A Christmas Eve Story

The year was 1906. Marconi had already invented the wireless telegraph and land and sea communication networks were being established. DeForest was attempting to perfect his 'audion' (triode) tube.

Reginald Fessenden, a Canadian inventor and Ernst Alexanderson, a Swedish immigrant, were hard at work in Fessenden’s Massachusetts laboratory. They developed a mechanical device to "alternate" a continuous radio wave.

The device consisted of a huge disc that revolved at 20,000 rpm. They had connected it to a transmitter and a microphone, and discovered that they could "modulate" a radio signal!

On Christmas Eve, as wireless operators at land stations and aboard ships off the Massachusetts coast diligently maintained their radio watches by listening to the familiar Morse code signals; they were startled when they suddenly heard voices in their headphones!

They listened spellbound. Then, they heard a woman singing! Finally, they heard someone playing a violin! It was Fessenden himself.. playing the sacred carol "O Holy Night".

No longer would radio sounds be restricted to the "dit’s" and "dah’s" of the Morse code.

That's how it happened.
Christmas Eve... Nineteen Hundred and Six.

(Reprinted from EMCOMM MONTHLY December 2004)

Thanks to Daniel Erickson ZL4DE for this item.

EMCOMM
http://www.emcomm.org/

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