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RULES REGINALD
AUBREY FESSENDEN (1871-1932)
(The weatherman)
AC Generator Broadcast -
1906
REGINALD
AUBREY FESSENDEN WAS BORN
in
the small township of Milton, Quebec,
Canada, on March 11, 1871. He died in,
Hamilton, Bermuda on July 22, 1932, four
years after settling a law suit against
his former bosses, GE and RCA for
$2.5-milliion. CLICK
FOR
STORY.
If
you were in search for a man that could
find a way to fill in the gap between
transmitting voice with sparks developed
by Tesla's RF electric generator, without
infringing on the simple grounded EMW
Wireless Telephone -- RF loop
antenna system, developed by Stubblefield,
Reginald would be your man. He patented
over 500 innovations he picked up from
working for others, including the
early day spark-gap
transmitter design allowing high levels of
radio-frequency power
output?.
It
all started when Fessenden, a Canadian
citizen came to the United States in 1886,
in search for a better signal detector.
His first job was with another former
Canadian, Thomas
Edison.
Reginald
was intrigued with the possibilities of
wireless telephone communication. He
taught electrical engineering at Purdue
and the University of Pittsburgh from 1893
to 1900, then worked with the U.S. Weather
Bureau until 1902.
It
was there, when he first read in the
newspapers about the Stubblefield Wireless
Telephone public demonstrations that
were going to be taking place in
Philadelphia and Washington,
D.C.
Reginald's
own 1901, unsuccessful demonstration of
voice transmission via spark were doomed
right from the start, because of the
inherent problems created by spark
coils.
Shortly
after seeing the Stubblefield
demonstrations attending by General
Squire, Tesla, Bell, Westinghouse, and
other industry leaders, he developed his
own electrolytic detector and other EMW
related devices that he thought would
improve on the Stubblefield RF
transmitting unit. His patents clearly
avoided the term Wireless Telephone.
It wasn't long after Fessenden left the
weather bureau that he formed his own
organization, the National Electric
Signaling Company (NESC) &endash; in 1906,
with the backing of two Pittsburgh
financiers, Hay Walker, Jr., and Thomas E.
Given.
- Continue
For More
1.
Feature
(Excerpt
from)"The
SMART DAAF BOYS"
Continued
from above -
Fessenden
directed the business activities of the
National Electric Signaling Company from
the Brant Rock, Massachusetts Dit Dah
transmitter facilities. He focused his
technical knowledge and efforts on
perfecting the Alexanderson, General
Electric, Tesla inspired 60 cycle AC spark
generator to transmit both Dit Dahs and
voice. The station first gained fame by
establishing communications with
Machrihanish in Scotland.
On December 24,
1906, at 9 P.M. eastern standard time,
Reginald Fessenden, with Alexanderson in
attendance, prepared and performed their
first
speech
and phonograph music
program from the
Brant Rock
station.
-- The
Christmas Eve Broadcast occurred the same
year Tesla's Westinghouse patent for his
60-cycle electrical AC generator expired.
The private
broadcast demonstration was reported to
have been received by ships at sea, with
look-a-like GE -- Fessenden receivers, up
and down the coast, inland some distance
in New York State and Maryland -- and as
far away as 100 miles.
--
It should be
noted here, that two months after the
Reginald broadcast event, the word "Radio"
popped up. On February 28,
1907, the
DeForest Radio Telephone Company was the
first to use the new word, "Radio" to
describe the Wireless Telephony. The first
permanent wireless telephone RF
broadcasting installation was constructed
in Murray, Kentucky, by Stubblefield's
Teleph-on-del-green Industrial College, on
the campus where Murray State University
is now located.
-- It
was also on April 5, 1907, that
Stubblefield filed his Wireless Telephone
Patent Application, Serial No. 366,544
-Room 109. The patent application was
granted in conjunction with the expiration
of Edison's Antenna patent.
Reginald's company,
National Electric Signaling Company
(NESC), went bankrupt in 1912.
