An Unsung hero:
Reginald Fessenden, the Canadian inventor of radio telephony
A Canadian, Reginald Aubrey Fessenden was the first person to prove that voices and music could be heard over the air without wires. Yet some books ignore him, others mistakenly call him an American, and one Canadian encyclopedia cites his mother as the principal founder of Empire Day but overlooks her eldest sons accomplishments. Marconi, on the other hand, is given credit for radio even though his theory on sound waves was wrong and even though he was still sending only Morse code signals when Fessenden made his first broadcast.
The reasons for the oversight are many. Although born in the Eastern Townships of Quebec in 1866, Fessenden left Canada at 18. He later worked for Edison, was a professor at two American universities, and was working with an American company when he proved his theories for broadcasting. In addition, lacking the showmanship of Marconi and Edison, Fessenden had
difficulty marketing himself or his inventions. A brilliant student at Trinity College School, Port Hope, at 14 he was granted a mathematics mastership to Bishops College in Lennoxville, Quebec. This gave him a small income and a credit for a college year if he passed the exams. He did, but a growing interest in science caused him to tire of study of the classics, and thus at 18 he accepted a teaching position in Bermuda.
The Forgotten Canadian
Reginald Aubrey Fessenden (1866-1932) Physicist Inventor
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Reginald Aubrey Fessenden (1866-1932)
Some biographical notes by Dave Riley
Reginald A. Fessenden - ARS
'W1FRV' ( first radio voice )
Marshfield, Massachusetts
Where the world's first radio voice broadcast took place...
A D V E N T U R E S in C Y B E R S O U N D
Reginald A. (Aubrey) Fessenden : 1866 - 1932
Reginald Aubrey Fessenden (1866-1932)
REGINALD AUBREY FESSENDEN AND THE BIRTH OF WIRELESS TELEPHONY*
Reginald Aubrey Fessenden (1866 1932) By Brian Smith
The Forgotten Canadian
Reginald Aubrey Fessenden (1866-1932) Physicist Inventor
Fessenden's Christmas Eve Broadcast
A shorter URL for the above link:
Title: Outline of an electrical theory of comets' tails.
Authors: Fessenden, Reginald Aubrey
Journal: Chicago, The University of Chicago press, 1896.
Fessenden, builder of tomorrows
By: Helen May Trott Fessenden
Type: English : Book : Non-fiction
Publisher: New York, Coward-McCann, 1940.
Subjects: Fessenden, Reginald Aubrey, -- 1866-1932.
A Determination of the Nature of the Electric and Magnetic Quantities and of the Density and Elasticity of the Ether, II
Reginald Aubrey Fessenden
1900 The American Physical Society
DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevSeriesI.10.83
The Cosmic Inventor:
Reginald Aubrey Fessenden (18661932). Transactions of the American Philosophical Society, vol.
89, pt. 6. Philadelphia, PA: American Philosophical Society, 1999.
REGINALD AUBREY FESSENDEN AND THE BIRTH OF WIRELESS TELEPHONY
Fessenden and Marconi: Their Differing Technologies and Transatlantic Experiments During the First Decade of this Century
by John S. Belrose
International Conference on 100 Years of Radio -- 5-7 September 1995
<http://www.ieee.ca/millennium/radio/radio_differences.html>
RADIO: HISTORY : BIOGRAPHY:
Fessenden, Reginald Aubrey (1866-1932) Physicist, Inventor
Here are some sources of information about this physicist and radio
pioneer whose life span straddled the two last centuries.
Fessenden, Reginald Aubrey (1866-1932) Physicist, Inventor
"The Father of Radio Broadcasting"
"Reginald Aubrey Fessenden was the Father of Radio Broadcasting.
His voice was the first-ever to be broadcast by radio waves and heard by another person. To accomplish this feat, he had to prove to his detractors by his own invention that his was the correct theory for wireless transmission.
On December 23rd, 1900, from a site on Cobb Island in the middle of the Potamac River near Washington, Fessenden spoke these words - "one - two - three - four, is it snowing where you are Mr. Thiessen? If it is, would you telegraph back to me?" Mr. Thiessen, one mile distant, confirmed.
Radio broadcasting was born.
However, it was not until another six years, after much fine-tuning, that radio's potential was demonstrated. Fessenden presented radio's first program on Christmas Eve 1906, from Boston with the assistance of his wife Helen, her friend and his helper. Wireless operators on ships in the
harbour heard the inventor play O Holy Night on his violin and Helen and her friend sing Christmas carols. Further experimentation followed, but it was not until after World War One that governments of Canada and the USA would issue broadcasting licences that would permit development of the new medium.
