[BC] need a NON-technical explanation

[Kevin C. Kidd CSRE/AMD]

I read somewhere (QST?) that the old meters designation originally used
to designate frequency was applicable because the spark gap transmitter
bandwith was extremely wide and not necessarily on a specific frequency.
 If you got your receiver in the general area of the transmit freq it
was easy to find.  There weren't many to choose from.

As technology evolved and bandwidth became narrower, it was necessary to
give a more accurate frequency location than a general wavelength.

Verify this but it is what I recall.

Later,

On 11/11/2010 12:33 PM, Tom Osenkowsky wrote:
> 
> Hams do refer to HF bands in terms of meters, the wavelength of the frequency. Examples include 160, 80, 40, 20 meters, etc. It is much easier to express a frequency in kilohertz or megahertz rather than in meters. For example, 1240 KHz in the AM band equals 241.93548387096774 meters. Hertz was established as a unit of frequency in 1930 by the IEC (International Electrical Congress). The hertz is named after the German physicist Heinrich_Hertz, who made important scientific contributions to the study of electromagnetism. The name was established by the International_Electrotechnical_Commission (IEC) in 1930.[5] It was adopted by the General_Conference_on_Weights_and_Measures (CGPM) (Conférence générale des poids et mesures) in 1960, replacing the previous name for the unit, cycles_per_second (cps), along with its related multiples, primarily kilocycles per second (kc/s) and megacycles per second (Mc/s)
> Cycles refers to cycles per second. (from Wikipedia).
>  

-- 
Kevin C. Kidd, CSRE/AMD
http://www.kkbc.com
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