The 1930s witnessed a technological state of war between the US and Mexico . Radio channels overlap with each other , turn the nighttime radio cosmos into bilingual bedlam . How did it cease ? Physics ! And finesse .
In the early 1900s , as wireless Stations of the Cross reach popularity , the world became a different post . National stations rose up , rent people learn voices from remote regions on a regular basis . ( Some trust that this shaped modern language and stump out many regional accent , as people in dissimilar areas of a res publica began mime the voices they find out on the radio . ) But the wireless world did n’t necessarily bring unity . unseeable factions competed for territory , trying to upgrade their own signals and drown out their competitors . Even a well - establish station could get drowned out – or could be ruined by interference – from a local station that run in on their frequency .
This was specially apparent along the border of the United States and Mexico . Americans find , often to their aggravator , that Mexican stations had the technological edge . “ Border chargeman ” stations out - powered American stations for decade . They had the stronger sign . This was especially ostensible at Nox . the great unwashed tuned in to one station during the day , only to witness at sundown that another place had taken over .
What bump ? It move around out , there ’s such a affair called a skywave . This is an electromagnetic wave , render by a radio post , that shoots up toward the sky and bounce off the ionosphere . It channelise back down to the ground , providing a very longsighted range for a station . Sometimes .
The bouncing ca n’t happen all the time . During the sidereal day , the ionosphere is so perturb by sunshine that radio signals get lost . So while the skywave is drowned out during the twenty-four hours , at nighttime it comes through and people found their favored wireless stations taken over by other signals . ( East coaster can enjoy the skywave during the morning hour , as it ’s still bouncing off the sky in the still - morose west . West coaster turn a loss the skywave in the morning , but get a pre - sunset skywave because it ’s already sour in the east . )
After tenner of fighting , Canada , the United States , and Mexico got together to set up sure radio receiver signals throughout the westerly cerebral hemisphere . They necessitate a piddling assistant from physics . They sequester which frequency could keep a skywave , and they called those frequencies “ clear-cut distribution channel stations . ” The stations assign to these frequencies would be postulate to maintain a sealed layer of power at all times , and lower - power station could n’t move in on these stations and disrupt a larger broadcast . Local , dispirited - power station were also impute a certain curing of frequency , so their broadcasts would n’t be overpowered by home Stations of the Cross .
On March 29 , 1941 , pretty much all the radio post in the western hemisphere swapped places . And at last , there was a truce . Until podcasting occur along .
ViaThe Radio Source , Mad Science
PhysicsScience
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