- Reginald Fessenden -- Pioneer of wireless radio and
telephony (The Radioscientist)
-
- 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 telephone, the radio compass and the visible bullet for
machine guns, he also invented the first television set in North America
in 1919."
-
- Unlike Marconi who received a grant from the Canadian
government to continue his experiments in Cape Breton, Fessenden was neither
a good businessman nor an accomplished promoter. Born in 1866 near Sherbrooke,
Quebec, he received his education in Canada but left to work in the field
of electricity in the United States. He became chief chemist for Thomas
Alva Edison who was developing his power company at that time and later
left to work for George Westinghouse. Westinghouse, impressed with Fessenden's
brilliance, agreed to make instruments and machines for him when he left
his employ to become head of the electrical engineering department of
the University of Pennsylvania. Fessenden in turn was to remain available
to Westinghouse for research. It was an excellent deal for both and gave
Fessenden the chance to work on the theories of Henrich Hertz of Karlsruhe
who had studied electromagnetic waves - and discovered they could travel
through walls. Many young inventors of the time were also frantically
studying Hertz's theories in the hope of improving on the Morse Telegraph
System by developing a wireless version. The race was on and Fessenden
was in it.
-
- But in 1896 Marconi's successful experiment on Salisbury
Plains in the U.K. where he transmitted a radio signal netted the inventor
£76,000 from the British government for the patent. Discouraged
because Marconi seemed to be leading the race, Fessenden took off for
a long holiday near Peterborough, Ontario. His radio ideas had dried up
on him and he was thoroughly depressed. It was while he was daydreaming
beside a lake during his holiday that the ripples on the lake spreading
out from a stone he had dropped, gave him the idea he needed. What if
sound waves travelling out from the centre were continuous like the ripples
on the lake?
-
- Fessenden was on the right track and nine years later
he'd prove it. Rejected by McGill in favour of an American professor for
the university's vacant electrical engineering chair he returned to his
Pennsylvania job and worked furiously on his new theory. It was during
this period that by accident his assistant, Mr. Kitner, jammed a Morse
code key which howled over a receiver and was transmitted to Fessenden
in another room. Fessenden concluded that if the howl could be carried
voices could too, and he decided that what was needed were very fast controlled
waves of high frequency which would carry sounds. Fessenden theorized
that the fast frequency could be broadcast with program information, and
a receiver could isolate the program information from the carrier and
leave sound for his listeners. Fessenden knew that his previous experience
in electrical engineering while working for Edison and Westinghouse would
help him to design and build a high- speed generator or dynamo to carry
his information. If he could get a steady enough set of radio waves he
knew he could put voices or music "on the air". But he needed
a lot of money to design and build his generator and most of all he would
need time - he would have to leave his university work and concentrate
on his inventions if he was to prove his theories.
-
- In order to make some money, he demonstrated the telegraph
equipment which he'd been developing at the University to the United
States Weather Bureau and sold them on the use of radio (with future improvements),
for weather forecasting. He figured he could develop transmitters and
receivers for the U.S. Weather Bureau and at the same time develop his
other theories while using their generators. His Morse system functioned
on primitive slow speed generations but Fessenden had convinced his new
employer that a faster and better generator would do a better job for
Uncle Sam. Fessenden's deal included retaining the ownership to his design
and inventions.
-
- Fessenden's new lab was at Cobb Island in the Potomac
River, where he was experimenting with a receiving station at Arlington,
Virginia, fifty miles away. He and his assistant Thiessen had perfected
Morse transmissions using a new generator they had bought, and in October
of his first year Fessenden experimentally hooked up a microphone to the
improved system. On December 23, 1900 Fessenden said into his microphone,
"One, two, three, four. Is It snowing where you are Mr. Thiessen?
If so telegraph back and let me know." Thiessen replied by telegraph
in Morse code that it was indeed snowing. In great excitement Fessenden
wrote at his desk, "This afternoon here at Cobb Island, intelligible
speech by electromagnetic waves has for the first time in World's History
been transmitted." This was almost a year before Marconi's transmission
in Morse code from England to Signal Hill in Newfoundland, on December
12,1901.
-
- Fessenden's employers, the U.S. Weather Bureau, were
pleased and Willis Moore, Fessenden's boss, suggested he move his experiments
to North Carolina to experiment between Cape Hatteras, Roanoke and the
mainland, a hundred-mile triangle. But things now began to go sour for
Fessenden. On December 12, 1901 Marconi successfully transmitted across
the Atlantic Ocean to St. John's, Newfoundland. Fessenden had wanted to
beat Marconi and again he had failed. His employer, Willis Moore of the
U.S. Weather Bureau was trying to shake down Fessenden for a share of
his patents and this was causing strain as well. Fessenden complained
to Theodore Roosevelt, without success, and in August 1902 Fessenden left
his job and went to Bermuda where his wife's family lived.
-
- Fessenden was now forced to continue his search for financial
backing for his experiments. He approached the Canadian Government which
had already spent $80,000 supporting Marconi at Glace Bay, but was refused.
