[South Florida DX Association] THE ORIGIN OF THE WORD HAM

[Bill]

I found this in the BARC Newsletter thanks to Robin Terrill N4HHP. I 
have heard many different explanations of where the term "Ham" came 
from. This being one good possibility.
Bill Marx W2CQ


THE ORIGIN OF THE WORD HAM
This is from my Aunt who used to be a HAM Operator but let her License 
lapse long ago..She is thinking about getting back into it.... Ricky 
Eaton / KD4HGR

Ham. Amateur radio operators are often referred to as "hams" -- a term 
with a complicated history. At the start of the 1900s, "ham" was 
sometimes used to refer to someone as "unskilled" -- "Ham actor" being 
the most common example. Wire-line telegraphy employees at this time had 
a rich vocabulary of insults for describing less-than-capable operators, 
and in The Slang of the Wire section of "Telegraph Talk and Talkers", 
from the January, 1902 issue of McClure's Magazine, author L. C. Hall 
noted "It is an every-day thing to hear senders characterized as Miss 
Nancys, rattle-brains, swell-heads, or cranks, or 'jays,' simply because 
the sound of their dots and dashes suggests the epithets." Hall's review 
further noted that "senders of hog-Morse, called techni-cally 'hams' " 
were known for their propensity for transmitting garbled Morse code. So 
it was natural, in light of wire-telegraph practice, for commercial 
stations to dismiss amateur radio operators as "hams"--and in Floods and 
Wireless by Hanby Carver from the August, 1915 Technical World Magazine 
the author noted "Then someone thought of the 'hams'. This is the name 
that the commercial wireless service has given to amateur operators...

" But, interestingly, "ham" would eventually lose its negative meaning 
and become a general nickname for all amateurs. This evolution was 
spotty and not very well documented. As early as the May, 1909 Wireless 
Regi-stry list in Modern Electrics, Earl C. Hawkins of Minneapolis, 
Minnesota was listed with the callsign of "H.A.M." This callsign was 
likely assigned by the magazine -- this was before the U.S. government 
began licensing sta-tions and issuing callsigns -- but was this an 
inside joke or just a coincidence? In two articles by Robert A. Mor-ton, 
Wireless Interference, in the April, 1909 Electrician and Mechanic, and 
The Amateur Wireless Operator, in the January 15, 1910 The Outlook, the 
author included an overheard transmission between amateur stations 
asking "Say, do you know the fellow who is putting up a new station out 
your way? I think he is a ham." How-ever, "ham" took a while to 
completely lose its negative connotations. A letter from Western Union 
employee W. L. Matteson in the December, 1919 issue of QST, Why is an 
Amateur?, complained that amateurs, now regulated by the government, 
were not getting the respect they deserved, noting that "Many unknowing 
land wire telegraphers, hearing the word 'amateur' applied to men 
connected with wireless, regard him as a 'ham' or 'lid'." But in the 
next month's issue, Thomas Hunter's exuberant "poem", I am the Wandering 
Ham, showed that other amateurs had already embraced "ham" as a friendly 
description for their fellow hobbyists.