writing at the intersection of rambam and radix. the best api is assuming positive intent.
writing at the intersection of rambam and radix. the best api is assuming positive intent.
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On Diogenes, Ham Radio, and the Cosmopolitan Metaverse
I
It’s a scenario familiar to many of us in the crypto/web3 community. Without meeting in person, Alan ‘made’ a friend who shared a niche interest. After bonding for several months, they agreed to meet IRL should the opportunity present itself. Unfortunately, when Alan finally made it to his friend’s town, his friend was traveling but said he’d arrange a tour of his home for Alan. Offering a friend a tour of your home sounds weird, but it’s less strange when you are King Hussein of Jordan and your house is the royal palace.
When Alan and the King first spoke, Alan didn’t know that his friend was the King of Jordan and King Hussein didn’t know that his friend was a lawyer living 30 minutes outside of Washington, DC. If this story took place today, this globe-spanning friendship might have been built in a Discord channel. But this story takes place in the 1980s, so the platform the two men used to build a connection with each other was ham radio.
Amateur radio, also known as ham radio, exploded in popularity in the early 19th century. After a Congressionally-mandated pause in US ham radio activity during World War I, the first transatlantic contact and communication via ham radio took place in the early 1920s. In early 1924, 30 amateur stations across America and Europe were communicating. By 1925, operators were communicating with South America and New Zealand. The first transatlantic phone call didn’t take place until 1927.
II
Humans seeking connection to larger communities outside of their immediate local community is not a new concept. When asked where he was from, Diogenes, a 4th Century BCE Greek philosopher and founder of Cynic philosophy, famously said ‘I am a citizen of the world (cosmopolites)’. In a 1997 Journal of Political Philosophy essay, Kant and Stoic Cosmopolitanism, Martha Nussbaum, one of the great contemporary philosophers, explains the importance of Diogenes’ Cosmopolitan claim:
Asked where he came from, Diogenes the Cynic replied, “I am a citizen of the world.” He meant by this, it appears, that he refused to be defined by his local origins and local group memberships, so central to the self-image of a conventional Greek male. He insisted on defining himself, primarily in terms of more universal aspirations and concerns. It would appear that these concerns focused on the worth of reason and moral purpose in defining one’s humanity. Class, rank, status, national origin and location, and even gender are treated by the Cynics as secondary and morally irrelevant attributes.
The human desire — to surpass the physical borders of one’s community and find the community that values you for your thoughts and actions — remains unchanged over millennia. But until the past century, despite this desire, geography limited a human’s ability to find their spiritual peers There was no Discord to silently join and gauge vibes. Gathering information from, and communication with, communities outside of your local community was costly and inefficient. As technology developed that allowed humans to send and receive information more cheaply, the way we connected and joined communities changed.
Why is information important when joining and building communities? Because it reduces the impact of luck. As Diogenes points out, for most of history, you had to hope you were born someplace and someone ‘good’. If you were born in a community that is judged by class, rank, status, national origin, location, or gender, factors and traits you did not choose could be a detriment to your life. That type of luck still has a tremendous impact today, but it was even more important in an information-scarce world.
Why? Because if you were born with the traits that made you disadvantaged in the local community, a lack of information made it even harder to pull yourself up by your bootstraps. Imagine you were a woman born in Mesopotamia, where only the daughters of royalty went to school.
Sure, you could leave, but where would you go? With an inability to send or receive information you might not know where to go to have a chance to prosper in the ways you desire. And even if you knew where to go, you couldn’t make friends or connections in advance. You had to show up, hoping to make inroads into your desired community.
Even if you found members of the community you wanted to join, consider the language barrier. There was no Google translate to help connect and communicate. Some communities had workarounds, like Jewish merchants, who could communicate in Hebrew when they didn’t share a secular language. However, while a shared language opened up communication with other Jewish communities, Hebrew could not bridge the division between Jewish and Gentile merchants.
For a majority of civilized existence, a lack of information has made it difficult for humans to choose the right community for themselves. Technology has changed things: carrier pigeons transmitted information as early as 3000 years ago, and the printing press and movable type print spurred a new era of information exchange. Yet, despite the gradual, and sometimes not so gradual progress of information transmission over the centuries, it wasn’t until the rise of ham radio that humans could finally enter the metaverse.
