Call Letters Meaning on Wikipedia

[Donna Halper]

On 6/14/2019 8:40 AM, Bob DeMattia wrote:
> Yes, I transposed 1MX.  W1XM is also affiliated with MIT but I do not 
> believe it is from the 1920's.
>

Actually, the MIT ham radio station 1XM absolutely was around in the 
early 1920s; there were articles about it in Radio News, circa 1922. (It 
got re-named as W1XM in 1927, when the W's got added to ham calls.) But 
the battle over who was first precedes the early 1920s-- little 1XE, 
which went on to  become greater Boston's first commercial station 
(re-named WGI in February 1922), was on the air in January 1916, having 
received its license in the autumn of 1915, based on the records I've 
found.  1XE was operated by several folks from the ham radio club at 
Tufts.  (By the way, I wrote an article about the history of 1XE/WGI, 
the AMRAD station, in last year's Antique Wireless Review.)


-- 
Donna L. Halper, PhD
Associate Professor of Communication & Media Studies
Lesley University, Cambridge MA