QST

QST

Le magazine ‘QST’ fut lancé en décembre 1915 par Hiram Percy MAXIM,  fondateur de l’ « American Radio Relay League » (Hartford, Connecticut) et Clarence D. TUSKA, secrétaire du ‘Hartford Radio Club’

Radioamateur titulaire successivement des indicatifs SNY, 1WA, 1ZM et 1AW-W1AW, Hiram Percy Maxim fonda l’ARRL en 1914 face à l’absence d’un groupe organisé de stations de relais capables de transférer des messages par la voie des ondes.

« One night in April he attempted to send a message to another ham in Springfield, Massachusetts. He had a one-kilowatt station and Springfield was only 30 miles (48 km) away, well within his normal range. He was unable to make contact, and remembering that he knew another ham in Windsor Locks, about halfway, he contacted the Windsor Locks ham, and asked him to relay the message, which was successfully done. This was not the first time a message had been relayed, but it set Maxim to thinking. At that time, a great deal, perhaps most of amateur radio activity consisted of sending and receiving  messages, not only between amateurs, but involving the general public as well. But at that time the maximum reliable range of a station was a few hundred miles or less, and so Maxim realized that a formally organized relay system would be of tremendous use to amateurs. » (De Soto, Clinton B., Two Hundred Meters and Down, the Story of Amateur Radio, Hartford: ARRL, 1936)

Voici ce que nous pouvons lire à ce sujet sur le site internet de l’ARRL :

« By 1914, there were thousands of Amateur Radio operators - hams - in the United States. Hiram Percy Maxim, a leading Hartford, Connecticut, inventor and industrialist saw the need for an organization to band together this fledgling group of radio-experimenters. In May 1914 he founded the ARRL to meet that need. »

L’ARRL connut un succès fulgurant ! 600 affiliés dès mars 1915. La nécessité d’un organe de liaison, permettant d’établir et de garder le contact entre les opérateurs sans-filistes du pays, se fit immédiatement sentir.

 « It was apparent that the ARRL now needed some kind of bulletin to stay in touch with its members, but there was no money for such a thing. Maxim and Tuska agreed to personally finance it, and in December 1915 the first, sixteen page issue of QST was sent free to all members. Further issues would be supplied through subscription at $1.00 per year » (De Soto, Clinton B., Two Hundred Meters and Down, the Story of Amateur Radio, Hartford: ARRL, 1936)

Une biographie claire et concise est disponible à l’adresse ci-dessous : http://www.qcwa.org/w1aw-sk.htm

Une biographie exhaustive fut publiée en 1970 :

Schumacher, Alice Clink, Hiram Percy Maxim, Father of Amateur Radio, Great Falls, MT: Schumachers, 1970

Hiram Percy Maxim, Président de l’ARRL et Père du radioamateurisme, décéda le 17 février 1936. Il repose au ‘Rose Hill Cemetery’ à Hagerstown, Maryland.