The goals for the Amateur Service, as defined in this document, have not changed. Today, the Amateur Radio Service continues in the rich and honorable traditions which caused it to be held in such high esteem in 1935. Of course, this was before the day of egg-headed CB operators, radio-frequency interference (RFI) and television interference (TVI).
The following is an interesting comparison of size and capabilities of several radio services, all licensed by the FCC. I've not intended to publish the entire Report, but rather to comment on the First Annual Report of the Federal Communications Commission and it's view of the Amateur Service, particularly as it compared to several other services. Therefore, in the following, I will jump immediately to page 41, where the report on the Amateur Service begins, and then move to some other pages (sometimes out of order) in order to perceive some fascinating realities of that time.
My comments (below) are delineated with rainbow horizontal bars and formatted in green italics, in order to clearly distinguish them from the Report. The individual page images are separated with ordinary, gray horizontal line. I hope you enjoy this interesting and quite fascinating journey back into the history of the Amateur Radio service, as redesigned and regulated beginning in 1935. The original radio service was entirely self-regulated and callsigns were created and assumed by operators on their own initiative and given numeric assignment by convention and concensus, based on the geographical location of the station. Later, these numerical identifiers were appropriated by the newly formed Federal Communications Commission and still exist, today (though they are largely both meaningless and ineffectual, other than for newly qualified Hams.
Page 42
From page 5
Page 6
Note that, at the end of June 1935, there were 45,561 licensed Amateur stations and only 194 radio licenses held by municipal (city) police agencies. Remarkably, there were even more licensed aircraft than all of the licensed Police services, combined.
Here's what is said about the licensed Police radios, from page 39:
The only service that came anywhere close to the Amateur service in number of licensed stations was presence of licensed radio rooms on board ships under U. S. registry. Concerning those ships, the following is written (page 35):
"Fifty-eight ship stations are licensed to operate on frequencies allocated for use exclusively in Alaskan waters. The number of vessels authorized for intership communication on the medium high frequency 2,738 kilocycles is 25."
This is, to me, amazing, given the age of radio telegraphy (even the HMS Titanic had a radio room and operator who sent the SOS picked up by the HMS Carpathia on the Titanic's ill-fated maiden voyage in 1912!).
But, there's more!
There were only 623 licensed commercial broadcast stations and only one licensed station used in the U. S. movie industry, concerning which the following is excerpted from page 40:
Fascinating!