III
Before explaining how ham radio made it possible for my grandfather Allan to hang in the Metaverse with King Hussein, let’s briefly discuss what the Metaverse is. My favorite definition of the Metaverse was proposed by Shaan Puri this past October. In a now viral twitter thread, Puri posits that rather than being a place:
https://twitter.com/ShaanVP/status/1454151241785696256
That’s where this essay first disagrees with Puri. Rather than the post-2000 rise of digitalization marking the start of our collective ascent into the Metaverse, this essay proposes it was the post-World War II rise of ham radio from the 1950s — 1980s that first made the Metaverse accessible. And to go one step further, the Metaverse may not be solely a moment in time as Puri suggests but rather both a place and a moment in time.
The Metaverse is the realization of Diogenes’ Cosmopolitan community. We can access the Metaverse when we humans can present the purest forms of our reason and moral purpose, fully divorced from the uncontrollable traits of our birth. The Metaverse is a place to be judged by the information one receives and sends, not the physical shell into which we are born. So how did ham radio hasten the advent of this Cosmopolitan Metaverse?
Radio revolutionized how people could communicate and exchange information, which in turn changed how people could seek and join communities. Discussing the impact of radio during the 1930s and 1940s in the United States, PBS calls radio “an excellent way of uniting communities of people, if only virtually” that “provided a way to communicate like never before.” The fluidity of information exchange that radio allowed would have made it easier for our Mesopotamian woman to find the community she desired. Radio freed humans in an entirely new way from the geographic constraints that made it difficult to connect to a new community if the one you happened to be born into wasn’t right for you.
Ham radio wasn’t perfect, but it was the first time people could converse and exchange ideas and information so freely. And the exchange of information made it easier to build connections and communities. Because all you could hear was the person’s voice, you couldn’t judge them as easily but you could still learn from them and find commonalities. Think back to our Mesopotamian woman from earlier and imagine if she had ham radio. Instead of setting forth for a distant, unknown shore, she could research potential communities and form relationships with community members before disembarking. Ham radio allowed for citizens of the world to form a community shared on mutual interest (perhaps akin to Diogenes’ ‘worth of reason’ Nussbaum identified) rather than circumstances of birth.
When my Grandpa Allan first spoke with King Hussein, he didn’t know he was talking to the leader of a nation, just another ham with the call sign JY1. Evidence that removing that anonymity didn’t ruin the Cosmopolitan nature of ham radio comes from Pat Kilroy, another ham who spoke with King Hussein and said:
“He insisted on me addressing him simply as ‘Hussein’…In one of the oldest traditions in Amateur Radio, Hussein upheld that this kinship transverses not only age and nationality, but also between citizen and head of state.”
What’s important about ham radio was that it allowed you to not only get information about other people, but also to share information about yourself with those same people. If you got along, you could form a community of equals, even if one of you was a king and the community existed only in the ether.
IV
Since ham radio debuted, other technologies have come along that made exchanging information and making connections easier. Telephones provided a similar ability to communicate information, but lacked the element of discovery. Instead of broadcasting along frequencies, you were dialing a specific number. Because you could tune in without broadcasting, ham radio allowed users to be passive members of a community — an analogue to the forum lurkers of today.
After ham radio, the next technology to have as big of an impact on the way humans connect and communicate was the internet. Social networks like Myspace, Twitter, and Reddit, alongside video games like Second Life and Animal Crossing, allow people to connect, communicate, and form communities in ways previously unimaginable. While ham radio made it possible to access the Metaverse, the internet kicked the doors open.
There are four distinct advantages (forming a positive flywheel) when considering using the internet instead of ham radio for connection, communication, and forming communities:
More Users — By the early 1940s, 83% of households in the US had a radio, but ham radio penetration was certainly less than 10% and likely less than 3%¹. Comparatively, over 85% of US houses have internet access with global adoption closer to 60%, significantly more penetration than ham radio at its peak.
Richer Information & More Control — While ham radio allowed people more control over what about their identity they did or didn’t include while sending or receiving information, the internet allows us to embed even more information in our communication. Richer information ultimately grants more control over the information we share and how we represent ourselves.
Better Organization — The internet removes some of the randomness of ham radio. While ham radio did allow people to both send and receive information, the internet’s search and indexing make it easier to find the exact information or community you are seeking.
