Reginald Aubrey Fessenden was born on October 6, 1866, and died on July 22, 1932. He was a Canadian-American electrical engineer and inventor who received hundreds of patents related to radio and sonar between 1891 and 1936. Seven of these patents were granted after his death.
Fessenden helped develop radio technology, including the early ideas for amplitude modulation (AM) radio. He made important achievements, such as the first radio transmission of speech in 1900 and the first two-way radiotelegraphic communication across the Atlantic Ocean in 1906. In 1932, he said that in late 1906, he had also made the first radio broadcast of entertainment and music. However, this claim is not well documented.
Most of his work was done in the United States. In addition to being a Canadian citizen, he claimed U.S. citizenship because his father was born in America.
Early years
Reginald Fessenden was born on October 6, 1866, in East Bolton, Canada East, as the oldest of four children of Reverend Elisha Joseph Fessenden and Clementina Trenholme. Reverend Fessenden was a minister in the Church of England in Canada, and the family moved to several locations across the province of Ontario during his career.
Fessenden attended multiple schools. At age nine, he studied for one year at DeVeaux Military School. He later attended Trinity College School in Port Hope, Ontario, from 1877 until the summer of 1879. Before he turned 16, which was required to enter college, he worked for one year at the Imperial Bank in Woodstock.
At age 14, he returned to his hometown in the Eastern Townships and enrolled at Bishop’s College School. There, he earned a teaching job in mathematics and a scholarship to study at the university division of Bishop’s College. While still a teenager, he taught math to younger students for four years and studied natural sciences with older students at the college.
At age 18, Fessenden left Bishop’s College without receiving a degree, even though he completed most of the required work. He accepted a position as headmaster and sole teacher at the Whitney Institute near Flatts Village in Bermuda, where he worked for two years. This lack of a degree may have limited his job opportunities later, such as when McGill University in Montreal created an electrical engineering department and did not accept his application to lead it.
While in Bermuda, Fessenden became engaged to Helen May Trott of Smith’s Parish. They married on September 21, 1890, in Manhattan, New York City. Later, they had a son named Reginald Kennelly Fessenden, who was born on May 7, 1893, in Lafayette, Allen, Indiana.
Early work
Fessenden’s early education gave him only basic knowledge of science and technology. Wanting to improve his skills in electricity, he moved to New York City in 1886, hoping to work with the famous inventor Thomas Edison. His first job application was not accepted. Fessenden wrote, “I do not know much about electricity, but I can learn quickly,” and Edison responded, “I already have enough people who do not know much about electricity.” Despite this rejection, Fessenden kept trying. By the end of 1886, he was hired for a part-time job as an assistant tester at the Edison Machine Works, a company installing underground electrical lines in New York City. He worked hard and earned several promotions, taking on more important tasks. In late 1886, Fessenden began working directly for Edison at the inventor’s new laboratory in West Orange, New Jersey, as a junior technician. He helped with many projects, including solving problems in chemistry, metallurgy, and electricity. However, in 1890, Edison had to lay off most of his laboratory workers, including Fessenden. Fessenden always admired Edison and, in 1925, said, “There is only one figure in history who is as great as Edison as an inventor, and that is Archimedes.”
Using the skills he gained from his work experience, Fessenden found jobs at several manufacturing companies. In 1892, he was hired as a professor to start the Electrical Engineering department at Purdue University in West Lafayette, Indiana. While there, he helped the Westinghouse Corporation install lighting for the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair. Later that year, George Westinghouse personally invited Fessenden to join the newly created Electrical Engineering department at the Western University of Pennsylvania in Pittsburgh (now the University of Pittsburgh).
Radio work
In the late 1890s, reports began to show that Guglielmo Marconi was making progress in creating a working system for sending and receiving radio signals, which were then called "wireless telegraphy." Reginald Fessenden started limited experiments with radio and concluded that he could create a more efficient system than the one used by Oliver Lodge and Marconi, which involved a spark-gap transmitter and a coherer receiver. By 1899, he successfully sent telegraph messages between Pittsburgh and Allegheny City (now part of Pittsburgh) using a receiver he designed.
