Rather than becoming an ADDITIONAL way of doing things....another tool in our arsenal....it becomes the ONLY way of doing things.
An outstanding example of this can be seen with the advent of amateur SSB. As soon as the mode became widely accepted in the mid 1950's and it was realised that SSB opened a new market for a whole new line of products, the amateur community had to endure a high pressure sales campaign to convince all hams that the conversion from AM to SSB was in effect mandatory, and that they had to throw out their old station equipment whether they wanted to make the change or not. Throughout the late 50's and early to mid 60's, every one of the mainstream amateur radio publications became instruments of anti-AM/pro-SSB propaganda. As SSB grew in popularity,
QST and other major publications quietly adopted a policy of pretending that AM didn't exist. To quote an ARRL official at a Boston forum in the mid 70's, the unofficial ARRL policy towards AM phone was one of "benign neglect", to let it "die a natural death".
Starting in the early 70's as more and more hams began to see through the propaganda smoke screen and a renewed interest in AM was becoming apparent, the FCC was bombarded with a flurry of rulemaking petitions to outlaw AM from the ham bands. The FCC itself released a series of docket proposals that included provisions that would have either eliminated AM altogether or severely restricted its use. These all eventually failed except perhaps for a fraudulently-tainted proceeding that resulted in a dubious redefinition of the amateur radio power limit.
To-day the AM mode has once again regained its position as one of the numerous facets of mainstream amateur radio, with the mode included on most commercially built transceivers, and even an article in February
QST encouraging amateurs to give the mode a try. AM has now been "coming back" for nearly three decades, many more years than it was ever "dead" to begin with.
All the B.S. that accompanied the introduction of amateur SSB, and the hard feelings and division within the amateur community that resulted from the infamous AM vs SSB wars of the 60's, along with its worst legacy that still haunts us, the widespread practice of jamming and blatantly deliberate interference, was totally unnecessary.
Had it not been for this attitude of a new technology coming along that solved one or two particular problems, and the amateur community being led to think we needed to apply it to everything, SSB would have been introduced and hams would have seen for themselves its advantages and disadvantages. Many would have embraced it immediately, while others would have eventually made the change, while others would have preferred to stay with the older existing technology. Eventually we would have more or less painlessly evolved exactly to where we are to-day: the majority of HF voice operation on SSB but with a substantial minority preferring to use AM. Amateur radio would be much better off if this common-sense route had been allowed by the amateur radio establishment.
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