The history of radio astronomy - whether one begins with Hertz's experiments, or Lodge's, or Jansky's - is one of fascination and serendipity. The development of the science has been fun and frustrating, often with the theorists two steps behind the observers, but with the former occasionally waiting around the bend of the next revelation smirking "I told you so." It is hoped that the bibliography that follows will give some of the essence of the early days and that the reader will be able to share some of the excitement, both of the early engineers who quickly realized they were onto something theretofore unknown and the later radio astronomers who continued in their footsteps. The attempt has been made to include most of the early engineering papers as well as a sampling of the theoretical ones that tried to explain what the engineers were revealing. In addition, there are included discovery papers for some of radio astronomy's "main events," a sampling of papers that reveal the development of the science in various countries, and books and papers that summarize the history of radio astronomy, or particular aspects of it, up to a certain point.
There are, of course, omissions. Some are deliberate. In order to keep the listing to a manageable size (< 350), some things are covered only briefly, such as the numerous radio source catalogs, just to provide examples of the kind of work being done. Other omissions are through ignorance or a biased selectivity. when talking to a scientist knowledgeable in the history of the field, one finds a certain bias toward that individual's own work. when this bias was confirmed through further study, it was included; when not, it was not. But if one had talked to a different subset of scientists, the results would probably have been skewed another way. If what you consider the most important paper in the history of radio astronomy has been omitted, please accept my apologies and let me know what the paper is, so that perhaps a later edition can be better rounded.