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Reginald Fessenden was a Engineering and technology good articles nominee, but did not meet the good article criteria at the time. There may be suggestions below for improving the article. Once these issues have been addressed, the article can be renominated. Editors may also seek a reassessment of the decision if they believe there was a mistake. | |||||||||||||
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Facts from this article were featured on Wikipedia's Main Page in the " On this day..." column on December 24, 2004, December 24, 2005, December 24, 2006, and December 24, 2007. | |||||||||||||
Current status: Former good article nominee |
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My grandmother's house in Chestnut Hill, mass. had formerly been Fessenden's Boston house. It is a grand Spanish style house, high upon a hill overlooking the city. Equipment my mother remembers in the basement of the house, left by Fessenden, clearly indicates he did do research there, and it is likely that he did radio work due to its excellent position over the city and facing the ocean. My family sold this house in 1978. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 65.96.166.15 ( talk • contribs) 20:03, December 23, 2004 (UTC)
Technical ed, Nikola Tesla On His Work With Alternating Currents and Their Application to Wireless Telegraphy, Telephony, and Transmission of Power (Denver: Sun Publishing, 1992, distb. by Twenty-First Century Books, Breckenridge, Colo. ). ISBN 0-9632652-0-2. First of four books in the “Tesla Presents” series. LC No. 92-060480. Not Fesseden, Not Eddison, Not Marconi. Was Nikola Tesla. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.159.33.153 ( talk) 04:17, 26 January 2015 (UTC)
It seems clear that the Christmas Eve, 1906 transmission by Reginald Fessenden was the first transatlantic voice/music transmission. But which transmitter did he use? Was it Ernst Alexanderson's alternator, or the rotary spark-gap transmitter that he already had at the Brant Rock, MA. site? Several Internet sources say that it was, indeed, Alexanderson's new alternator. But the IEEE publication comparing Fessenden and Marconi's methods insists that it was the rotary spark-gap transmitter that made this broadcast, and the level of detail it gives is convincing (80 kHz tuned antenna, 1.8 m rotary gap, 50 electrode rotor driven by 35 kVA steam powered (125 Hz) alternator). But the same page has the intriguing paragraph here By the summer of 1906 many of the difficulties had been overcome and the Alexanderson HF alternator developed by GE for Fessenden giving 50 kHz was installed at Brant Rock. Various improvements were made by Fessenden and his assistants, and by the fall of 1906 the alternator was working regularly at 75 kHz with an output of one half a kilowatt. This was the beginning of pure CW transmission, (c.f. Alexanderson [1919] "Transatlantic Radio Communication", Trans. AIEE, pp. 1077-1093) which lends a bit of uncertainty to the explanation. Evidently Fessenden had both transmitters in place, and we may need to track down these old publications, or find a definitive history text to resolve the differences in the Internet accounts. -- Blainster 19:40, 11 April 2006 (UTC)
It has been a few weeks since I read the main article. It struck me, the voice transmission would be extremely difficult. if not impossible, using true spark or synchronous spark technology, I also remember reading Aiken"s "The Continuous Wave" some decades ago. My guess is that an arc rather than spark was used. I did not really understand this until I read The Continuous Wave. I thought that Fessenden was a licensee of Poulsen's arc. I also vaguely remember that small arcs were used as local oscillators for heterodyne detection. There also was a PBS documentary of voice transmission using arcs and absorption modulation17:28, 13 June 2013 (UTC) PEBill ( talk) before WWI by Herold near San Francisco. The Perham Foundation, if it still exists, is likely to have information on that subject. PEBill ( talk) 17:28, 13 June 2013 (UTC)
This statement has been moved from the article intro: Fessenden is second only to Edison in the number of patents held in his name. The same position is also claimed for Edwin H. Land, so it needs to be investigated and referenced. -- Blainster 19:24, 29 April 2006 (UTC)
A search of LexisNexis shows that Reginald Fessenden is listed as the inventor on 136 patents and Edwin Land is listed as the inventor on 459 patents.
We need more details up top to clearly establish notability. I don't know as much about these subjects as some of you might, but I am willing to help. -- Chris Griswold 17:49, 14 June 2006 (UTC)
From Radio World Magazine by James E. O'Neal, 10.25.2006 Complete article: http://www.rwonline.com/pages/s.0052/t.437.html
Let us summarize our reasons to doubt:
No press reports at the time, or for a quarter-century after. No mention for decades by an inventor who knew how to promote himself and wrote hundreds of articles about his work. No mention in a contemporary log and no known logs elsewhere, whether official naval logs or otherwise. No commemorations 25 years later. No challenge to De Forest's published competing claim. No followup to Clark's finding that the year needed to be verified; no consensus as to the date among the group cited by Clark. No mention of 1906 once the year 1907 began to be cited.
