Looking back, it's a puzzlement that the Callbook didn't routinely include such license numbers data, say once a year. Also puzzling that they'd publish name, call, address, but not license class (until 1967).
As for the first question, I don't know. Maybe there weren't as many callbook or license historians back then as there are now.
It seems to be something they did once-in-a-while. I suspect they simply reprinted numbers supplied by FCC, because the 1963 page shows breakdowns by state, which would be a lot of extra work to compile from the raw data.
QST would occasionally post license numbers that were simply totals supplied by FCC. I can find no pattern to when they published updated numbers - it was probably "when FCC got around to doing it".
IIRC, FCC first computerized the license system in 1964. That may explain the 1963 totals list.
I don't know about the second question either, but for a long time back then it didn't matter what class you were--the privileges were the same. Novices were obvious by the distinctive callsign. And I'm ignoring Techs. It wasn't until incentive licensing was on the horizon that it mattered much. But that's just speculation.
It makes sense, though. I do recall there was at least one case in the late 1950s-early 1960s of FCC going after a Technician operating on HF - which brings up another historical factor....
Until about the 1970s or so, FCC was VERY active in closely monitoring the amateur bands, particularly HF. They'd send out notices for all sorts of violations - chirp, click, splatter, harmonics, anything less than PDC signal, being ever so slightly outside the band or subband, failure to ID properly, etc. There's an article in QST about 1965 about a visit to an FCC monitoring station, and how many notices were sent out.
I was told by now-SK amateur that FCC would even listen in the Novice subbands for things like Novice signals that drifted, or for Novices that seemed to have an amazing number of crystals on different frequencies - indicative of VFO use back in the crystal-control-only days.
In those days FCC would also show up at various amateur stations to conduct inspections, usually centered around power input suspicions. (Remember how any transmitter capable of more than 900 watts input was required to have plate current and voltage metering so that power input could be determined at any time?).
Such a.....presence......clearly had an effect. Note, however, that almost all the cited violations were clear
technical violations (poor signal quality, operating outside authorized limits, failure to properly ID, etc.), not
operating violations (DQRM, language, etc.).
The situation of
technical violations is what brought about the ARRL Official Observer program. The idea was that many of the violations were unintentional - an amateur wouldn't know his signal had hum/chirp/clicks/splatter, that his VFO calibration could not be trusted, etc. Better to find out from another amateur rather than from FCC. There was real concern that too many low-quality signals was seriously damaging our reputation at FCC.
Until the early 1980s, US amateurs had only one "keyboard mode" - 45.45 baud 5 level Baudot code RTTY. And all RTTY stations had to ID in Morse. It is my understanding this was so FCC monitors could readily read the transmissions and could ID the stations.
As you note, Incentive Licensing added a bunch of new rules to enforce - and FCC did in fact enforce them.
Steve, do you have any info on how the Callbook info was compiled in the pre-computer era? Seems it would be an enormous task to do manually every 3 months!
I have no specific knowledge, but I agree that doing it manually was a big job. And for many, many years, it had to have been manual.
I have a vague recollection of a discussion--I don't know if it there was an authoritative source or just speculation. But I envision a process where each individual license transaction had to have a paper trail as formal documentation of an entry that was to be put into the license database (whatever format that was). A carbon copy of that piece of paper would be enough for the callbook company to mirror those changes in their copy of the database And that would also be the source for the "Stop Press" pages in the books, that listed transactions that hadn't made it into the main volume. But that is just speculation.
Maybe John Johnston knows. We should contact him.
Eventually, when the license database was computerized, FCC would sell copies of the computer tapes--Fred Lloyd tells the story of the start of QRZ here, and that includes a statement that the cost in 1992 was $700. That might have started in the 1980s, and been the source of the few competitors to RAC that popped up then (ARRL and Buckmaster).
Great stuff - thanks!
Since that last post, it occurred to me that, back-in-the-day, The Telephone Company would publish telephone books, which was a similar task - and they did so long before computerized records, with a much larger database. Where I live (Delaware County, PA), just my
county had far more telephones than the entire USA had radio amateurs! Yet, at least annually, a new telephone book would arrive on the doorstep, with every telephone in the area listed - plus lots of other information. So it's possible the Callbook folks used similar techniques.
It is my understanding that the emphasis on telephone books and "let your fingers do the walking through the Yellow Pages" was because directory assistance cost The Telephone Company MUCH more than printing telephone books.
ARRL got into the Call Directory game for a while, but that was after computerization.
73 de Jim, N2EY