In 1900, Fessenden left Pittsburgh to work for the United States Weather Bureau. His goal was to prove that coastal radio stations could send weather information, which would save money compared to using telegraph lines. The contract required him to be paid $3,000 per year and provided with space, help, and housing. Fessenden would keep ownership of any inventions, but the Weather Bureau could use his discoveries without paying fees. He made major improvements, especially in receiver design, and developed a device called a barretter detector. Later, he created an electrolytic detector, which became the standard for sensitive radio reception for several years.
As his work continued, Fessenden also developed the heterodyne principle, which used two radio signals to create an audible tone that made Morse code easier to hear. However, this method was not practical for a decade because it required a stable local signal, which was not available until the invention of the oscillating vacuum tube.
Fessenden’s early work for the Weather Bureau took place at Cobb Island, Maryland, near the Potomac River. Additional stations were built along the Atlantic Coast in North Carolina and Virginia. However, Fessenden had disagreements with his sponsor, the Weather Bureau, over patent rights. He refused to give up his rights, and his work with the bureau ended in August 1902.
In November 1902, two Pittsburgh businessmen, Hay Walker Jr. and Thomas H. Given, helped start the National Electric Signaling Company (NESCO) to support Fessenden’s research. The company first operated in Washington, D.C., where a station was built for experiments. Two more stations were built in New Jersey. In 1904, an attempt to connect General Electric plants in New York and Massachusetts failed.
Selling equipment to governments and companies was difficult. Fessenden’s high prices, especially for the U.S. Navy, caused conflicts. The Navy used other companies to build equipment based on Fessenden’s designs, leading to lawsuits. Selling the company also failed. In 1904, NESCO changed its focus to compete with ocean cables by setting up a transatlantic radiotelegraph link. The company moved its headquarters to Brant Rock, Massachusetts, where a 420-foot antenna was built. A matching tower was built in Scotland. In January 1906, the stations successfully sent two-way Morse code messages across the Atlantic, a feat Marconi had not yet achieved. However, the system failed during daylight and summer months due to interference, and work was paused. In December 1906, the Scottish tower collapsed in a storm, ending the project. A review in Engineering magazine blamed poor construction for the collapse.
In a letter published in Scientific American in 1907, Fessenden said the tower collapse did not stop NESCO’s plans. He claimed the company would build five stations for transatlantic work and apply for a commercial permit in England. However, the collapse marked the end of NESCO’s transatlantic efforts.
Fessenden was interested in sending audio radio signals early on, unlike the early spark-gap systems that only sent Morse code. As early as 1891, he studied sending alternating currents along telegraph lines to create a multiplex system. He later used this knowledge to develop continuous-wave radio signals.
Fessenden’s method was described in U.S. Patent 706,737, filed in 1901. It involved a high-speed alternator that produced "pure sine waves" for continuous radio signals. This idea opposed the belief that large electrical sparks were needed to create strong signals. John Ambrose Fleming, a Marconi associate, criticized Fessenden’s patent in his 1906 book, saying an alternator would not produce the required effect. This criticism was later removed from the 1916 edition of the book after Fessenden’s success. Fessenden next used a carbon microphone to modulate radio signals, a technique borrowed from telephone technology, to send audio transmissions.
Later years
After Fessenden left NESCO, Ernst Alexanderson continued his work on alternator-transmitter development at General Electric, mainly for long-distance radiotelegraph use. He eventually created the high-powered Alexanderson alternator, which could send messages across the Atlantic. By 1916, the Fessenden-Alexanderson alternator was more reliable for sending messages across oceans than the spark transmitters that had been used before. Also, after 1920, radio broadcasting became common. Although radio stations used vacuum-tube transmitters instead of alternator-transmitters (because vacuum tubes made alternators outdated), they still used the same continuous-wave AM signals that Fessenden introduced in 1906.
Although Fessenden stopped radio research after leaving NESCO in 1911, he worked in other areas. As early as 1904, he helped design the Niagara Falls power plant for the newly formed Hydro-Electric Power Commission of Ontario. His most important work, however, was in marine communication as a consulting engineer for the Submarine Signal Company. This company built a widely used navigation aid using bells, called a submarine signal, which worked like an underwater foghorn. While working there, Fessenden invented the Fessenden oscillator, an electromechanical transducer. The company quickly replaced bells and old receivers on ships with this new device. The oscillator also led to new uses, such as underwater telegraphy and measuring distances using sound. This idea became the basis for sonar (SOund NAvigation Ranging), echo-sounding, and the principles used in radar (RAdio Detection And Ranging). The device was used by submarines to send signals to each other and to locate icebergs, helping avoid disasters like the sinking of the Titanic. While the company used the oscillator to replace bells in its systems and began using acoustic telegraphy, it ignored the potential for echo ranging. Echo sounding was later invented in 1912 by German physicist Alexander Behm.
