Reginald Fessenden

Reginald Fessenden (1866–1932) was a Canadian-born inventor who pioneered radio telephony and made an early broadcast of voice and music in 1906.

Radio broadcasting: The one-to-many transmission of audio or video programs to a dispersed audience. Fessenden’s 1906 transmission is often cited as an early demonstration of broadcasting.
High-frequency alternator: An electrical generator designed to produce alternating current at radio frequencies. Fessenden developed an alternator capable of generating continuous radio-frequency waves.
Thomas Edison: An American inventor and businessperson whose laboratories developed and commercialized electrical technologies. Fessenden worked for Edison in the 1880s before pursuing his own research.
1906 Christmas Eve broadcast: A radio transmission from Massachusetts in 1906 featuring speech and music. Fessenden’s best-known broadcast included a violin performance and a reading from the Bible.
Amplitude modulation: A method of encoding information by varying a carrier wave’s amplitude. Fessenden used amplitude modulation to transmit speech over radio.
Heterodyne: A technique that combines signals at different frequencies to produce a new frequency. Fessenden developed heterodyne reception to make radio signals easier to detect.
University of Pittsburgh: A research university in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, founded in 1787. Fessenden led its electrical engineering department before turning to commercial radio research.
1906 New Year’s Eve broadcast: A reported radio transmission of speech and music made by Fessenden at the end of 1906. Accounts describe it as a second transmission intended for ships at sea.
Radio telephony: The transmission of speech by radio waves. This was the central practical goal of Fessenden’s high-frequency radio experiments.
Electrolytic detector: A radio-wave detector that uses current through an electrolyte to reveal signal variations. Fessenden’s detector could respond to continuous-wave signals used for radio telephony.

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