Permanence & Asynchronicity — Compared to the internet’s capabilities, ham radio’s communication can feel ephemeral and its communities fleeting. The internet’s ability to archive historical information allows for asynchronous communication, connection, and community building. The asynchronicity allows for greater adoption which starts the flywheel over again.
If ham radio allowed us to enter the Cosmopolitan Metaverse, and the internet added permanence to the Cosmopolitan Multiverse, then NFTs are the next technology to advance the Multiverse’s evolution. Diogenes desired to be judged by elements of himself that he chose, like his reason, rather than uncontrollable circumstances of his birth. But if he could control the circumstances of his birth, he may not have rejected them. Because you can choose NFTs, NFTs can grant residents of the Cosmopolitan Metaverse control over traits that historically have been decided by the circumstances of one’s birth.
The traits of national origin and location Nussbaum identified could be the L1 hosting the NFT and the particular project — are you a Solana Orcanaut or one of the Glitches on Ethereum? Gender and race/skin tone are obvious comparisons for human-based NFTs but now you can also be an animal if you prefer. Class and rank could be analogous to rarity traits or floor prices.
In this Cosmopolitan Metaverse, where we desire to be perceived by our decisions, NFTs represent a paradigm shift over what we can control. Admittedly, the NFT market today is more driven by price speculation and FOMO than by individuals hoping and attempting to express their true identities. But individuals choosing NFTs for such reasons do exist, and it is worth remembering the nascency of both NFT technology and of human experience using this technology to represent our selves, values, and ideals. How this representation manifests through a mixture of ‘earned’ NFTs and ‘paid’ NFTs may impact how integral and widely adopted NFTs are to the collective Metaverse experience.
Already, some would suggest that the original iteration of NFTs has been surpassed as a conduit to the Metaverse. As we know, owning an NFT often doesn’t actually give one possession of the traits represented by the NFT art, it gives one a claim to those traits that are still in someone else’s possession. In theory, after you choose the NFT that represents your values and beliefs, someone could change the art, changing how you choose to represent yourself and how others ‘view’ you. And that’s where Chain Runners comes in.
V
Despite recent price action suggesting excited VCs might be a negative signal for an NFT project, there is still undeniably a tremendous amount of excitement about Chain Runners (at the time of writing Chain Runners had a 1 ETH floor with over 7500 ETH in volume — that’s over $30 million USD for those counting at home).
Chain Runners is one of the NFT projects (a group including Autoglyphs, Nouns, Corruption(s*), Blitmap, and more) featuring on-chain art. What is an on-chain NFT project? We’ll let Mckay Wrigley explain:
https://twitter.com/mckaywrigley/status/1462254449745960961
As for why on-chain NFT projects matter:
https://twitter.com/mckaywrigley/status/1462254450903560198
In other words, by removing the ability for a third party to change and influence traits/features, on-chain NFT projects give users more control within the Cosmopolitan Metaverse. If NFTs let an individual decide how they present themselves to their community, then on-chain NFTs are the next evolution, granting security in a chosen identity and presentation. Just as the internet provided more access and richer control than the ephemeral radio, on-chain NFTs promise users more permanence and control over how they communicate.
For thousands of years, humans have sought connection, community, and identity beyond the circumstances of their birth. Ham radio opened up the doors to the Metaverse, and NFTs gave people the ability to choose and change traits once thought immutable. Whether you think we entered the Metaverse in the early 20th century or in the last 20 years, technological developments of the last century rapidly accelerated our ability to fulfill the primordial human desire to be judged by the traits and actions we control. The question, then, is raised, of what’s next?
If on-chain NFTs are another step in a never-ending march towards the Cosmopolitan Metaverse, where do we go from here? Is virtual reality the next step in controlling our identities, communication, and community? Probably. VR fits the trend started by ham radio and continued by the internet and NFTs. One thing that is certain is that humans won’t stop attempting to access the Cosmopolitan Metaverse. Because if one thing has remained constant over two thousand years of philosophy, technological development, and societal evolution, it’s that we all want to connect with people who see us as we choose to be.
-
Many thanks to Annika Lewis for her edits, feedback, and suggestions and to Anna Kamerow for her feedback. Also thanks to David Phelps who discussed some of these ideas with me as I was formulating the piece.
— — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — —
¹ It is difficult to find numbers for ham radio adoption in the 1940s. These numbers are extrapolated from the roughly 780,000 ham radio operators estimated to be active in the US today and the US population in 1940 of 132 million.
