Pirate radio
For example, in the UK, Marconi's work was supported by the post office, but in an era of weak regulation, a music hall magician Nevil Maskelyne deliberately hijacked a demonstration.
The May 25, 1907, edition of Electrical World',' in an article called "Wireless and Lawless," reported authorities were unable to prevent an amateur from interfering with the operation of a government station at the Washington, D.C. Navy Yard using legal means.
[3] In the run-up to the London Radiotelegraph Convention in 1912, and amid concerns about the safety of marine radio following the sinking of the RMS Titanic on April 15 of that year, the New York Herald of April 17, 1912, headlined President William Howard Taft's initiative to regulate the public airwaves in an article titled "President Moves to Stop Mob Rule of Wireless.
[citation needed] In the 1960s in the UK, the term referred to not only a perceived unauthorized use of the state-run spectrum by the unlicensed broadcasters but also the risk-taking nature of offshore radio stations that actually operated on anchored ships or marine platforms.
The audience in the United Kingdom originally listened to their radio sets by permission of a wireless license issued by the British General Post Office (GPO).
[citation needed] By the 1970s, pirate radio in the UK had mostly moved to land-based broadcasting, transmitting from tower blocks in towns and cities.
[citation needed] In the US, the 1912 "Act to Regulate Radio Communication" assigned amateurs and experimenters their own frequency spectrum, and introduced licensing and call-signs.
During the first two and a half years of World War I, before US entry, President Wilson tasked the US Navy with monitoring US radio stations, nominally to "ensure neutrality."
The Navy took it a step further and declared it was illegal to listen to radio or possess a receiver or transmitter in the US, but there were doubts they had the authority to issue such an order even in war time.
As a result of the AT&T interpretation, a landmark case was heard in court, which even prompted comments from Secretary of Commerce Herbert Hoover when he took a public stand in the station's defense.
Predecessors to XERF, for instance, had originally broadcast in Kansas, advocating "goat-gland surgery" for improved masculinity, but moved to Mexico to evade US laws about advertising medical treatments, particularly unproven ones.
While the United States transmitted its programs towards the Soviet Union, which attempted to jam them, in 1970 the government of the United Kingdom decided to employ a jamming transmitter to drown out the incoming transmissions from the commercial station Radio North Sea International, which was based aboard the motor vessel (MV) Mebo II anchored off southeast England in the North Sea.
