Monday, February 15, 2010


Where did the word HAM come from?


From Florida Skip Magazine - 1959

Have you ever wondered why radio amateurs are called "HAMS"?

Well, it goes like this: The word "HAM" as applied to 1908
was the station CALL of the first amateur wireless stations
operated by some amateurs of the Harvard Radio Club.
They were ALBERT S. HYMAN, BOB ALMY and POOGIE MURRAY.
At first they called their station "HYMAN-ALMY-MURRAY".
Tapping out such a long name in code soon became tiresome
and called for a revision. They changed it to "HY-AL-MU",
using the first two letters of each of their names.
Early in 1901 some confusion resulted between signals
from amateur wireless station "HYALMU" and a
Mexican ship named "HYALMO".
They then decided to use only the first letter of each name,
and the station CALL became "HAM".

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