Ask Perry: Why is the ARRL in Connecticut?

Every once in a while, ARRL Archivist Perry Williams, W1UED - a rich source of information about the early days of the League - runs across a question that really needs an answer. Earlier this month, someone posed this question to Perry: Why was Connecticut chosen as the site for ARRL?

"To answer that question," Perry explained, "consider a parable: Why did the tree choose to grow in this forest? Because that is where the seed fell on fertile ground.

The seed that became ARRL fell on Hartford, Connecticut in 1914. When it sprouted, it was cultivated initially by two men: Hiram Percy Maxim, 1WH (he became W1AW after World War I), and Clarence D. Tuska, 1WD, who was still in his teens when the League began.

"Maxim was an inventor in a family of inventors, an industrialist. He was founder of the Maxim Silencer Company making devices to keep firearms and engines quiet, as well as a principal in a company involved first in making bicycles and then autos.

"He was also a writer with an early interest in motion pictures (he was also founder of the Amateur Cinematographic League) and on and on. Most of these activities were in or near Hartford, where he lived with his family.

"Tuska manned the hoe and trowel around the ARRL seedling. Soon after the ARRL's founding, Maxim settled in as President, an office he held until his death in 1936. In those early days, Tuska served as Secretary.

"Together, Maxim and Tuska founded the magazine QST as a private venture in 1915 out of their own pockets; Tuska was its Editor until the United States got into WWI and amateurs were taken off the air. Tuska closed down the 'offices' of ARRL and QST - they were in his mother's kitchen - and joined the Army."

Williams said that the story doesn't end here - to find out more, please see "Two Hundred Meters and Down," by
Clinton B DeSoto, W1CBD (SK).

Williams continued: "By the time the Tree had grown to the point to merit relocation elsewhere (this issue has been examined many times by the ARRL's elected, unpaid Board), transplanting it never came out as feasible: The Hartford-area roots were too deep."