Any one of these objections can be explained away. Taken together, they form a powerful counterargument.
The question of the year also might be considered a minor discrepancy except that the evidence seems to point to De Forest being first with what we would consider broadcasts in the spring of 1907.
Fessenden was a great man. It is not my desire to discredit his many accomplishments. However, it appears his claim to this particular historic "first" hangs on a single letter penned late in his life, which laid out a story that has been parroted many times since. This should not guarantee automatic entrance into the "broadcasting hall of fame" and the title of world's first broadcaster.
Perhaps somewhere out there, locked in a trunk, is a diary kept by Fessenden or one of his associates. Perhaps the Brant Rock station log survives in a second-hand bookstore. I leave it to future historians to find such evidence and prove me wrong.
The author acknowledges the assistance of Elliot Sivowitch, Smithsonian Institution curator (retired); Hal Wallace, Smithsonian Institution curator; Jane Johnson, librarian, Charlotte (N.C.) Public Library; Jim Haynes, retired engineer and educator, and his wife Pamela O'Neal, who worked with him in plowing through Fessenden files and writings. He also thanks the staff members of the Smithsonian's Archives Center and the North Carolina State Archives. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Gmeader3 ( talk • contribs) 10:57, December 9, 2006 (UTC)
I have "quick-failed" this GA nomination because it appears to have a complete lack of reliable sources. Please see Wikipedia:Verifiability. Johnfos 04:18, 3 October 2007 (UTC)
I am disputing the contention that the artilce has a complete lack of reliable sources. The references list found under 'Further reading' seem reliable to me. It does not contain any in-line citations but the references are reliable Cheers! Wassupwestcoast 00:04, 4 October 2007 (UTC)
—Preceding unsigned comment added by 72.94.240.51 ( talk) 04:48, 14 June 2008 (UTC)
According to broadcast historian Donna Halper of Emerson College, " Fessenden never spoke of a Christmas Eve broadcast at the time and only mentioned it once, in a 1932 letter just before his death. If such a broadcast did happen, Halper says, it may well have been a bit of holiday fun amidst more serious experiments and demonstration broadcasts that took place, fully documented, on other dates in December." See http://www.rwonline.com/pages/s.0106/t.502.html
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On the first radio broadcast in 1906, Fessenden actually played on his violin a song by Gounod called "Adore and Be Still", and sang the last line of it as well ("Adore and be still"). He later misremembered the title as "O Holy Night", but it was clearly "Adore and Be Still": [1], [2], [3]. The incorrect myth that it was Adam's "O Holy Night" (which Fessenden never even said or wrote) has been perpetuated over the years by various pop-culture publications, but it's just a myth. Softlavender ( talk) 01:46, 10 December 2017 (UTC)
German physicist Alexander Behm invented echo sounding system in 1912. -- 92.76.97.5 ( talk) 14:26, 22 September 2020 (UTC)
This is the
talk page for discussing improvements to the
Reginald Fessenden article. This is not a forum for general discussion of the article's subject. |
Article policies
|
Find sources: Google ( books · news · scholar · free images · WP refs) · FENS · JSTOR · TWL |
Reginald Fessenden was a Engineering and technology good articles nominee, but did not meet the good article criteria at the time. There may be suggestions below for improving the article. Once these issues have been addressed, the article can be renominated. Editors may also seek a reassessment of the decision if they believe there was a mistake. | |||||||||||||
| |||||||||||||
Facts from this article were featured on Wikipedia's Main Page in the " On this day..." column on December 24, 2004, December 24, 2005, December 24, 2006, and December 24, 2007. | |||||||||||||
Current status: Former good article nominee |
This
level-5 vital article is rated B-class on Wikipedia's
content assessment scale. It is of interest to the following WikiProjects: | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
My grandmother's house in Chestnut Hill, mass. had formerly been Fessenden's Boston house. It is a grand Spanish style house, high upon a hill overlooking the city. Equipment my mother remembers in the basement of the house, left by Fessenden, clearly indicates he did do research there, and it is likely that he did radio work due to its excellent position over the city and facing the ocean. My family sold this house in 1978. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 65.96.166.15 ( talk • contribs) 20:03, December 23, 2004 (UTC)
Technical ed, Nikola Tesla On His Work With Alternating Currents and Their Application to Wireless Telegraphy, Telephony, and Transmission of Power (Denver: Sun Publishing, 1992, distb. by Twenty-First Century Books, Breckenridge, Colo. ). ISBN 0-9632652-0-2. First of four books in the “Tesla Presents” series. LC No. 92-060480. Not Fesseden, Not Eddison, Not Marconi. Was Nikola Tesla. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.159.33.153 ( talk) 04:17, 26 January 2015 (UTC)
