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Business Two Way Radio

According to Tom Farley, a cell phone and mobile phone historian, things were just getting started when Motorola began war production on a device that someday would serve as a business two way radio, too.

Backpack Model is Great Grandfather to Business Two Way Radio of Today

“Motorola made 130,000 hand held units between 1941 and 1945,” according to Farley. “The SCR-536 was typical. Pulling out the antenna turned the radio on, pushing the antenna back in turned it off. While the 1943 Handie-Talkie somewhat resembles a large radio-telephone of today, it was Motorola's backpack model, the Walkie-Talkie, that heralded a new era in personal, portable communications, gigantic compared to a business two way radio used today.

Huge in Relationship to Our Present Business Two Way Radio

“Known as the SCR-300, it weighed almost 16 kg. and had an average range of 16 to 32 km.—a bit outdated compared to business two way radio usage right now. It used 18 fragile glass tubes. Motorola chief scientist Daniel E. Noble designed it for the U.S. Army Signal Corps, which in turn deployed it to the different divisions of the armed forces.”

Change Makes for a Better Business Two Way Radio

Farley suggests that while reducing the size of the devices was important, another significant development was the use of F.M., or frequency modulation. With F.M., the carrier wave is varied in proportion or frequency to the amplitude of the information signal. F.M was preferred over A.M., or amplitude modulation technology. F.M. radios use less power to transmit, since they're not affected by the kind of interference that plagues A.M. radios. Farley adds that, “transmissions sound cleaner and arrive without static. F.M. also has a capture effect, whereby the receiver locks on to the strongest signal it picks up.”