Educational Timeline
September 26th, 2000
Eric Larson
First True Radio Broadcast:
The first spoken words using radio were heard December 23rd, 1900 on Cobb island in the middle of the Potomac river. Reginald Fessenden spoke the words "one, two, three, four, is it snowing where you are Mr. Thiesen? If it is, would you telegraph back to me?" Six years later, merchant radiomen in Boston Harbor, and hundreds of miles out to sea, were starled to hear human voices. This is considered the birth of Amplitude Modification (AM) radio.
Fessenden, a Canandian born scientist, was an inventor on par with Thomas Edison -- Fessenden is second only to Edison in number of patents. Fessenden did not fully understand what was needed for broadcast radio to be successfull -- this was left to Deforest and later pioneers (Deforest hired one of Fessenden's assistants and "suddenly" has patents on devices similar to Fessendens).
Further Reading