On Diogenes, Ham Radio, and the Cosmopolitan Metaverse
I
It’s a scenario familiar to many of us in the crypto/web3 community. Without meeting in person, Alan ‘made’ a friend who shared a niche interest. After bonding for several months, they agreed to meet IRL should the opportunity present itself. Unfortunately, when Alan finally made it to his friend’s town, his friend was traveling but said he’d arrange a tour of his home for Alan. Offering a friend a tour of your home sounds weird, but it’s less strange when you are King Hussein of Jordan and your house is the royal palace.
When Alan and the King first spoke, Alan didn’t know that his friend was the King of Jordan and King Hussein didn’t know that his friend was a lawyer living 30 minutes outside of Washington, DC. If this story took place today, this globe-spanning friendship might have been built in a Discord channel. But this story takes place in the 1980s, so the platform the two men used to build a connection with each other was ham radio.
Amateur radio, also known as ham radio, exploded in popularity in the early 19th century. After a Congressionally-mandated pause in US ham radio activity during World War I, the first transatlantic contact and communication via ham radio took place in the early 1920s. In early 1924, 30 amateur stations across America and Europe were communicating. By 1925, operators were communicating with South America and New Zealand. The first transatlantic phone call didn’t take place until 1927.
II
Humans seeking connection to larger communities outside of their immediate local community is not a new concept. When asked where he was from, Diogenes, a 4th Century BCE Greek philosopher and founder of Cynic philosophy, famously said ‘I am a citizen of the world (cosmopolites)’. In a 1997 Journal of Political Philosophy essay, Kant and Stoic Cosmopolitanism, Martha Nussbaum, one of the great contemporary philosophers, explains the importance of Diogenes’ Cosmopolitan claim:
Asked where he came from, Diogenes the Cynic replied, “I am a citizen of the world.” He meant by this, it appears, that he refused to be defined by his local origins and local group memberships, so central to the self-image of a conventional Greek male. He insisted on defining himself, primarily in terms of more universal aspirations and concerns. It would appear that these concerns focused on the worth of reason and moral purpose in defining one’s humanity. Class, rank, status, national origin and location, and even gender are treated by the Cynics as secondary and morally irrelevant attributes.
The human desire — to surpass the physical borders of one’s community and find the community that values you for your thoughts and actions — remains unchanged over millennia. But until the past century, despite this desire, geography limited a human’s ability to find their spiritual peers There was no Discord to silently join and gauge vibes. Gathering information from, and communication with, communities outside of your local community was costly and inefficient. As technology developed that allowed humans to send and receive information more cheaply, the way we connected and joined communities changed.
Why is information important when joining and building communities? Because it reduces the impact of luck. As Diogenes points out, for most of history, you had to hope you were born someplace and someone ‘good’. If you were born in a community that is judged by class, rank, status, national origin, location, or gender, factors and traits you did not choose could be a detriment to your life. That type of luck still has a tremendous impact today, but it was even more important in an information-scarce world.
Why? Because if you were born with the traits that made you disadvantaged in the local community, a lack of information made it even harder to pull yourself up by your bootstraps. Imagine you were a woman born in Mesopotamia, where only the daughters of royalty went to school.
Sure, you could leave, but where would you go? With an inability to send or receive information you might not know where to go to have a chance to prosper in the ways you desire. And even if you knew where to go, you couldn’t make friends or connections in advance. You had to show up, hoping to make inroads into your desired community.
Even if you found members of the community you wanted to join, consider the language barrier. There was no Google translate to help connect and communicate. Some communities had workarounds, like Jewish merchants, who could communicate in Hebrew when they didn’t share a secular language. However, while a shared language opened up communication with other Jewish communities, Hebrew could not bridge the division between Jewish and Gentile merchants.
For a majority of civilized existence, a lack of information has made it difficult for humans to choose the right community for themselves. Technology has changed things: carrier pigeons transmitted information as early as 3000 years ago, and the printing press and movable type print spurred a new era of information exchange. Yet, despite the gradual, and sometimes not so gradual progress of information transmission over the centuries, it wasn’t until the rise of ham radio that humans could finally enter the metaverse.
