the radio voice
This carries on from the earlier post, more on radio’s history, #1.
Marconi?s receivers could pick up morse code ? but not the continuous oscillations of the human voice. It was Reginald Fessiden and Lee De Forest who developed the possibilities of continuous wave transmission that would make voice communication possible.
Fessenden, in partnership with Swedish engineer, Ernst F.W. Alexanderson, then working for GE, designed an alternator, a “critical breakthrough in radio technology and elegant evidence of Fessenden’s genius in synthesizing his previous work in the electric power industry with his need for a transmitter” (Douglas, Inventing American Broadcasting, 156). By 1906 he had transmitted the human voice over a distance of 10 miles. Fessenden also established an experimental station in Brant Rock, Massachusetts, just south of Plymouth. From there he wrote to phonograph companies asking for a good phonograph and several records, especially recordings of Sousa, Caruso, and violin solos. At 9 p.m., Christmas Eve, 1906, when wireless operators of several United Fruit Company ships in the Atlantic, tipped off to expect something unusual on their NESCO*-provided sets, listened in, they heard Fessenden transmit a recording of Handel?s “Largo” on an Ediphone, play “Oh Holy Night” on the violin, and read from the bible before wishing them a Merry Christmas.
“The Christmas Eve program is still considered the first radio broadcast in American history?” (Douglas, 156).