The original low cost SDR was a European TV tuner USB stick. A driver developer noticed that it was possible to turn off the built-in vertical and horizontal b

The original low cost SDR was a European TV tuner USB stick. A driver developer noticed that it was possible to turn off the built-in vertical and horizontal blank suppression to get a raw I/Q dump from a device that was available for $20 retail. This revolutionized the hobbyist SDR community as the purpose built devices cost hundreds or thousands of dollars. The "RTL" came from the company that built the hackable chip: Realtek.