At the start of World War I, Fessenden offered his help to the Canadian government and was sent to London. There, he developed tools to detect enemy artillery and locate enemy submarines. He also worked on a version of microfilm to keep records of his inventions, projects, and patents. Fessenden patented ideas that led to reflection seismology, a method used to find oil. He also received patents for other inventions, including tracer bullets, paging systems, television equipment, and a turbo electric drive for ships.
Fessenden was known for being a curious and creative person, and he held more than 500 patents. He often relaxed by floating on his back in rivers or lakes, holding a cigar and wearing a hat over his eyes. At home, he liked to lie on the carpet with a cat on his chest. In these moments of rest, he imagined and thought of new ideas. Fessenden had a reputation for being temperamental. His wife later said, "Fessenden was never hard to work with, but he was very hard to deal with in politics." A former assistant, Charles J. Pannill, remembered, "He was a great character, strong and healthy, but he had a quick temper." Another assistant, Roy Weagant, noted, "He could be kind sometimes, but only sometimes."
In 1925, Radio News honored Fessenden as "one of the greatest American radio inventors" and started a monthly series called "The Inventions of Reginald A. Fessenden," planning to publish it as a book. Instead of focusing on his radio work, Fessenden talked about other topics, such as which races he believed were most capable of inventing and how governments should support inventors. After the seventh article, Radio News added a note saying it was "not responsible for any opinions expressed in Dr. Fessenden's article." After eleven articles, Fessenden had only covered his life up to 1893 and said little about radio. The series was then quietly ended.
Awards
In 1921, the Institute of Radio Engineers gave Fessenden the IRE Medal of Honor. The medal was gold-plated. Fessenden believed earlier medals had been solid gold, so he returned this one. After Greenleaf W. Pickard investigated and confirmed that previous medals were also gold-plated, Fessenden accepted the award. In 1922, Philadelphia's Board of Directors of City Trusts awarded Fessenden the John Scott Medal, which included $800, for "inventing a reception method for continuous wave telegraphy and telephony." They also recognized him as "One whose labors had been of great benefit." Fessenden suspected the awards were given not out of sincerity but to calm him. His wife, Helen Fessenden, wrote in her biography that Fessenden compared the IRE medal to the proverb "beware of Greeks bearing gifts." The Scott Medal faced more suspicion because it was suggested by Westinghouse engineers, who worked for a company that had financial disagreements with Fessenden. Helen Fessenden noted, "The Medal cost [Westinghouse] nothing and was a good 'sop to Cereberus,'" and described the medals as "small change for tips in the pockets of Big Business." In 1929, Fessenden received Scientific American's Safety at Sea Gold Medal for inventing "the Fathometer and other safety instruments for safety at sea."
Death and legacy
After finishing his legal case with RCA, Fessenden bought a small estate named "Wistowe," which was once the home of Charles Maxwell Allen, the United States Consul who had hosted Samuel Clemens there. The estate was located in Hamilton Parish, near Flatts Village in Bermuda. Fessenden died there on July 22, 1932, and was buried in the cemetery of St. Mark's Church in Bermuda. At the time of his death, an editorial in the New York Herald Tribune titled "Fessenden Against the World" was published.
Beginning in 1961, the Society of Exploration Geophysicists has given its Reginald Fessenden Award each year to "a person who has made a specific technical contribution to exploration geophysics." In 1980, a Fessenden-Trott Scholarship was created at Purdue University's School of Electrical and Computer Engineering to honor Reginald Fessenden and his wife.
Fessenden's home at 45 Waban Hill Road in the village of Chestnut Hill in Newton, Massachusetts, is listed on the National Register of Historic Places and is also a U.S. National Historic Landmark. He purchased the house in 1906 or earlier and lived there for the rest of his life.