As an aside, why is ‘ham’ radio called that?

I assume in some way it derives from ‘amateur’ but I’ve no idea how or why.

Moggy

Wikipaedia has a section on this

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Etymology_of_ham_radio

My late father was a pre-war ham (G3two letters) and always used the term “ham radio”. As medical students were a reserved occupation during the war, he joined the Radio Security Service “to do his bit”. He spent many hours in the evening and at weekends in shacks up on the moors intercepting radio messages from U Boats. He transcribed the coded morse messages which were then sent he knew not where. The messages went of course to Bletchley Park and the rest is history. He said he could always identify particular U-Boats by the “hand” of the signaller sending the morse message. Apparently everybody was slightly different.