Quick, name someone influential in the history of radio. Who do did you think of? Marconi? Tesla? Armstrong? Hertz? Perhaps Sarnoff? We bet only a handful would have said Reginald Fessenden. That’s a shame because he was the first to do something that most of us do every day.
Few know this Canadian inventor’s name even though he developed quite a few innovations. Unlike Colpitts and Hartley we don’t have anything named after him. However, Fessenden was the first man to make a two-way transatlantic radio contact (Marconi’s was one way) and he was a pioneer in using voice over the radio.
He did even more than that. He patented transmitting with a continuous wave instead of a spark, which made modern radio practical. This was unpopular at the time because most thought the spark was necessary to generate enough energy. In 1906, John Fleming (who gave us tubes that are sometimes still called Fleming valves) wrote that “a simple sine-curve would not be likely to produce the required effect.” That was in 1906, five years after Fessenden’s patent.
Start at the Beginning
Reginald Fessenden was born in Quebec in 1866. He dropped out of Bishop’s College at 18 even though he had essentially completed his degree, to take a job in Bermuda teaching. Eventually, he would move to New York City hoping to work for Thomas Edison. This didn’t work out at first because he didn’t know much about electricity at the time, but he was persistent. He kept hanging around one of Edison’s machine shops and one day an instrument tester walked off the job. Desperate, the foreman hired him on the spot.
Once in Edison’s employ, his math skills and troubleshooting skills led to him quickly rising, finally working directly for Edison in New Jersey as a junior technician. He actually asked Edison if he could research wireless. The boss was agreeable but asked him to wait until he returned from Europe.
Before Edison could return, however, he was forced to lay off most of his laboratory employees, including Fessenden. Armed with practical experience, he found several jobs before winding up as a professor at Purdue. There his work came to the attention of George Westinghouse who personally recruited him to be the chair of the electrical engineering department at the Western University of Pennsylvania in Pittsburgh (now the University of Pittsburgh).
Radio Active
About this time, Marconi was in the news for developing a practical wireless transmission system using spark gaps and coherers to send Morse code. Fessenden started experimenting and realized he could do better. By 1899 he had sent messages between Pittsburgh and Allegheny City, using a receiver he designed. In particular, he had been critical of the coherer developed by Lodge and Marconi because it did not lend itself to measurements that could tie the observed radio effects to electromagnetic theory. A properly adjusted coherer acts like a switch. It is either on or off. That made it difficult to compare two signals if both of them were strong enough to set off the detector. This made it difficult to compare antennas or transmitters, especially since the antennas and receivers of the day were hardly portable.
In a talk in 1899, Fessenden showed three different detectors he had been working on. They were sensitive and able to produce a measure of signal strength. He also understood resonance from experiments he’d conducted earlier with multiplex telegraph systems that use various frequencies. He understood that the broad signal produced by a spark was not suitable for tuning and wanted to find a way to make higher frequencies that were constant and not ringing like the decay of a spark. This all sounds ordinary today, but remember, Marconi’s system operated at about 8 Hz and the sparks were throwing lots of harmonics and decaying down to zero on each pulse.
Working for the United States Weather Bureau, Fessenden would invent the barretter detector that demodulated radio waves using a hot platinum wire prepared with acid. He followed this up with the popular (at the time) electrolytic detector that used the same kind of wire, but kept it in the acid during operation.
So What?
You might wonder why we care about two old-fashioned radio detectors. There were two things of interest here. First, keep in mind this is before tubes, so there was no amplification available. More sensitive detectors were crucial in making radio more useful. In addition, these detectors could detect amplitude not just on and off like a coherer. Not only did this enable the scientific measurements Fessenden wanted, it also enabled AM radio.
By using a carbon microphone in the transmission line, Fessenden was able to successfully transmit voice on Cobb Island in the Potomac River near Washington DC. The distance was only about a mile and the audio quality was not suitable for practical use, but it is considered the first transmission of speech. The message was reportedly:
“One, two, three, four. Is it snowing where you are Mr. Thiessen? If it is, telegraph back and let me know.”
