Radio News

Radio News was an American monthly technology magazine published from 1919 to 1971. The magazine was started by Hugo Gernsback as a magazine for amateur radio enthusiasts, but it evolved to cover all the technical aspects to radio and electronics. In 1929 a bankruptcy forced the sale of Gernsback's publishing company to B. A. Mackinnon. In 1938 Ziff-Davis Publishing acquired the magazines.

Gernsback Era

In 1904 Hugo Gernsback established Electro Importing Company to sell radio components and electrical supplies by mail order. The catalogs had detailed instructions on projects like a wireless telegraph outfit and were the predecessor of his first magazine, Modern Electrics (April 1908). In May 1913 he started another magazine, The Electrical Experimenter. The magazines would have Gernsback's bold predictions of the future as well as fiction. In 1926 he started the magazine Amazing Stories and coined the term "scientifiction" which became science fiction.

Gernsback was an enthusiastic supporter of amateur radio. During the First World War the US government placed a ban on amateur radio and Gernsback led the campaign to lift it. Gernsback started a magazine devoted to radio, Radio Amateur News (July 1919.) The title was shortened to Radio News in July 1920.