--
Did the
demonstration set priorities for Radio
transmissions? --
Apparently
not, because Stubblefield was granted the
all-in-one U.S. Patent for voice-music
broadcasting in 1908, based on his 1898,
electrolytic grounded EMW transmitting
batteries, and his public Wireless
Telephone demonstrations that
commenced in 1892, in Murray,
Kentucky.
School Days, Edison, Tesla and the
Telegraphy Spark gap
When Reginald Fessenden was a child, he
moved with his family to Ontario, where,
from an early age, like Marconi, he become
fascinated with the idea of wireless
telegraphy as a child when he saw
Alexander Graham Bell demonstrate his
telephone over a distance of several miles
near Bell's home in Ontario. After
training as an electrician, Fessenden
began research that subsequently took him
to the United States, where he worked with
Thomas Edison as a chemist developing
insulation for electrical wires.
In 1892, at the time of Stubblefield's
first voice broadcast, he became fasinated
with the work of Tesla while working with
George Westinghouse to help set up the
lighting for the World Columbian
Exposition in Chicago. Fessenden then
became professor of electrical engineering
at Purdue University, and a year later he
was named head of electrical engineering
at Western University of Pennsylvania, the
institution that was to become the modern
University of Pittsburgh.
In 1900 Fessenden left the University
of Pittsburgh to work for the United
States Weather Bureau, on the
understanding that the Bureau could have
access to any devices he invented, but
that he would retain ownership. At the
Weather Bureau he invented the liquid
barretter (an early radio receiver) and
attempted to work out a means for wireless
transmission of weather forecasts. On
December 23, 1900, a few associates had
claimed he transmitted his own voice over
the first wireless telephone from a site
on Cobb Island in the middle of the
Potomac River near Washington, DC., near
the spot where the first Stubblefield ship
to shore broadcast took place. After a
squabble over patent rights, Fessenden
resigned from the Bureau in 1902.
Lacking the showmanship of Tesla, Marconi
and Edison, and his frustration often
showed in his personality, which made it
nearly impossible for him to market his
inventions without the help of outside
investors, like Pennsylvania businessmen,
Hay Walker, Jr., and Thomas H. Given. They
joined with Fessenden to form the National
Electric Signaling Company (NESCO), to
carry on his own research, and also to
develop Morse code services between
Marshfield's Brant Rock, Massachusetts and
several points in the United States.
Fessenden recognized that a continuous
wave transmission was required for speech
and he continued the work of Nikola Tesla,
John Stone Stone, and Elihu Thomson on
this subject. Fessenden felt he could also
transmit and receive Morse code better by
the continuous wave method than with a
spark-apparatus such as the one that
Marconi was using. This work arose out of
Fessenden's desire for a more effective
type of receiver than the coherer, a
delicate device that was limited in its
sensitivity by rolling of a ship at sea.
In 1903 he developed a new receiving
mechanism&emdash;the electrolytic detector
and another less successful called a
barretter detector. As his work progressed
Fessenden evolved the heterodyne system.
However, due to faulty construction and
the fact that it was ahead of its time,
heterodyne reception was not fully
appreciated until the oscillating triode
was devised, thus allowing a practical
means of generating the local frequency.
Between 1905 and 1913 Fessenden developed
a completely self-sustaining wireless
system.
In 1903 Fessenden's first high-frequency
Tesla type of alternator for continuous
wave transmission, was built to his
specifications by General Electrics, E. F.
W. Alexanderson, one of the Smart Daaf
Boys. The Alexanderson alternator, which
produced such alternating currents, was
done at General Electric, (Charles Proteus
Steinmetz, was CEO of GE at the time).
Fessenden sent a voice message to an
assistant 50 miles away, and another voice
sound was heard at his experimental towers
in Scotland. In 1904 he was hired to help
engineer the Niagara Falls power plant for
the newly formed Hydro-Electric Power
Commission of Ontario.
Finally on Christmas Eve 1906, with an
upgraded Alexanderson alternator of
greater power from GE, he purportedly
transmitted the first audio radio
broadcast in history from Brant Rock,
Massachusetts.
Ships at sea with a same like reciever,
were said to hear the broadcast that
included Fessenden playing the song O Holy
Night on the violin and reading a passage
from the Bible.
