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Reginald Fessenden Facts & Worksheets

Reginald Fessenden was a Canadian-born inventor and radio pioneer who broadcasted a holiday program with music and voice transmitted over long distances for the first time.

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Reginald Fessenden was a Canadian-born inventor and radio pioneer who broadcasted a holiday program with music and voice transmitted over long distances for the first time. He developed radio technology, which included the foundation of amplitude modulation (AM) radio. He was also the first to make two-way radio telegraphic communication across the Atlantic Ocean.

See the fact file below for more information on the Reginald Fessenden or alternatively, you can download our 24-page Reginald Fessenden worksheet pack to utilise within the classroom or home environment.

Key Facts & Information

EARLY LIFE AND EDUCATION

  • Reginald Fessenden was born on October 6, 1866, in East Bolton, Canada East.
  • He grew up in Ontario with his father, Reverend Elisha Joseph Fessenden, an Anglican minister, his mother, Clementina Trenholme Fessenden, a writer, and his three siblings. His family moved to several postings throughout the province of Ontario due to his father’s job.
  • Fessenden was enrolled in the Deveaux Military School for a year when he was nine. He attended Trinity College School in Port Hope, Ontario, for two years.
  • At 14 years old, Bishop’s College School granted him a mathematics mastership that allowed him to teach mathematics in his teenage years. He also got a scholarship to the University of Bishop’s College and studied literature and natural science while teaching.
  • Fessenden was 18 when he left university after four years without graduating, even though he had substantially completed his requirements to accept the Whitney Institute’s Headmaster position.
  • The lack of degree may have affected Fessenden’s employment opportunities as his application to be the electrical engineering department chairman was turned down.

FESSENDEN’S CAREER

  • In 1886, he went to work with Thomas Edison. Edison did not believe in his capabilities, but Edison Machine Works hired him eventually as an assistant tester. Fessenden mastered his work and helped his supervisor until he finally proved his worth. He was promoted twice, not an easy feat for a 20-year-old with no credentials.
  • However, when Edison ran into financial trouble in 1890, the company was forced to lay Fessenden off.
  • Soon after that, Fessenden found work as a professor of electrical engineering at Purdue University. In 1893, while working there, he helped the Westinghouse Corporation install the Chicago World Columbian Exposition lighting. They offered him a position as the first chair of the Electrical Engineering department at the Western University of Pennsylvania in Pittsburgh.
  • While working there, he learned about Guglielmo Marconi’s effort to develop a practical system of transmitting and receiving radio signals, commonly known then as “wireless telegraphy”. He began experimenting to improve some of the technology Marconi was testing.

EARLY EXPERIMENTS

  • In 1900, Fessenden left Pittsburgh and worked for the United States Weather Bureau. The Bureau wanted to test the practicality of using coastal stations to transmit weather information to lessen reliance on telephone and telegraph wires and eliminate these expenses. It was impractical and complicated to use telegraphy, which used short and long electric pulses to communicate by Morse code.
  • For his experiment to be successful, he combined a basic radio transmitter with a specially designed interrupter linked to an induction coil. It allowed Fessenden to modify the carrier signal’s oscillation strength to include sound signals. From this, he discovered the amplitude modulation (AM) principle.
  • Fessenden successfully transmitted his voice over a distance of 1.6 km using amplitude modulation. His first message was, “Hello. One, two, three, four. Is it snowing where you are, Mr. Thiessen?” Although the sound quality was poor, it was still a scientific breakthrough.
  • Fessenden improved the sound’s reception over radio waves by inventing the electrolytic detector or its patent name, “barretter detector”, in 1903. It became the standard in the very early years of radio.
  • Fessenden quit the Weather Bureau due to some patent disputes. In November 1902, two wealthy Pittsburgh businessmen supported Fessenden’s research and formed the National Electric Signaling Company (NESCO).
  • The business did not gain enough success due to the multiple patent infringement lawsuits and bad feelings with the US Navy. Fessenden, however, successfully sought wireless alternatives to existing transatlantic cables.

FIRST TRANSATLANTIC MESSAGE

  • In summer 1906, he experimented with an alternator-transmitter to transmit voice 18 km apart, from Brant Rock to Plymouth in Massachusetts.
  • He also built a station at Machrihanish in Scotland for transatlantic experiments.
  • In November 1906, his wife Helen sent a coded telegraph message via “wireless”, which is now called radio, to Machrihanish station.
  • The station received the message, decoded and then retransmitted by telegraph to Helen’s friends in London. After two days, they received a reply, making it the first transatlantic personal message set and received using radio waves.
  • Fessenden and his work were becoming a sensation. His experiments and demonstration were reported to the technical, scientific press. He demonstrated his inventions for his potential clients, such as the United States Navy, the American Telegraph and Telephone Company, and leading academics.
  • However, there were reports that the system could not reliably bridge the distance during the summer or even when the sun was up as the interference levels were too high. The project was paused until later that year.
  • On December 5, 1906, the Machrihanish radio tower collapsed during a violent storm, which became the nail in the coffin and ended the transatlantic service before it even began.

FIRST RADIO BROADCAST

  • On December 21, 1906, a selected number of guests witnessed the first public demonstration of music and speech broadcast.
  • After a few days, Fessenden asked ships of the US Navy and the Fruit Company to listen in on Christmas Eve for a special music, speech, and singing program. The first broadcast of a holiday program from the Brant Rock transmitter tower to the electrolytic detectors installed on ships transpired on December 24, 1906, followed by another on New Year’s Eve.
  • Fessenden claimed that the holiday program’s broadcast was heard as far as Norfolk, Virginia, and the south of the Caribbean Sea.

PERSONAL LIFE

  • Reginald Fessenden married Helen May Trott in 1890. They had one son.
  • Fessenden was a genius and accumulated 500 patents of important discoveries; he was not a businessman. Fessenden Wireless company, formed in Montreal in 1906, caused many problems with his financial backers. It led to his dismissal as one of the board of directors of NESCO.
  • Fessenden worked with the Submarine Signal Company of Boston as a consulting engineer from 1912-1921. His research there led to the development of sonar.
  • He died in “Wistowe”, a small estate in Bermuda he purchased using the large cash settlement from his legal case on July 22, 1932.
  • The Society of Exploration Geophysicists began an annual awarding of the Reginald Fessenden Award in 1961. A Fessenden-Trott scholarship program was also established at Purdue University’s School of Electrical and Computer Engineering to honor the couple.

Reginald Fessenden Worksheets

This is a fantastic bundle which includes everything you need to know about Reginald Fessenden across 24 in-depth pages. These are ready-to-use Reginald Fessenden worksheets that are perfect for teaching students about Reginald Fessenden who was a Canadian-born inventor and radio pioneer who broadcasted a holiday program with music and voice transmitted over long distances for the first time. He developed radio technology, which included the foundation of amplitude modulation (AM) radio. He was also the first to make two-way radio telegraphic communication across the Atlantic Ocean.

Complete List Of Included Worksheets

  • Reginald Fessenden Facts
  • Inventor’s Bio
  • Before the Radio
  • Radio Experiments
  • Fessenden’s Inquiry
  • 1906
  • Fessenden’s Fact or Bluff
  • Important Discoveries
  • Fessenden’s Inventions
  • Inventor’s Speech
  • Your Own Radio Program

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