On the air, our club identifies itself with the call sign LA1K. For non-radio related business however, letterheads and envelopes with emblems and addresses were the hot thing. A great amount of HAMs probably lived through it, but these days all mail apart from our QSL-cards are handled digitally. The emblem however is still used for our website and several other merch like clothing and cups. For fun, let’s have a look at the full history of our emblem.
In the early days of our club, the club didn’t even have a call sign yet. Not for a lack of effort, it simply wasn’t issued in the country until a few years later. The club however was engaged in several topics regarding the call sign and a radio exhibition, from where we still have the correspondence from in our archives. One of the first, if not the first letterheads from 1924 can be found from this time, listed in the grid below. The top row is from 1924-1926, notice the “Riksmål”-variant “Klub”, to the top-right. This form of writing was gradually phased out from 1929 and onwards. The bottom row are from 1929 and 1940, where in 1929 the club had finally received it’s license LA1K, and by 1940 the club had moved from NTH to “Studentersamfundet” where we’re still located today.
After the war, radio was gradually becoming legal again, and the club reassembled. It was pitched during a board meeting in November 1945 that the club needed an emblem for the letterhead. Over a year later in November 1946 it was finally completed by then Vice-Chairman Olaf Lien. The reason for the wait was the desire to make diplomas featuring the emblem as well for members doing outstanding effort during the war. We haven’t been able to locate such a diploma as of yet, but the emblem is featured here from a letter in 1947. The club also produced a pin to wear, which have more detailed waves. Photo, courtesy of DigitaltMuseum.no.
After the 1980’s came to an end, it was decided revise the old emblem for the hip new decade, known then (and still) as the 1990’s. The reason for the revision; the old batch of club t-shirts was running out and the desire for an update for the next batch was rising. The letterheads for papers and envelopes had a few revisions over the years, with many marginally updated designs, but the emblem itself was quite familiar to the original design. A few examples below:
While the computers were becoming more common at the time, the new design was completed by hand with Letraset dry-transfer letters and all. Club tees never looked better! When our club later got it’s own website at the university domain http://www.stud.ntnu.no/studorg/la1k/index.html (very nostalgic and secure!), a revised version made with MS Paint promptly featured.
A cleaned up, simpler design was also designed later which was used until 2004.
In 2004 the emblem was revised again, and at the time of writing, for the final time. This revision was made in Adobe Illustrator and generally just cleaned up the layout with a simple 2:1 ratio and three equally spaced rings, or waves as we like to call them. The font used is Futura Bold, which matches the font used for the Student Society. However, as the numbers are a little “ugly” the liberty was taken to use a different font for the rhombus’ lower half. The emblem is still used with or without the bordering text for different purposes, and a slight alteration in the border-text was also used during our 100th anniversary in 2023.
And that’s the end of it, thanks for reading. We hope you enjoy these historical retrospectives during the holidays, and we hope to get more club activity-related news when the university semester kicks off later in August!
Speculation and additional info!
Hold up, maybe it’s not over quite yet. In terms of HAM radio, the international emblem is a vertical rhombus, which itself is based on the ARRL-emblem. So how come ARK’s emblem is switched to a horizontal layout instead? Let’s first look at the vertical design.
It’s speculated the rhombus-design to begin with was based on the Blaw-Knox towers or a rhombic antenna; both of which are visually similar. However, both of these designs are from the 1930’s. Almost a decade too new, as the ARRL logo first debuted in 1920. How do we know? Thanks to World Radio History we can look through the QST- archives which luckily features the little origin-article. In May 1920 we find the announcement, and in July 1920 (and page 2) we find the column itself. After all that it concludes with… that it’s just a recognizable shape.
Images taken from Wikipedia.org
So what about the ARK-emblem then, does it have an explanation? For the people of Trondheim, there is a logo that is somewhat familiar to the one of ARK; the one of the football club, RBK. The logo is flown with dozens of flags each home game, but can it be related? We reached out to Tor Kleveland (former player, manager and historian) to hear what he thought. He told us that while it was an usual for the clubs to design their own logos at the time, RBK probably wasn’t big enough to have that kind of influence on the city and perhaps members of our club yet. While RBK’s logo debuted on the 1st of May 1928, and ARK’s November 1946 – RBK didn’t become the prominent team in the city until the 1960’s. Thanks for the input, Tor!
That’s all for now, we mean it this time! Hope you enjoyed the additional info!
