File:Verboten cartoon Electrical Experimenter Feb 1919.png

English: Editorial cartoon in February 1919 issue of Hugo Gernsback's magazine Electrical Experimenter, opposing proposed government regulation of amateur radio. In the U.S. prior to World War 1, the new technology of "wireless" (radio) communication had been mostly unregulated by the government, and experimenters in "amateur radio" were largely free to do as they wanted. However radio stations had proved a vital national resource during the War, and in the conservative atmosphere following the Armistice in 1918 bills were introduced in Congress, the "Poindexter bill" in the Senate and the "Alexander bill" in the House, to make radio communication a government monopoly run by the Navy, and severely restrict private "amateur" radio activities.

The cartoon depicts "Alexander" in caricatured Prussian military garb, a reference to U.S. Secretary of Commerce Joshua W. Alexander. Gernsback headlined an editorial the previous month, "Prussianizing the American Ether" [1].

Hugo Gernsback, a visionary champion of amateur radio and publisher of one of the few magazines in the country devoted to it, lampooned the restrictions with this cartoon in his February 1919 issue.

Due to opposition from radio amateurs and many other quarters, the bills died.