Posted on 12/20/2014 8:44:42 AM PST by hoagy62
Every year around this time, I write a little tribute to an event that took place on a Christmas Eve many, many years ago. Although I never knew of it until a few years ago when I did a little research, the event impacted my life. It also impacted the lives of countless people all over the world since then.
Therefore....let's raise a glass to Professor Reginald Fessenden!
"Who?", you say? Read on....
It's Christmas Eve, 1906. in a small building by the shores of the Atlantic in Brant Rock, Massachusetts, Prof. Fessenden is doing some last-minute tweaking to make sure all is in readiness. At last, he turns on his equipment and begins his experiment.
Now, let's imagine you're on a merchant vessel out on the Atlantic. You're the one who operates the 'wireless', the means that recently became available for ships to talk to each other (and to the shore) by way of the relatively-new invention of Gugliermo Marconi. Your headphones hang loosely over your ears as you listen to the dots-and-dashes of Morse Code that is the realm of this new device. The ship's cook just brought you a steaming mug of coffee before retiring for the night, and you sit back in your chair and continue to listen to the 'dits' and 'dahs'.
Suddenly, you sit bolt upright in your seat. You press the headphones against your ears, thinking that you must be imagining things. After a few seconds, you realize you're not dreaming or hallucinating. You yell down the hall for the captain, "Sir, get down to the radio room! You gotta hear this!" The captain and a couple others who heard your excited cry clamber into the radio room. You take off your headphones, point the tiny speakers outward, and say "Be quiet and listen to this!". They all lean in towards the two little speakers and.....they hear a human voice.
In that shack on the seashore at Brant Rock, Professor Fessenden is conducting the world's first broadcast of human voice and music over radio.
He read a verse out of the Gospel of Luke (Luke 2:14, to be exact) and played the first music ever heard over radio...O Holy Night, played by the Professor on his violin. (There was some other music played, a piece by Handel over a phonograph.) He then asked his listeners to write and report where they were when they heard the broadcast, wished his listeners a Merry Christmas and a Happy New year, then signed off.
He repeated the experiment a few days later on New Year's Eve. It's said he was heard all the way down in the Caribbean Sea.
Professor Fessenden, born a Canadian, passed away in 1932 in Bermuda. It wasn't until a few decades later that he received proper acknowledgment for his work.
For a few years, I got to be a radio deejay. It was my 'dream job', and I am thankful I got the opportunity to do it. I've done a couple Christmas Eve shifts, and when I got to play O Holy Night...and even when I hear it today...I remember Prof. Fessenden and what he did 118 years ago this Christmas Eve.
You asked for a ping when I told the story. Here it is.
Fessenden is a very elite New England rich boy’s school-—some of the Kennedy boys went there.
“...talk to each other (and to the shore) by way of the relatively-new invention of Gugliermo Marconi”
Actually, Nikola Tesla was the inventor of wireless radio.
Thanks! Great post.
Amazing and something I did not know!!! Thank You.
You know, another FReeper pointed that out to me as well. And, it’s true. As I also told the other fine FReeper who reminded me, Nikola Tesla was, as described by author Spider Robinson, “the most screwed-over man in history”.
When I re-tell this story in the future, I shall endeavor to remember that.
“Nikola Tesla was the inventor of wireless radio.”
That is correct! Tesla won the Supreme Court battle over the issue, When told of Marconi’s success, Tesla said something like;
“Great! He’s using 11 of my patents.”
Sort of the same circumstance as Edison and the light bulb. He didn’t invent it, he bought the patents for it, then made it practical.
Well at least Tesla has been memorialized by a regime-affiliated battery powered sedan.
When I left, the guy who took over was 'All Duke Ellington, All The Time.' That didn't last very long.
Another unsung great American (as Hannity would say) and also a conservative is Edwin Howard Armstrong. When Rush talks about the disgronifier, the disgronificator, and the superheterodyne receiver, be aware that the first two are fictional but the superheterodyne is not. It enabled home users to operate their radios with a simple tuning control to select the stations in addition to a volume and possibly a tone control while still achieving greater sensitivity and selectivity than with earlier designs. He went on to invent FM broadcasting when other engineers insisted it would be unworkable. To my mind, this invention, particularly during its time in the early 1930s, is astounding. FM, with its higher fidelity and much greater resistance to static, made it the natural choice for music broadcasting while today, talk predominates on AM.
I have read but cannot conclusively verify that FDR directed the FCC to cancel Armstrong’s early FM broadcast licenses after Armstrong criticized the New Deal in on-air editorials. Armstrong nonetheless made all of his FM patents available to the government for one dollar in pursuit of World War II communications research and development. Armstrong served directly in World War I being promoted to Major.
And I also know that Mr. Armstrong committed suicide. It was very sad.
He did after years of endless patent suits against RCA and other companies that had infringed on his FM patents. Indeed a sad ending to the life of an exceptional American.
I was once a radio DJ myself, but this is the first I’ve ever seen of this history.
Thanks for posting it!
Wonderful post; and it’s still as magical today, when you build your own radio (the old way), and hear voices and music coming through it.
My father told me and my brother, back in the ‘sixties, about crystal radio sets. I think that my father, on the first one he built, heard a President’s inaugural address. So, my brother built one (with the help of the old Lafayette Electronics) and grounded it to the radiator in the bedroom. We heard things! It was amazing to me, and something I’ve never forgotten.
All of the modern technology that we have to play with now can’t touch the magic of learning to successfully manipulate the basic principles. I think every kid should build a little radio (and have an ant farm, and a kid’s chemistry set, rescue a baby bird, plant a little garden, and have access to all those other things that teach kids about science in engaging hands-on ways. Wouldn’t hurt if they still had to learn to use a slide-rule, either ;-)
It hurts me that I never see kinds roaming the creeks in my neighborhood, or even riding their bikes outside - they are all inside, glued to the TV or the computer...I’m sure they are learning things; but it isn’t ‘hands-on’ learning; it’s kind of a ‘sponge’ learning; and it doesn’t really give them capabilities.
(One of my retirement-years goals, is to learn Ham radio and become licensed.)
Thanks for pinging me!
-JT
That is cool.
Hail the innate altruism of Christian inventors!
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