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Reginald Aubrey Fessenden was born on 06 October 1866 in Milton, Province of Quebec, Canada. At the age of fourteen, Bishop's College School in
Lennoxville, Quebec granted Fessenden a mathematics mastership. In late 1886, Fessenden began working directly for Thomas Edison at the inventor's new Laboratory in West Orange,
New Jersey. Fessenden quickly made major advances, especially in receiver design, as he worked to develop audio reception of signals. From 1890 to 1900, Fessenden worked at
several manufacturing companies and became a professor of electrical engineering at Purdue University in 1892 and then chair of the electrical engineering department of the
University of Pittsburgh in 1893. By 1900, Fessenden was working for the United States Weather Bureau where he evolved the heterodyne principle where two signals combined produce
a third audible tone. While there, Fessenden, experimenting with a high-frequency spark transmitter, successfully transmitted speech on 23 December 1900 over a distance of about
1.6 kilometers (one mile), which appears to have been the first audio radio transmission.
On 21 December 1906, Fessenden made an extensive demonstration of the new alternator-transmitter at Brant Rock, showing its utility for point-to-point wireless telephony, including
interconnecting his stations to the wire telephone network. A few days later, two additional demonstrations took place, which appear to be the first audio radio broadcasts of entertainment
and music ever made to a general audience. On the evening of 24 December 1906 (Christmas Eve), Fessenden used the alternator-transmitter to send out a short program from Brant Rock, which
included his playing the song "O Holy Night" on the violin and reading a passage, Luke Chapter 2, from the Bible. On 31 December, New Year's Eve, a second short program was broadcast. The
main audience for both these transmissions was an unknown number of shipboard radio operators along the Atlantic Coast. Although now seen as a landmark, these two broadcasts were barely
noticed at the time and soon forgotten. His great contributions in the field of radio were of marked benefit not only to the Navy but to all seamen. He died 22 July 1932, at his home on
Bermuda.
USS Fessenden (DE 142) (1943-1960) was the first ship named in his honor. |
William F. Fessenden |
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28 June 1945: off Brooklyn, N.Y. - Two aerial views of Fessenden taken by aircraft from the New York Naval Air Station at
Floyd Bennett Field. Fessenden was in the Brooklyn Navy Yard for an overhaul prior to departing for training at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba enroute to her new assignment
in the Pacific.
(U.S. Navy photo #NYNAS CP-DE-142 19-N-85805 from the National Archives and Records Administration, College Park, Md.; courtesy
of Chris Wright)
(U.S. Navy photo #NYNAS CP-DE-142 19-N-85804 from the National Archives and Records Administration, College Park,
Md.; courtesy of Chris Wright) |
Ed Zajkowski
Narvon, Pa. |
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Undated Post-Conversion Image |
John Aldrich
Lt.(jg), 1955-1957 |
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Undated Post-Conversion Image |
Nick Tiberio
Shelton, Conn. |
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Photo scanned from a September 1956 issue of "All Hands" magazine |
John Volpe
crewmember 1955-1957 |
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I received this photo of USS Fessenden (DER 142) escorting the Mayflower II in 1957 from the Plymouth Plantation people and would like to get
it to the Fessenden crew if possible. Here is their explaination of the photo; "Our Mayflower II, with its story of friendship between nations following World War II, is
a reminder to us always. Now in his 90s, Clarence Gogeun was a Navy photographer in 1957 who took a number of pictures of Mayflower II from the sky during her crossing to Plymouth,
Massachusetts - below is one, with a U.S. Navy vessel in the background. He recently shared his photos with us and we are delighted to share this one with you today!" |
Karl Kohler |
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28 October 1958: the Pacific Ocean - USS Fessenden (DER 142) alongside USS
Kawishiwi (AO 146)
(Official U.S. Navy photo #1039377 |
David Buell |