Continuous Wave
Fessenden kept experimenting with alternators (like the one on the right) and increasing their frequency. He had alternators that would go as high as 50 Hz, but with no amplification, it was difficult to get good results. However, he did have some success and even prophetically, connected the radio to the telephone network.
There were reports that some of the audio tests were even accidentally heard in the Scottish sister station set up by Fessenden’s new company. By 1906 he patented a system for measuring the distance to icebergs using radio waves — similar to modern radar. It was also used during wartime to detect submarines.
That’s Entertainment
Christmas Eve of 1906, Fessenden’s station at Brant Rock, Massachusetts sent CQ using Morse code. Then, he used a microphone to announce the show followed by a gramophone playing Handel’s Largo. He also personally played the violin, rendering O Holy Night. Then he wished his listeners a merry Christmas. Some others were to speak, but they suffered what could be the first case of mic fright, or so it is reported.
That was the first entertainment broadcast known to occur. It didn’t get as much publicity as Lee De Forest’s broadcast a few months later. Between connecting radio and telephone, and using broadcasts for entertainment, you can conclude that our inventor had a pretty good crystal ball. He certainly had a big antenna, as you can see on the left.
You can hear a reproduction of the original Christmas program in this video:
Personal
Fessenden was clearly a smart guy. There are some records that indicate he was quite vain and didn’t treat employees with much respect. He supposedly had a nasty temper. You can never be sure with these figures — especially ones that aren’t as well-known as some others — how much of that is true and how much is an exaggeration.
One thing is for sure, though. While Fessenden built much of the foundation for radiotelephony, he didn’t have a lot of financial success. The company that sponsored most of his work, dismissed him in 1911, leading to a protracted court battle. The company was eventually sold to RCA who settled the case.
He continued to work, but not on radio. He wound up with over 500 patents. He also became eccentric, causing Radio News, a magazine, to eventually stop carrying his serialized autobiography. He died in 1932 at his home he had bought with settlement money in Bermuda. His burial vault bears the words:
By his genius distant lands converse and men sail unafraid upon the deep.
A great sentiment. A shame so few remember him. On the other hand, he did get his own ballad.
I guess this community was formed before he was famous…
http://fessendennd.com/
“Eventually, he would move to New York City hoping to work for Thomas Edison. ”
Canadian brain drain, still a problem today (for Canada).
I think they found out why they can’t maintain a larger population with their natural resources and land mass without immigration for a reason. I’m sure the root cause is not just the weather. Washington Border Patrol warned me how bad they are in BC with hit men hideouts and terrorists going back and forth. Huge trafficking route for humans even.
Somebody on Reddit had a funny one: If you steal a Tesla would it become an Edison?
No, it becomes a Westinghouse.
Ah, why do Canadians always have to leave home to be famous? Except Celine Dion, we wanted her to leave.
I think the reason for this is because Canadians have an inferiority complex. It seems that Canadians and/or Canadian Companies only recognize their own when they are acquired and/or embraced by the countries outside of Canada (e.g US, etc). This is too bad as lot of high tech Canadian companies have to move outside of Canada to gain any real traction with their tech…
Canada hasn’t had very many long running entertainment TV shows. None anywhere near as long as the longest running American or British shows. The longest running entertainment show ever on the CBC is currently “Heartland”, which is loosely based on a book series by an American author, with its original setting in Virginia. The TV series moved it to Alberta.
I enjoyed working with ABB Bomem and implementing as well as advancing with their FT systems. Last I left off, I was even working on a triangular cell design to make prep easier with liquids for diffuse reflectance and transmission non-destructive testing. Not really radio… thought the system could be design for communications of more than chemical information. :-)
It all about money. To succeed one have to go where the money is. R&D needs money.
True, but there is money in Canada. Unfortunately, Canadian companies tend to be very risk averse as compared to other area and so this is the other reason companies have to move abroad. In fact Canadian companies are so risk averse that even if you show them a profit they are still on the fence on doing a deal and/or embracing a new technology. It is too bad, as the Canadian business culture virtually ensures that companies will move abroad in time…
Maybe not always; more like usually. Canadians still have Trailer Park Boys and Letterkenny.