Meanwhile, Reginald Fessenden, inventor and physicist, put his mind to other tasks - one of the most impressive being his Fathometer - a detector to be used to combat the U-boat menace during the War. In his lifetime, he conceived over 500 inventions which benefited and enriched mankind, if not Fessenden himself. In her book, Fessenden, Builder of Tomorrow, Helen Fessenden, in referring to her husband's accomplishments, wrote of his fertile mind that it had "failed to defend itself against
commercial assault, whether financial or scientific". "
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Fessenden and the Early History of Radio Science
by John S. Belrose
The Radioscientist -- volume 5 number 3 September 1994
Marconi was the first to describe and the first to achieve the transmission of definite intelligible signals by means of Hertzian waves. History has accredited him with the invention of an early form of radio telegraphy. His contributions to the history of radio communications are well known and celebrated but other experimenters took a hand, very early.
Do you know:
Who first used the word and the method of continuous waves?
Who was first to transmit voice over radio?
Who devised a detector for continuous waves?
Who first used the method, and the word heterodyne?
Who was first to send two-way wireless telegraphy messages across the
Atlantic ocean?
Who was first to send wireless telephony (voice) across the Atlantic
Ocean?
Who made the world's first wireless broadcast (voice and music)?
The answer to all seven questions is Reginald Aubrey Fessenden, a Canadian-born radio pioneer, working in the United States. Fessenden must clearly be the pioneer of radio communications as we know it today. I wonder how many of you have heard of him?
It is perhaps appropriate that an Alexander Graham Bell Lecture should remember the contributions of Prof. Fessenden to the early history of radio science, since the work of Bell had a profound influence on his life. Bell developed a method of sending words over wires (the telephone). The idea of transmitting the human voice by wireless dominated the early radio experiments of Fessenden.
Reggie, during his boyhood in Fergus, Ontario, followed the work of Alex Bell in nearby Brantford with great fascination. But his inquisitive mind was well ahead of Bell's experiments.
The year was 1876, Reggie was 10 years old. His Uncle Cortez Fessenden, who played an important role in the development of Reggie's inquiring mind, had been invited to see a demonstration of the telephone at the Bell homestead on 4th August. Bell's first long distance call, between Brantford and Paris, via Toronto, a distance of 113 kilometres, was made a few days later on the 10 August 1876.1
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Reginald Aubrey Fessenden
b. October 6, 1866, Knowlton, Quebec, Canada
d. July 22, 1932, Bermuda
<http://chem.ch.huji.ac.il/~eugeniik/history/fessenden.html>
Some of the Fessenden's patents are listed below:
Silicon Alloys 452,494 (1891)
Design and Construction of X Ray Equipment 648,660 (1900)
Heterodyne Principle 706,738 (1902), 706,739 (1902), 706,740 (1902),
1,050,441 (1913), 1,050,728 (1914)
Rectification 706,736 (1902)
F. Alternator 706,737 (1902)
Arc Oscillator (Mention) 706,742 (1902)
Radio Telephone 706,747 (1902)
Multiplexing 715,203 (1902), 727,326 (1903), 981,406 (1911)
Point Contact Rectifier, 727,327 (1903)
Electrolytic Detector 727,331 (1903)
Vertical Antenna 793,651 (1905)
Anti Static Device 918,306 (1909), 918,307 (1909)
Directive Antenna Array 1,020,032 (1912)
Storage of Wheeled Vehicles 1,114,975 (1914)
Internal Combustion Engine 1,132,465 (1915)
Sound Production and Signaling 1,207,387 (1916), 1,207,388 (1916),
1,311,157 (1916), 1,108,895 (1914), 1,277,562
(1918), 1,384,855 (1920)
Submarine Signaling and Detect 1,348,556 (1920), 1,348,828 (1920),
1,348,855 (1920), 1,429,497 (1922)
Subsurface Directive Signaling 1,348,856 (1920), 1,355,598 (1920)
Ship Location 1,319,145 (1919)
Fathometer 1,217,585 (1917)
Geophysical Prospecting With Sound 1,240,328 (1917)
Water Storage and Power Generation 1,214,531 (1910), 1,247,520 (1917)
Gun Location by Sound 1,341,795 (1920)
Microphotographic Books 1,616,848 (1927), 1,732,302 (1929)
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