III
Before explaining how ham radio made it possible for my grandfather Allan to hang in the Metaverse with King Hussein, let’s briefly discuss what the Metaverse is. My favorite definition of the Metaverse was proposed by Shaan Puri this past October. In a now viral twitter thread, Puri posits that rather than being a place:
https://twitter.com/ShaanVP/status/1454151241785696256
That’s where this essay first disagrees with Puri. Rather than the post-2000 rise of digitalization marking the start of our collective ascent into the Metaverse, this essay proposes it was the post-World War II rise of ham radio from the 1950s — 1980s that first made the Metaverse accessible. And to go one step further, the Metaverse may not be solely a moment in time as Puri suggests but rather both a place and a moment in time.
The Metaverse is the realization of Diogenes’ Cosmopolitan community. We can access the Metaverse when we humans can present the purest forms of our reason and moral purpose, fully divorced from the uncontrollable traits of our birth. The Metaverse is a place to be judged by the information one receives and sends, not the physical shell into which we are born. So how did ham radio hasten the advent of this Cosmopolitan Metaverse?
Radio revolutionized how people could communicate and exchange information, which in turn changed how people could seek and join communities. Discussing the impact of radio during the 1930s and 1940s in the United States, PBS calls radio “an excellent way of uniting communities of people, if only virtually” that “provided a way to communicate like never before.” The fluidity of information exchange that radio allowed would have made it easier for our Mesopotamian woman to find the community she desired. Radio freed humans in an entirely new way from the geographic constraints that made it difficult to connect to a new community if the one you happened to be born into wasn’t right for you.
Ham radio wasn’t perfect, but it was the first time people could converse and exchange ideas and information so freely. And the exchange of information made it easier to build connections and communities. Because all you could hear was the person’s voice, you couldn’t judge them as easily but you could still learn from them and find commonalities. Think back to our Mesopotamian woman from earlier and imagine if she had ham radio. Instead of setting forth for a distant, unknown shore, she could research potential communities and form relationships with community members before disembarking. Ham radio allowed for citizens of the world to form a community shared on mutual interest (perhaps akin to Diogenes’ ‘worth of reason’ Nussbaum identified) rather than circumstances of birth.
When my Grandpa Allan first spoke with King Hussein, he didn’t know he was talking to the leader of a nation, just another ham with the call sign JY1. Evidence that removing that anonymity didn’t ruin the Cosmopolitan nature of ham radio comes from Pat Kilroy, another ham who spoke with King Hussein and said:
“He insisted on me addressing him simply as ‘Hussein’…In one of the oldest traditions in Amateur Radio, Hussein upheld that this kinship transverses not only age and nationality, but also between citizen and head of state.”
What’s important about ham radio was that it allowed you to not only get information about other people, but also to share information about yourself with those same people. If you got along, you could form a community of equals, even if one of you was a king and the community existed only in the ether.
IV
Since ham radio debuted, other technologies have come along that made exchanging information and making connections easier. Telephones provided a similar ability to communicate information, but lacked the element of discovery. Instead of broadcasting along frequencies, you were dialing a specific number. Because you could tune in without broadcasting, ham radio allowed users to be passive members of a community — an analogue to the forum lurkers of today.
After ham radio, the next technology to have as big of an impact on the way humans connect and communicate was the internet. Social networks like Myspace, Twitter, and Reddit, alongside video games like Second Life and Animal Crossing, allow people to connect, communicate, and form communities in ways previously unimaginable. While ham radio made it possible to access the Metaverse, the internet kicked the doors open.
There are four distinct advantages (forming a positive flywheel) when considering using the internet instead of ham radio for connection, communication, and forming communities:
More Users — By the early 1940s, 83% of households in the US had a radio, but ham radio penetration was certainly less than 10% and likely less than 3%¹. Comparatively, over 85% of US houses have internet access with global adoption closer to 60%, significantly more penetration than ham radio at its peak.
Richer Information & More Control — While ham radio allowed people more control over what about their identity they did or didn’t include while sending or receiving information, the internet allows us to embed even more information in our communication. Richer information ultimately grants more control over the information we share and how we represent ourselves.
Better Organization — The internet removes some of the randomness of ham radio. While ham radio did allow people to both send and receive information, the internet’s search and indexing make it easier to find the exact information or community you are seeking.
Permanence & Asynchronicity — Compared to the internet’s capabilities, ham radio’s communication can feel ephemeral and its communities fleeting. The internet’s ability to archive historical information allows for asynchronous communication, connection, and community building. The asynchronicity allows for greater adoption which starts the flywheel over again.
