Word: cb
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...owners of 15 million Citizens Band radio sets, and some of the millions more who have become familiar with CB language from records and TV shows, the message was loud and clear: a nontrucker from New York City, whose CB nickname is Red Vine, was driving his Volkswagen through Washington when he passed the White House, home of fellow CB-Owner Betty Ford, whose radionym is First Mama (TIME, May 3). There were no cops around, so he slowed down and tried to reach her on his set, using her FCC-issued call number, but got no response. The attractive...
...cryptic, demotic jargon-and the Arkahoma accent in which it is invariably delivered no matter where in the U.S.-may seem outlandish to many. If so, they had better hang easy and adjust to it. From 8 to 10 million more CB sets will be sold in 1976, which with extra equipment could amount to some $2.5 billion worth-nearly as much as total sales of TV sets. One of the biggest manufacturers, Hy-Gain Electronics Corp. (maker of Betty Ford's rig), reported that 1976 first-quarter sales quintupled those for the same period...
...biggest U.S. electronics manufacturers decided this year to enter the lucrative market for what the song The White Knight described as "that Japanese toy, that trucker's joy." Most 1976 American cars can be bought with the sets installed; nearly half of all trucks in the U.S. are CB-equipped. The cost is relatively low-from about $90 to $350 for a serviceable set and antenna-and CB is simple to install in a truck, car or boat, drawing its power from the vehicle's battery. The same units can be plugged in at home with inexpensive...
Without doubt, simple, low cost, ubiquitous radio conversation represents the biggest explosion of communications since the invention of the telephone. Its cultural impact may not be as pervasive as television's, but in an odd way, it is a creative one. TV is, after all, a nonparticipant pastime. CB radio, by contrast, is a two-way medium that enables everyman to write his own script. It has not only nourished a proliferating vocabulary that threatens to outdate any dictionary of American slang within months; as well, it catalyzes an egalitarian, anti-authoritarian philosophy that has never been expressed...
Such considerations were far from the collective mind of the FCC in 1945, when it set aside a sliver of the broadcast spectrum for the noncommercial use of ordinary citizens such as hunters, boaters, construction teams and farmers ranging far from homes and telephones. The first CB license was not granted until 1947. In the next quar ter-century, only 850,000 CB licenses were issued. Then came the 1973 oil embargo, speed limits were dropped to 55 m.p.h. ("double nickel" in CB argot) and truck drivers installed the units to warn each other of lurking cops ("smokey bears...