Of course this feat was four years after
Smart Daaf Boy Marconi's Dit Dah Morse
Code signal "S" was heard by Marconi from
England to Newfoundland in 1901, and
Stubblefield ship to shore two-way
wireless telephone broadcast in
Philadelphia and Washington, D.C., in
1902. Fessenden attended the event.
Marconi's signal was one-way only.
Fessenden's achievement was significant in
that he accomplished two-way voice
transmission by radio between Machrihanish
in Scotland and Massachusetts, using
synchronous rotary-spark transmitters and
his barretter detectors. Still, the
potential for his invention was not
recognized, and even his own backers were
not interested in voice or music
communication.
Walker and Given dismissed Fessenden from
NESCO in January of 1911. Fessenden
brought suit, won, and was awarded
damages. To conserve assets pending
appeal, NESCO went into receivership in
1912, and Samuel Kintner was appointed
general manager of the company.
Further work on Fessenden's alternator was
given to Ernst F. W. Alexanderson. It took
years for Alexanderson to develop an
alternator capable of transmitting regular
voice transmissions over the Atlantic, but
by 1916 the Fessenden-Alexanderson
alternator was more reliable for
transatlantic communication than the spark
apparatus. NEWTON,
Mass, Oct. 13,
1928
-- The internationally known
inventor, whose home is at 45 Waban Hill
road, Newton, has forced the so-called
Radio Trust to pay him $2,500,000 in cash,
and name him as -- "the father of
Radio."
In addition, the Boston physicist
and engineer has secured from eight great
corporations acknowledgment of the
validity of all his inventions in the
field of wireless
communication.
Thus ends, in so far as Professor
Fessenden is concerned, his suit for
$60,000,000 against the Radio Corporation
of America, The American Telephone &
Telegraph Company, the General Electric
Company, the Westinghouse Electric and
Manufacturing Company, the Western
Electric Company Inc, the International
Radio Telegraph Company, the United Fruit
Company and the wireless Specialty
Appliance
Company. Claimed $60,000,000
FIGHTS
FINANCIERS
His contempt for the leaders of
"Big Business" and their methods is
well-known. He has yet to back down in a
fight with Wall Street, of which he has
had quite a few.
When seen at his home in Newton,
Processor Fessenden not only told how he
beat the radio Trust at its own game, but
aired his opinions in general about how
"big business" treats the "Little
Fellow."
"Just how much did you
settle for against the Radio Corporation
and the rest of the organizations listed
in your suit of December, 1925?" he was
asked.
"Exactly $2,5000,000 in cold
cash!" -- answered Professor
Fessenden. FESSENDEN ONCE WON
$406,175
But triumphing over corporations is
nothing new for Professor Fessenden, for
in 1912 he was awarded $406,175 in the
United States District Court at Boston in
a suit against the National Electric
Signalling
Company.
The award was not only the largest
ever given up to that time in
Massachusetts, but was notable in bringing
out the history of the Boston inventor's
pioneer work in wireless telegraph and
telephony. -- FOR
MORE STORY SEE LOST NEWS ARTICLES ON GE,
RCA LAW SUIT CLICK
HERE
/ CLICK
FOR PART TWO OF FESSENDEN ARTICLE
Before all of his successful law suits, he
was an inveterate tinkerer who perfected
the devices description on paper, to make
them into work in thought, the way were
supposed to. Reginald Fessenden eventually
become the holder of more than 500
patents. He could often be found in a
river or lake, floating on his back, a
cigar sticking out of his mouth and a hat
pulled down over his eyes.
In this state of
relaxation,
it was said that Fessenden could
imagine, invent and think his way to new
ideas, including a version of microfilm,
that helped him to keep a compact record
of his inventions, projects and patents.
He patented the basic ideas leading to
reflection seismology, a technique
important for its use in exploring for
petroleum.