So back to the U.S. he went where be teamed up in Pittsburg with two millionaires,
Given and Walker, to form the National Electric Signalling Company, and
built two wireless stations near New York City on each side of Chesapeake
Bay, later adding three more at New York, Philadelphia and Washington.
-
- Despite his setbacks Fessenden was making tremendous
strides in Morse code transmission and the company now held an enormous
number of American patents. He was also gaining a worldwide reputation
as a scientist, but unlike Marconi he remained a lone- wolf experimenter.
Even though Marconi's successful transmission across the Atlantic had
resulted in both publicity and adulation for the Italian scientist, Fessenden
was convinced that Marconi's "whiplash" method, an "on
and off" type of transmission, did not work well enough. Most researchers
were pursuing the "whiplash" idea because they could not accept
the idea that electromagnetic continuous waves could be created, loaded
with a program, transmitted and then eliminated leaving only the program
for the listeners. Fessenden's mathematical background made this abstract
idea easy for him to grasp. Other inventors who had not had his training
were still fumbling along for solutions without any real knowledge of
exactly where they were heading.
-
- Meanwhile, the next major step for the National Electric
Signalling Company was to build radio transmission towers at Brant Rock
near Boston and in Scotland for trans-Atlantic experiments. Despite his
disappointments in Canada Fessenden remained a true patriot and rather
than transmitting from the U.S. he wanted to transmit between Canada and
Europe. So on July 20, 1906, by an act of Parliament, Fessenden formed
a Canadian company supported by Sir Robert Borden and other influential
men, called the Fessenden Wireless Telegraph Company of Canada. Canada
was now sewn up by Fessenden but there were other problems at the radio
station at Machrihanish in Scotland. The technicians involved couldn't
seem to get the hang of the equipment and the station could not receive
even over short distances. Fessenden was furious. He was so confident
that the fault was with the technicians and not with his plans that he
sent Armour, his best engineer, to Scotland to take over while he continued
his local experiments in the U.S. and did the paper work required to clean
up his 300 patents.
-
- .?
-
- Reginald Fessenden and his associates at Brant Rock (Hammond
Museum of Radio)
-
- At about this same time Fessenden was also learning a
little about the effect of weather conditions on radio broadcasts. He'd
been experimenting enough to know that cold weather and long nights were
good times to transmit and that warm weather during daylight time was
poor or impossible. On the night of January 3, 1906 the weather was ideal
- cold and dark. Fessenden adjusted a gadget on his transmission tower
which resembled an umbrella frame and started transmitting Morse code
to Armour in Scotland. Later that night a cable arrived saying "We
are getting you Brant Rock, loud and clear." It looked as if things
were beginning to jell for Fessenden now that he had finally perfected
an invention similar to Marconi's but more reliable and less slapdash.
It wasn't reliable enough, though, to work through the following spring,
and there still remained problems to iron out.
-
- When the cold and dark weather returned in the fall he
resumed his Trans-Atlantic Morse experiments and his local voice experiments,
and in November he received a "personal" registered letter from
his engineer, Armour, at Machrihanish which both delighted and shocked
him. The letter said, "at about 4 o'clock in the morning I was listening
in for telegraph signals from Brant Rock when to my astonishment I heard
instead of dots and dashes, the voice of Mr. Stein telling the operators
at Plymouth how to run the dynamo. At first I thought I must be losing
my senses, but I'm sure it was Stein's voice for it came in as clearly
as if he were in the next room."
-
- Fessenden frantically checked the logs which recorded
the various tests and satisfied himself that he'd actually invented equipment
which could and did transmit voices across to Scotland. It had been a
happy accident, but another accident now took place which stopped Fessenden
cold. A storm wrecked his Scottish receiving tower on December 6, 1906.
- There was still another shock in store for Fessenden.
He learned that Marconi had been given exclusive rights to build wireless
stations in Canada. So much for Fessenden and his Canadian company. The
idea that Marconi, an Italian, received not only the approval but support
of the Canadian government which Fessenden, a Canadian, had been denied,
infuriated and frustrated the inventor. He had to prove his genius, prove
to the world and Canada that he was the real inventor of radio.
-
- He held a contract with the United Fruit Company which
had installed wireless systems on the boats to control the harvesting
and marketing of bananas in Puerto Rico, and Professor Fessenden decided
to give a Christmas present to his customers on the dozen or so ships
of the United Fruit Company at sea. He told the wireless operators to
listen on Christmas Eve for "something different". At 9 o'clock
the operators heard the familiar "C.Q." which means "listen
all stations" from Brant Rock and then they heard Fessenden's voice
speaking.
-
- On that cold December night Fessenden knew he had given
the world one of the greatest Christmas presents it would ever receive.
Without wires across vast distances, he had transmitted human voices.
The word was made known and Fessenden truly believed the world was now
at his feet.
-
- Instead, the rest of Fessenden's life was a constant
struggle for recognition for his inventions and compensation from his
rich partners who had sold his patents out from under him to large American
companies. Fessenden returned to Canada from time to time but he never
settled here again and died finally, relatively unknown, in Bermuda. American
books that do condescend to recognize Fessenden's achievement describe
him as the "American Marconi." Perhaps it is just as well he
never had the chance to read that.
-
- Reprinted courtesy of the Radioscientist
|