Fessenden meaning
Who was Reginald Aubrey Fessenden?
Reginald A. Fessenden was an outstanding Canadian scientist, inventor and engineer
Born in Knowlton, Quebec, Reginald Fessenden was an inveterate inventor.
Reginald fessenden biography Reginald Aubrey Fessenden October 6, — July 22, was a Canadian electrical engineer and inventor who received hundreds of patents in fields related to radio and sonar between and seven of them after his death. Fessenden pioneered developments in radio technology, including the foundations of amplitude modulation AM radio. His achievements included the first transmission of speech by radio , and the first two-way radiotelegraphic communication across the Atlantic Ocean In he reported that, in late , he also made the first radio broadcast of entertainment and music, although that claim has not been well documented. He did a majority of his work in the United States and, in addition to his Canadian citizenship, claimed U.He worked with such distinguished innovators as Thomas Edison (who called him Fezzie) and George Westinghouse, inventor of the railroad air brake and the alternating current electrical system. Fessenden was inspired by Alexander Graham Bell. When he was only 10 years old, he watched Bell demonstrate the telephone in his lab in Brantford, Ontario and later make the first long distance phone call in history, from Paris to Brantford.
While still in his twenties, by sheer perseverance combined with acute insight into electrical current transmission, Fessenden became Edison’s assistant at his main plant in New Jersey - at the time considered to be the finest experimental laboratory in the world. He rose to become chief chemist of Edison Electrical Co. in Not long after, Westinghouse lured Fessenden away from Edison by offering him a senior position at Westinghouse Electric Corporation.
Fessenden taught electrical engineering at Purdue University, where he was able to pursue experiments on the development of sound vibration and wireless sound transmission.
He left Purdue to devote all his time and energies to developing his inventions and settled in Pittsburgh at the invitation of George Westinghouse.
Yes, it WAS a Canadian - Reginald Aubrey Fessenden - who was recognized as the "father" of radio and as the first to actually transmit the sound of the human voice without wires. Several years prior to his first broadcast by radio, Reginald Fessenden had perfected a new method of sending Morse code more effectively than Guglielmo Marconi. To him goes the credit for successfully transmitting the sound of the human voice between two foot towers on Cobb Island located in the Potomac River, Washington D. The first radio broadcast ever in the world's history was made by Reginald Fessenden on Christmas Eve when he beamed a "Christmas concert" to the astonished crews of the ships of the United Fruit Company out in the Atlantic Ocean and the Caribbean Sea. Beamed out from the foot towers of the transmitting shack at Brant Rock, Massachusetts on the Atlantic coast, this program commenced exactly at 9 o'clock, with 'CQ CQ CQ', meaning general call to all stations within range', sent out in dots and dashes.He was named chair of the electrical engineering department at the University of Pittsburgh where he developed and patented several inventions, including microphotography. His improved telegraph system got the attention of the United States Weather Bureau, Fessenden’s next employer.
Bureau chief and officials were astounded when Fessenden transmitted his dots and dashes wireless signal from Cobb Island, Maryland over a distance of fifty miles.
But it was the transmission of speech, not "dots and dashes," which spurred Fessenden to greater effort.
Fessenden biography The son of an Episcopal minister, Reginald A. A well-known pioneer in radio communications , Fessenden became a strong advocate of continuous-wave radio as an alternative to spark systems and he opposed excessive government regulation of the emerging industry. A prolific inventor, he introduced a number of important technical innovations and was awarded the Medal of Honor of the Institute of Radio Engineers in He then taught for two years at Whitney Institute in Bermuda before moving to New York City in where he worked as a tester for the Edison Machine Works on electric power distribution systems. In , he joined the research staff at Edison's new laboratory facility in West Orange, NJ, and worked there for about three years.Fessenden was rewarded by achieving the first wireless transmission of the human voice, even though it was over the short distance of one Cobb Island on December 23rd, , for the first time in the world's known history, intelligible speech was transmitted by electromagnetic waves. Thus the honor of taking the first step in the development of what is now universally termed 'radio' deservedly belongs to Reginald Fessenden.
Convinced of the inventor's technical ability, two Pittsburgh millionaires agreed to form and finance a company, the National Electric Signaling Company, employing Fessenden on condition that he place his inventions in the name of the Company.
Two wireless stations were built at Brant Rock, Massachusetts, with foot antenna towers and state-of-the-art equipment. As a result of their excellent performance, three more stations were built in New York, Philadelphia and Washington. These Fessenden installations were the first to send wireless dot and dash messages over land and sea, establishing a record of 6, miles to Alexandria, Egypt.
For Fessenden, was a triumphant year in which he achieved the world’s first two-way transatlantic radio transmission from Brant Rock.
Jump to the biography. Source: Link. His mother, later a prominent member of the imperialist movement, was the granddaughter of immigrants from Yorkshire, England. In his father was ordained to the priesthood, and afterwards the family moved regularly as Elisha Fessenden assumed pastorates in Bolton Centre, Que. Later in life Reginald would attribute his success as an inventor to his ancestry and his Canadian upbringing.Some later milestones include the invention of a turbo-electric drive for battleships, insulating electrical tape and many other underwater sound devices. He won the Scientific American's Gold Medal in for the fathometer, which could determine the depth of water under a ship's hull. He eventually held over patents, reflecting his prodigious talent for innovation.
Reginald Aubrey Fessenden, a great Canadian who gave the world so much, died in Bermuda on July 22nd, On the stone lintel across the top of the fluted columns marking his final resting place are inscribed these words:
"By his genius, distant lands converse
and men sail unafraid upon the deep."
The above contains excerpts from a biographical article by Dr.
Jack Belrose of the Communications Research Centre of Canada.