Reginald Fessenden, the Canadian inventor of radio telephony by IEEE
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Reginald Fessenden -- Pioneer of wireless radio and telephony (The Radioscientist)
IN THE BEGINNING WAS THE WORD
If Canadian radio archives do not contain as much material as they should, there is one
historical event well documented - the achievement of Guglielmo Marconi, an Italian who
made radio history by transmitting the letter "s" in Morse code from Cornwall, England to a
receiving station on Signal Hill overlooking St.
John's Harbour in Newfoundland on
December 12, 1901.
But an equally historic event, the achievement of a brilliant Canadian inventor, Reginald
Aubrey Fessenden, is generally ignored and largely unknown.
On December 24, 1906, at 9
P.M.
eastern standard time, Reginald Fessenden transmitted human voices from Brant
Rock near Boston, Massachusetts to several ships at sea owned by the United Fruit
Company.
The host of the broadcast was Fessenden.
After giving a resume of the program Fessenden
played a recording of Handel's "Largo" on an Ediphone thus establishing two records - the
first recording of the first broadcast.
Fessenden then dazzled his listeners with his talent as
a violinist playing appropriately for the Christmas season, "Oh Holy Night" and actually
singing the last verse as he played.
Mrs.
Helen Fessenden and Fessenden's secretary Miss
Bent, had promised to read seasonal passages from the Bible including, "Glory to God in
the highest -and on earth peace to men of good will," but when the time came to
perform they stood speechless, paralyzed with mike fright.
Fessenden took over for them
and concluded the broadcast by extending Christmas greetings to his listeners - as well as
asking them to write and report to him on the broadcast wherever they were.
The mail response confirmed that Fessenden had successfully invented radio as we know
it.
Technically, he had invented radio telephony or what radio listeners would call "real"
radio as opposed to Marconi's Morse code broadcasting.
Fessenden could truly lay claim
to be the inventor of radio and he fully expected the world to beat a path to his door.
Instead, he never received his due recognition, lost control of his patents and the ensuing
revenue which made other inventors and companies immensely wealthy.
Even today the
Encyclopedia Canadiana does not give him a separate listing.
Mention of him is only
included under the listing for his mother Clementina who established Empire Day in
Canada.
Reginald is mentioned as one of her four sons, "inventor of the wireless
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