In 1915 he invented
the fathometer, a sonar device used to
determine the depth of water for a
submerged object by means of sound waves,
for which he won Scientific American's
Gold Medal in 1929. The Institute of Radio
Engineers presented him with its Medal of
Honor, and Philadelphia awarded him a
medal and a cash prize for "One whose
labors had been of great benefit"
Fessenden's private residence at 45 Waban
Hill Road in the Chestnut Hill district of
Newton, Massachusetts is on the National
Register of Historic Places.
MAXWELL'S
ETHER THEORY DIES - November, 13,
1931. The one-hundredth anniversary of
Clerk Maxwell's birth was marked by the
scientific world "digging a grave for the
theory of a luminiferous ether," but at
the same time honoring Maxwell's
mathematical genius.
1903 12 11 - PATENT
EXPIRES: Wireless Telegraph - Induction;
Emerson Amos Dolbear's 1986 Wireless
Telegraph- Induction Patent expires.
1904 0201 -
Stubblefield 's Groundless All-in-One
Radio System completed February, 1904.
1905 02 -AUDION
PATENT Number One, #979,275, was Applied
For On February 2, 1905 - By DeForest.
1905 - PATENT LAWS
- Revised (1905, STATUTE: SEC. 4886).
1906 12 -
Ship To Shore Christmas Eve Broadcast With
GE Alternator (Christmas Eve) Reginald
Fessenden and Ernst Alexanderson. Occured
the same year Tesla's Westinghouse patent
for his 60-cycle electrical generator
expired.
1907 0228 - THE
FIRT RADIO STOCK CORPORATION. DeForest
RADIO TELEPHONE COMPANY - On February 28,
1907 - the first Wireless Telephone
company USING the new WORD "RADIO".
1907 0405 -
Stubblefield In Washington. Nathan B.
Stubblefield's Wireless Telephone Patent
Application Filed Apr. 5, 1907, Serial No.
366,544 -Room 109. The first permanent
wireless telephone broadcasting
installation was in January, 1892. The
station was constructed in Murray,
Kentucky, by Stubblefield's
Teleph-on-del-green Industrial College, on
the campus where Murray State University
is now located,
1907 0601 - June 1,
1907 - STUBBLEFIELD PROSPECTUS - VALUABLE
APPLICATIONS OF THIS INVENTION. As Cited
In Our United States Patent
Application.
1907 0607 - Private
Prospectus - June 7, 1907 - U.S. Army
Signal Corps - Major Squier, Washington,
D.C. -
1907 1017 -
Stubblefield Wireless Telephone Patent
Application Approved By Commissioner Allen
- Nathan B. Stubblefield - (Patent Expires
October 17, 1924).
1908 12 - Antenna
PATENT EXPIRES: Thomas A. Edison's Antenna
- 1891 Wireless Telegraphy Patent
Expires.
1908 0512 - PATENT:
Stubblefield Received His All Purpose -
Wireless Telephone Patent, Number 887,357
Click to Go To US Patent Office -- then
Click Full Text to refresh page. - (Patent
Expires May 12, 1925)
1908 0218 - PATENT:
Audion Patent Number Three, #879, 532
Covering The Device As A Detector - Was
Issued On February 18, 1908, TO
DeForest.
1909 - CONTINENTAL
WIRELESS TELEPHONE AND TELEGRAPH COMPANY,
1909: Included six companies. (Wireless
Telegraphy or Wireless Telephony):
Incorporated December 1909 In Arizona For
$5 million.
1909 0417 -
STUBBLEFIELD'S CANADIAN PATENT Issued
#114,737 - GRANTED TO STUBBLEFIELD -
(Patent Expires in 1926).
1909 0615 -
Stubblefield Assigns Canadian Patent To A.
Frederick Collins, June 15, 1909. Collins
assigns 75% of his old Collins Wireless
Telephone Company Formed in 1903.
1909 1114 - A.
Frederick Collins - Electrical Show In
Madison Square Garden, New York, Oct. 14,
1909 for the purpose of selling stock in
the Collins Wireless Telephone Co.
1911 - COLLINS
INDICTED - December 1911. Four officers of
the Continental Co. excepting Walter
Massie were indicted for using the mails
to defraud in selling worthless stock.