An Amateur Radio Station License granted by the United States Department of Commerce to Sidney N. Shure in 1913, when he was 11 years old.
Amateur radio operators, known as “hams,” formed clubs, read hobby magazines, and exchanged cards that verified the contacts they made with their radios. In 1910, a popular magazine described the growth, popularity, and contributions of amateur radio: “Hundreds of schoolboys in every part of the country have taken to this most popular scientific fad and, by copying the instruments used at the regular stations and constructing apparatus out of all kinds of electrical junk, have built wireless equipment that in some cases approaches the naval stations in efficiency.”
