Christmas Eve was the 100th birthday of radio
broadcasting.. or was it?
A radio history buff finds that evidence for
the famous Brant Rock broadcast is lacking
Christmas Eve is being widely celebrated as the 100th anniversary of
the first radio broadcast.
According to the official version of events, recorded in Wikipedia, Canadian
physicist Reginald Fessenden used an alternator-transmitter to send out
a short programme from Brant Rock, which included his playing the song
O Holy Night on the violin and reading a passage from the Bible.
The event appears to have taken place on 24 December, 1906, though some
sources say it was actually 21 December. So Fessenden is widely recognised
to be first person to transmit the human voice.
Some historians, however, have raised doubts about the authenticity of
this story. Read the article
in Radio World by James E O’Neal who
has done extensive research into the subject.
Media Network does not take a view one way or the other, but we have
noted a lot of Fessenden-related items over the past few months, and none
of them bothered to ask whether the story is true.
We invite you to read both sides of the argument and make your own mind
up
Source: MediaNetwork
Related url's
Special
Canadian prefixes celebrate 100 years of voice radio
BBC
World Service Discovery - Fessenden: King of the Radio Waves
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