Word: cb
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...demonstrator: the citizens' band radio. When local officials realized that elusive troublemakers had been keeping track of the cops as well as each other through these inexpensive two-way sets, they struck back in kind. They obtained a powerful transmitter of their own and used it to jam CB channels with loud signals whenever the chatter indicated that rioters were on the move...
Though it was scarcely intended to be an aid to urban protesters, CB may be the fastest-growing communications medium since the Bell telephone. Used largely as a plaything after its introduction in the 1950s, it first invaded the air waves in force during the 1973 oil embargo, when speed limits were dropped to 55 m.p.h. and truck drivers installed the units to warn each other of radar traps. In the past year, the vogue has spread to a vast and vocal number of private-car owners, who have tied into a short-wave system* that today links an estimated...
...Exam Needed. While some CB owners exchange aimless chitchat or jokes, the primary use for the sets, which have a range of about 15 miles, is to apprise other drivers of road hazards, weather conditions and emergencies. On the nation's highways this summer, auto-borne vacationers with CBs could get all this information-and a lot more. A family returning from Maine took a tip from a driver who called himself Thermidor and lucked into an exceptional lobster restaurant. Some of the CB messages are unembarrassedly commercial. A group of CB-assisted hookers plies one of the main...
Chicago-based CB Center of America, which operates two retail stores on each coast, reports sales of 500 sets per week, double last year's rate. Says Co-Owner Fred Bartlett: "We're selling them to salesmen, doctors, businessmen, housewives-just about everyone." Unlike "ham" radio, which calls for considerable expertise and costs at least $700 for a good set, a CB unit takes no more skill to operate than a telephone and costs only about $120. No exam is needed for the $4, FCC-required CB license, but only a minority of buyers bothers...
...race will be like the infamous Grand Prix of Gibraltar, in which no one finished. That mythical race was a comedy record by Peter Ustinov, but the Cannonball Baker is going to happen. The entrants have alternate routes, Citizens Band radios (Parker noted that over 6 million Americans have CB radios, a trend, he says, which marks a healthy sign of American individualsm and revolt against the speed laws) and new tactics, still secret, ready for this race, which was postponed from the regular November date because they didn't want to be sitting ducks for the police...