<\/p>\n
\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0In 1911, Reginald Aubrey Fessenden was fired from his own company. \u00a0The Canadian born, largely self-educated scientist had finally exhausted the patience of his Pittsburgh based investors who had bankrolled his experiments in radiotelephony. \u00a0The National Electrical Signalling Company (NESCO) had succeeded in demonstrating the concept of wireless radio broadcasting in December of 1906, but the return on their investment wasn\u2019t meeting the expectations of the money men. \u00a0All great achievements require someone to plant the seeds. \u00a0When he was released in 1911, financing Fessenden\u2019s company had chewed through an amount of seed money that would amount to more than $40 million in today\u2019s dollars.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Shortly before his death in 1944, Fessenden\u2019s son R.K. Fessenden donated a large collection of his father\u2019s papers to the State Archives of North Carolina. \u00a0Frequent RADIO WORLD magazine contributor James E. O\u2019Neal has done exhaustive research looking for evidence that the first wireless broadcast took place on December 21, 10\\906 and not the more commonly reported December 24, 1906. \u00a0While Fessenden is certainly not a name widely known outside of folks interested in the history of radio, it is certainly a name we should not forget. \u00a0Everyone knows the Wright Brothers, but their story is incomplete without knowing how their battles with fellow aviation pioneer Glenn Curtis laid the foundations of modern aviation. \u00a0The same can be said about Fessenden and the early days of radio.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Radio after Marconi was an emerging technology but the NESCO backers weren\u2019t investing in the project for the pure science of it. \u00a0As a businessman, Hay Walker, Jr. and Thomas H. Given recognized Fessenden\u2019s potential to develop the new wireless (radio) technology but, as correspondence between them shows, were unhappy with his progress. \u00a0This correspondence also gives us a peek at their motivation (in financing Fessenden\u2019s work). \u00a0As Walker stated in a letter dated April 27, 1906, \u201cTo really get over [the top] is our aim and to be the first on record that is witnessed by people who are in every way disinterested would, as you know, be worth everything to us . . . the man or company first ever publicly have [sic] a great startin a business way, and that part now is of importance to us.\u201d \u00a0To underscore his point, Walker added, \u00a0\u201cArt is long but time is fleeting.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Further correspondence throughout the remainder of 1906 hinted that they might reduce his funding and paid staff. \u00a0For his part, Fessenden told his staff at his research and broadcast test stations in Brant Rock and Plymouth, Massachusetts and Machrihanish, Scotland that, \u201cI want to avoid doing this if we possibly can because if we shut down even for a month, it will make a great deal of trouble starting up again . . . We can probably form a company soon and Mr. Westinghouse and some other me whom I have seen will come into it.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Fessenden was attempting to manage multiple sites, mollify his backers, and prepare for a public demonstration. \u00a0He was testing his backers patience and by September 24, 1906, they telegraphed their displeasure: \u00a0\u201cWire us what you have actually accomplished on [radio] telephone. \u00a0No prediction.\u201d \u00a0This was in reference to a separate over-water radiotelephone demonstration that soon disappeared completely as Fessenden tried to get his other broadcast demonstration together.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Walker and Thompson continues to press Fessenden throughout October and November. \u00a0Fessenden had oversight of Machrihanish Station removed from his duties when he received a wire in early December that informed him the 420 foot smokestack\/tower being used there (as an antenna) had toppled over in high winds. \u00a0He then began the process of inviting the parties who would be necessary to witness the test broadcast between Brant Rock and Plymouth nine miles away.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0The demonstration of December 21, 1906 was reported to Walker et al the next day: \u00a0\u201cThe test passed off successfully. \u00a0With our own transmitter [carbon microphone] an Associated Press man at Plymouth got every word except one which the Associated Press man at Brant Rock spoke.\u201d \u00a0When asked about this demonstration in 1932, Fessenden had replied, \u201cIf you mean broadcasting the transmission of speech, music, and singing to other stations . . . at the exhibition (on December 21, 1906) . . .this would be a broadcast.\u201d \u00a0Fessenden himself repeated the demonstration by broadcasting his voice and music on December 24, 1906,but anecdotal accounts about this broadcast aside, the account from Fessenden himself (about December 21) appears to set the actual date of the first true radio broadcast to the December 21, 1906 date.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Fessenden may have been planting the seeds, but it took another decade for broadcast radio to become a widely accepted reality. \u00a0He had a vision of what was to come as he wrote in 1906: \u201c[Radio] Telephony is admirably adapted for transmitting news, stock quotations, music, race reports, etc simultaneously over a city, on account of the facts that no wires are needed and a single apparatus can distribute to ten thousand subscribers as easily as to a few. \u00a0It is proposed to erect stations for this purpose in the large cities here and abroad.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Would Fessenden recognize his vision 110 years later? \u00a0I think that he would.<\/span><\/p>\n Top Piece Video: \u00a0Queen’s\u00a0Radio Ga Ga\u00a0<\/em>seemed to fit the era of Fessenden and the birth of radio.