The Centennial of the First Radio Broadcast.

[syscom3]

Hard to believe that tonight is the centenial of an event that truely did change the world.

Reginald Aubrey Fessenden (1866-1932).
The Centennial of the First Radio Broadcast.
December 24, 2006

In December 1906, Canadian-born inventor Reginald Fessenden advised wireless operators on U.S. Navy and United Fruit Company ships to tune in on Christmas Eve for a special message. Shipping companies and navies had been using wireless telegraphy to communicate with their vessels at sea since the early 1900s and radio receivers built by Fessenden were standard equipment on board U.S. Navy and United Fruit Company ships. But that Christmas Eve operators who listened in did not hear the familiar dots and dashes of Morse code. Instead, to their great astonishment, a human voice came out of their receivers.

On December 24, 1906 Reginald Fessenden, with the help of his wife Helen and an assistant, made the first broadcast of the human voice from a radio shack at Brant Rock, Massachusetts. Fessenden greeted surprised mariners, played Christmas carols on a phonograph and then performed "O, Holy Night" on his violin. He concluded the broadcast with a reading from the Bible, wished his listeners a Merry Christmas, and invited them to tune in again on New Year's Eve. Fessenden's message was heard by ships as far away as Virginia, and the New Year's broadcast travelled even further and was picked up by wireless operators in the West Indies.

Canada Science and Technology Museum

[the lancaster kicks ass]

wow, interesting stuff, would've loved to've seen the faces of the guys when they first recieved the voice certainly something we take for granted these days.........