If ham radio allowed us to enter the Cosmopolitan Metaverse, and the internet added permanence to the Cosmopolitan Multiverse, then NFTs are the next technology to advance the Multiverse’s evolution. Diogenes desired to be judged by elements of himself that he chose, like his reason, rather than uncontrollable circumstances of his birth. But if he could control the circumstances of his birth, he may not have rejected them. Because you can choose NFTs, NFTs can grant residents of the Cosmopolitan Metaverse control over traits that historically have been decided by the circumstances of one’s birth.
The traits of national origin and location Nussbaum identified could be the L1 hosting the NFT and the particular project — are you a Solana Orcanaut or one of the Glitches on Ethereum? Gender and race/skin tone are obvious comparisons for human-based NFTs but now you can also be an animal if you prefer. Class and rank could be analogous to rarity traits or floor prices.
In this Cosmopolitan Metaverse, where we desire to be perceived by our decisions, NFTs represent a paradigm shift over what we can control. Admittedly, the NFT market today is more driven by price speculation and FOMO than by individuals hoping and attempting to express their true identities. But individuals choosing NFTs for such reasons do exist, and it is worth remembering the nascency of both NFT technology and of human experience using this technology to represent our selves, values, and ideals. How this representation manifests through a mixture of ‘earned’ NFTs and ‘paid’ NFTs may impact how integral and widely adopted NFTs are to the collective Metaverse experience.
Already, some would suggest that the original iteration of NFTs has been surpassed as a conduit to the Metaverse. As we know, owning an NFT often doesn’t actually give one possession of the traits represented by the NFT art, it gives one a claim to those traits that are still in someone else’s possession. In theory, after you choose the NFT that represents your values and beliefs, someone could change the art, changing how you choose to represent yourself and how others ‘view’ you. And that’s where Chain Runners comes in.
V
Despite recent price action suggesting excited VCs might be a negative signal for an NFT project, there is still undeniably a tremendous amount of excitement about Chain Runners (at the time of writing Chain Runners had a 1 ETH floor with over 7500 ETH in volume — that’s over $30 million USD for those counting at home).
Chain Runners is one of the NFT projects (a group including Autoglyphs, Nouns, Corruption(s*), Blitmap, and more) featuring on-chain art. What is an on-chain NFT project? We’ll let Mckay Wrigley explain:
https://twitter.com/mckaywrigley/status/1462254449745960961
As for why on-chain NFT projects matter:
https://twitter.com/mckaywrigley/status/1462254450903560198
In other words, by removing the ability for a third party to change and influence traits/features, on-chain NFT projects give users more control within the Cosmopolitan Metaverse. If NFTs let an individual decide how they present themselves to their community, then on-chain NFTs are the next evolution, granting security in a chosen identity and presentation. Just as the internet provided more access and richer control than the ephemeral radio, on-chain NFTs promise users more permanence and control over how they communicate.
For thousands of years, humans have sought connection, community, and identity beyond the circumstances of their birth. Ham radio opened up the doors to the Metaverse, and NFTs gave people the ability to choose and change traits once thought immutable. Whether you think we entered the Metaverse in the early 20th century or in the last 20 years, technological developments of the last century rapidly accelerated our ability to fulfill the primordial human desire to be judged by the traits and actions we control. The question, then, is raised, of what’s next?
If on-chain NFTs are another step in a never-ending march towards the Cosmopolitan Metaverse, where do we go from here? Is virtual reality the next step in controlling our identities, communication, and community? Probably. VR fits the trend started by ham radio and continued by the internet and NFTs. One thing that is certain is that humans won’t stop attempting to access the Cosmopolitan Metaverse. Because if one thing has remained constant over two thousand years of philosophy, technological development, and societal evolution, it’s that we all want to connect with people who see us as we choose to be.
-
Many thanks to Annika Lewis for her edits, feedback, and suggestions and to Anna Kamerow for her feedback. Also thanks to David Phelps who discussed some of these ideas with me as I was formulating the piece.
— — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — —
¹ It is difficult to find numbers for ham radio adoption in the 1940s. These numbers are extrapolated from the roughly 780,000 ham radio operators estimated to be active in the US today and the US population in 1940 of 132 million.
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