Richard Knoppow wrote:
Perhaps this is the wrong place to ask but I am
assuming that most fans of boatanchor stuff are also
interested in history. I was recently looking over the
_Radio Service Bulletins_ published on the FCC site. These
were originally published by the Federal Radio Commission,
the predecessor to the FCC and date from the early 1920's to
about 1930. In about a 1928 bulletin the requirements for
the commercial licenses of the time are mentioned. At that
time there was no differentiation between phone and
telegraph licenses but there were several grades of license.
The code requirement for the top grades was (are you ready?)
continental code: 30 WPM five letter code groups AND
American Morse: 25 WPM plain text. I wonder how many
followers of this group could pass that now. What I am
curious about is what sort of theory test went along with
this code test. The top license, called something like the
Extra Commercial, required at least 18 months actual
experience within the previous two years and allowed the
holder to be the primary operator of any kind of commercial
station.
I don't know when the FRC or FCC changed the
classification of licenses, actually, I think they modified
them several times, but its possible that someone out there
may actually have held one of these licenses or its later
equivalent.

If the FCC offered the test, then somebody has to have issued a cramming
manual for the test. I'd bet that National Technical Schools had such
a thing. A letter to them might turn something up in the archives.

I didn't take the First Phone until the seventies, but when I took it,
I answered a couple questions oddly and got called in after the test
to give oral explanations. They were apparently satisfactory because
I passed. Could you imagine doing that today?
--scott

--
"C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."