While Marconi is often credited as being the, or at least, a father of radio, he was in fact experimenting with wireless telegraphy. His spark technology was also a dead end and would be abandoned by 1912.
At the same time, a Canadian working for the US Weather service, was developing actual radio technology,
On this date. December 23, 1900, Reginald Fessenden developing AM radio technology (amplitude modulation) transmitted the very first wireless radio voice message.
He sent a message a distance of 1.6 kilometres between two 13-metre towers.
The first words ever transmitted were, “One Two Three Four — is it snowing where you are Mr. Thiessen? If it is, telegraph back to me”.
Thiessen quickly telegraphed back using Morse code that he heard Fessenden clearly and that it was snowing.
Continuing to perfect his technology, on Christmas eve 1906, he made the world’s first public broadcast
From his station near Boston, ships at sea in the Atlantic and Caribbean outfitted with his recievers heard a female vocalist and Fessenden himself playing ‘O Holy Night’ on his violin. He also sings carols,and read passages from the Bible.
Fessenden is credited with over 500 patents and inventions from sonar, to television, to a fathometer to tracer bullets and many more. He died in 1932.
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