By Kevin Bissett
The Canadian Press
24 December, 2006

It was on Christmas Eve, 100 years ago, that an eccentric Canadian inventor
made history when he produced the world's first public radio broadcast.

Reginald Aubrey Fessenden, born in Knowlton, Que., isn't well known in his
native land, but his technological feat rivals that of other, better-known
radio pioneers, including Italy's Guglielmo Marconi.

With Mr. Fessenden's inventions, the medium graduated from the crackle of
Morse code to the lilting strains of music and voice that we know today.

Mr. Fessenden, raised and educated in Ontario, moved to the United States
where he worked for Thomas Edison's laboratory, Westinghouse and two U.S.
universities before forming his own company in 1902.

His work led him to establish the heterodyne principle, the process of
mixing modulated radio signals that remains at the heart of modern
broadcasting.

While under contract with the National Electric Signaling Co., Mr. Fessenden
worked to find a way to transmit voice messages to the ships of the United
Fruit Co.

By late 1906, he had planned a demonstration for his financial backers that
was supposed include the transmission of a voice signal across the Atlantic.

But when Mr. Fessenden's 150-metre tower in Machrihanish, Scotland, was
destroyed by a storm, he decided to aim his signal at ocean-going ships
using his receivers.

On Dec. 24, 1906, Mr. Fessenden fired up his transmitting station at Brant
Rock, Mass., a village about 50 kilometres from Boston.

Together with his wife Helen, a secretary and a small crew, Mr. Fessenden
started his broadcast at 9 p.m. with a brief speech, followed by an Edison
phonograph recording of Handel's Largo.

Mr. Fessenden also performed a violin solo of O, Holy Night, sang a few
verses of a song, and read a passage from the Bible.

He then wished his listeners a Merry Christmas and asked them to write him.

"It was the first time radio was used as an entertainment medium as opposed
to just a 'help-me-please' medium," said Ed Perry, owner of WATD, a radio
station in nearby Marshfield, Mass.

Mr. Fessenden later asserted that the pioneering broadcast was heard as far
away as Norfolk, Va., more than 800 kilometres away.

"On Christmas Eve, I could not get any of the others to talk, sing or play
and consequently had to do it all myself," he later recalled.

Until that night, radio consisted only of Marconi's crude, coded
transmissions -- harsh blasts of electrical energy.

"[Mr. Fessenden] put together what we would now call a show," said Len
Arminio, professor of broadcast journalism at Loyalist College in
Belleville, Ont.
"On that night, he was the first announcer, the first disc jockey, the first
to play live music on radio."

But the only documented evidence of this feat came to light 25 years later,
only a few weeks before Mr. Fessenden died, in a letter he sent to a friend.
Still, no one disputes his historic accomplishment. Scholars have long
assured us that Mr. Fessenden's recollections were accurate.

The inventor earned more than 500 patents during his lifetime, claiming
credit for the radio telephone, a sonic depth finder and submarine
signalling devices.
While Mr. Fessenden is relatively unknown in Canada, his work has been
recognized in Scotland and the United States, where the U.S. Navy named a
destroyer after him in 1943.

Still, some historians have concluded that Mr. Fessenden, unlike Marconi,
was a lousy salesman who was simply ahead of his time.
Despite his success, commercial radio really didn't catch on with the public
until the 1920s.

Regarded as a cantankerous, impatient man, Mr. Fessenden toiled in obscurity
for much of his life, fighting court battles over his many patents.
Finally, in 1928, the U.S. Radio Trust paid him $2.5-million in recognition
of his contribution to radio technology.

He retired to Bermuda, where he died in 1932 at age 65.

"I'm not sure he promoted he was Canadian enough," said Mr. Perry, whose
radio station has planned a few hours of special programming on Christmas
Eve.
The station will broadcast a Canadian-produced play based on Mr. Fessenden's
life, and there will be a live re-enactment of the first broadcast from the
site of Mr. Fessenden's 140-metre tower, which still stands today.

"Fessenden was a true Canadian genius," Prof. Arminio said. "He got lost in
the historic shuffle, and that's too bad."

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