And Hortons, but Poutine only got big once it got to Russia though, basically runs the place now.
Possibly Canada’s population is aboot 1/10th that of the US.
That is an issue. I knew someone who made small kits for ham radio in the seventies and eighties, and he’d pick a price that seemed suitable for US buyers (after costs were taken care of), while Canadians paid a higher price (because of the exchange). So he was aiming at the US market, and counted on it for finding a large enough pool of potential buyers. And of course, parts coming into the country probably had duty on them. We’ve never had the same level of stores for hobby electronics here, the smaller population not offering up enough of a niche market, but also with less manufacturing, not the same level of surplus.
Michael
We’ll keep Celine Dion if you take Justin Bieber back.
If he was truly the ogre personality that people said he was, then he wasn’t nice enough to remain there.
In Murray, KY there is a statue dedicated to Nathan Stubblefield as the Father Of Radio. After studying a lot of his work and many attempted replications, I think he was more the Father Of The Cell Phone. But, he did all of this in the 1800’s.
I just looked him up. I’d agree “the father mobile phones” would be an appropriate title!
Interesting that he powered the phone system of Murray, KY using nothing but his earth batteries. Also, the information was transmitted through the ground ala Tesla, no phone wires or poles needed. I have an old photo of Stubblefield and Tesla together somewhere.
Telluric fields also in areas where the batteries weren’t as effective and I speculate grounding also. I can’t find the book I read that detailed this though and don’t remember the title. Pre GSW reading.
Interesting read.. reminds me of the HaD’s coverage of Dr. JC Bose https://hackaday.com/2016/01/19/j-c-bose-and-the-invention-of-radio/
Purdue! I didn’t know.
Nice article, I don’t think I have ever actually heard of Fessenden before. Definitely an unsung hero. After looking him up just now, I’ve learnt that he invented heterodyning back in 1901. I remember doing this back in college, and remember thinking how smart it was, but had no idea it was invented so early.
Empire of the Air is both an incredibly dense book and a really watchable documentary: https://smile.amazon.com/Empire-Air-Men-Made-Radio/dp/0060182156
You’ll see Fessenden’s name all over. It’s worth a read, or a watch, or both.
I remember (actually recorded on VHS) a PBS documentary called “Empire of the Air”.
Which featured Lee de Forest, Edwin Howard Armstrong, and David Sarnoff.
(de Forest and Sarnoff come off looking like jerks)
Oh, a quick Ggggle turned this up…
http://www.pbs.org/kenburns/empire/
Where would Alexanderson have been without Fessenden’s work? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexanderson_alternator
Didn’t De Forrest steal some of Fessenden’s patents or infringe on?
I can’t remember how or when I learned about Fessenden, but it was fairly early. I think a magazine article in a hobby magazine, I think separate from the usual history of radio.
But on a clearance table of books, I think in the late seventies, I did get for I think less than ä dollar “Radio’s First Voice” by Ormand Raby from 1970, published in Canada. The only time I read it was after buying it.
The Brome County Historical Museum has a permanent display on Fessenden, that being where he was born. They do a “Fessenden Radio Day” every summer at the end of July, I think every year. It’s a few hours drive from Montreal.
The stories I’ve read about him have him suddenly doing the Christmas Eve broadcast, and being heard. But at some point, I think in the last few year, I suddenly realized that early detectors were coherers, fine for Morse cod, but not for voice. I think that would limit who might have heard the broadcast. It’s just this year that I learn he had his own detector, which explains why he could be heard, but makes it a more staged event, likely only to small handful of listeners.
The mind boggles at using a mechanical system to generate the signal, and boggles again at the very low frequency used because that was as fast as they could go.
Michael
“but makes it a more staged event, likely only to small handful of listeners.”
Well, the first telegraph message was a “staged event”, one could argue that the Wright Brothers first flight was a
‘Staged event”, I guess A. G. Bell’s “Watson, come here, I need you!” was not staged.
But, most historical “firsts” I would claim, are “staged” events occurring after a “test run” without the knowledge of the public to reduce the chance of embarrassment if it didn’t work.
And of course, we just went through a whole discussion about whether Apollo 11 was “staged”! B^)