milestone accomplishment immediately rendered the huge, large-scale, longer-wave broadcasting stations obsolete. It set the table for many later technological developments in short wave (HF or high frequency) radio that are applied in international government broadcasting and by private domestic stations, air traffic control, utility stations not intended for the general public, amateur radio, time-signal and radio clock stations. Other sporadic or non-traditional users of the shortwave bands also include clandestine and numbers stations, unlicensed two way radio activity, pirate radio broadcasting, over-the-horizon radar, and ionospheric heaters used for scientific experimentation. Once the 1921 Transatlantic Tests proved that large distances could be spanned with very modest wireless equipment, a new period of experimentation and innovation began in wireless. Inventors such as Major Edwin Armstrong (a member of the Radio Club of America) perfected superregenerative and superhetrodyne receivers, and frequency modulation. Other inventors over the next 100 years worked on ever higher frequency equipment, perfected antenna technology, smaller and eventually miniature circuits, and perfected improved
1BCG Commemorative Monument in Greenwich Connecticut.
techniques for sending both voice and data transmissions. One of the results today is the proliferation of smart phones, Bluetooth devices, wireless routers to give us Internet access, and many other technologies that we take for granted, which can be traced back to the 1921 Transatlantic Tests.
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FALL 2021 PROCEEDINGS 13
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