It seems clear that the Christmas Eve, 1906 transmission by Reginald Fessenden was the first transatlantic voice/music transmission. But which transmitter did he use? Was it Ernst Alexanderson's alternator, or the rotary spark-gap transmitter that he already had at the Brant Rock, MA. site? Several Internet sources say that it was, indeed, Alexanderson's new alternator. But the IEEE publication comparing Fessenden and Marconi's methods insists that it was the rotary spark-gap transmitter that made this broadcast, and the level of detail it gives is convincing (80 kHz tuned antenna, 1.8 m rotary gap, 50 electrode rotor driven by 35 kVA steam powered (125 Hz) alternator). But the same page has the intriguing paragraph here By the summer of 1906 many of the difficulties had been overcome and the Alexanderson HF alternator developed by GE for Fessenden giving 50 kHz was installed at Brant Rock. Various improvements were made by Fessenden and his assistants, and by the fall of 1906 the alternator was working regularly at 75 kHz with an output of one half a kilowatt. This was the beginning of pure CW transmission, (c.f. Alexanderson [1919] "Transatlantic Radio Communication", Trans. AIEE, pp. 1077-1093) which lends a bit of uncertainty to the explanation. Evidently Fessenden had both transmitters in place, and we may need to track down these old publications, or find a definitive history text to resolve the differences in the Internet accounts. -- Blainster 19:40, 11 April 2006 (UTC)
It has been a few weeks since I read the main article. It struck me, the voice transmission would be extremely difficult. if not impossible, using true spark or synchronous spark technology, I also remember reading Aiken"s "The Continuous Wave" some decades ago. My guess is that an arc rather than spark was used. I did not really understand this until I read The Continuous Wave. I thought that Fessenden was a licensee of Poulsen's arc. I also vaguely remember that small arcs were used as local oscillators for heterodyne detection. There also was a PBS documentary of voice transmission using arcs and absorption modulation17:28, 13 June 2013 (UTC) PEBill ( talk) before WWI by Herold near San Francisco. The Perham Foundation, if it still exists, is likely to have information on that subject. PEBill ( talk) 17:28, 13 June 2013 (UTC)
This statement has been moved from the article intro: Fessenden is second only to Edison in the number of patents held in his name. The same position is also claimed for Edwin H. Land, so it needs to be investigated and referenced. -- Blainster 19:24, 29 April 2006 (UTC)
A search of LexisNexis shows that Reginald Fessenden is listed as the inventor on 136 patents and Edwin Land is listed as the inventor on 459 patents.
We need more details up top to clearly establish notability. I don't know as much about these subjects as some of you might, but I am willing to help. -- Chris Griswold 17:49, 14 June 2006 (UTC)
From Radio World Magazine by James E. O'Neal, 10.25.2006 Complete article: http://www.rwonline.com/pages/s.0052/t.437.html
Let us summarize our reasons to doubt:
No press reports at the time, or for a quarter-century after. No mention for decades by an inventor who knew how to promote himself and wrote hundreds of articles about his work. No mention in a contemporary log and no known logs elsewhere, whether official naval logs or otherwise. No commemorations 25 years later. No challenge to De Forest's published competing claim. No followup to Clark's finding that the year needed to be verified; no consensus as to the date among the group cited by Clark. No mention of 1906 once the year 1907 began to be cited.
Any one of these objections can be explained away. Taken together, they form a powerful counterargument.
The question of the year also might be considered a minor discrepancy except that the evidence seems to point to De Forest being first with what we would consider broadcasts in the spring of 1907.
Fessenden was a great man. It is not my desire to discredit his many accomplishments. However, it appears his claim to this particular historic "first" hangs on a single letter penned late in his life, which laid out a story that has been parroted many times since. This should not guarantee automatic entrance into the "broadcasting hall of fame" and the title of world's first broadcaster.
Perhaps somewhere out there, locked in a trunk, is a diary kept by Fessenden or one of his associates. Perhaps the Brant Rock station log survives in a second-hand bookstore. I leave it to future historians to find such evidence and prove me wrong.
The author acknowledges the assistance of Elliot Sivowitch, Smithsonian Institution curator (retired); Hal Wallace, Smithsonian Institution curator; Jane Johnson, librarian, Charlotte (N.C.) Public Library; Jim Haynes, retired engineer and educator, and his wife Pamela O'Neal, who worked with him in plowing through Fessenden files and writings. He also thanks the staff members of the Smithsonian's Archives Center and the North Carolina State Archives. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Gmeader3 ( talk • contribs) 10:57, December 9, 2006 (UTC)
I have "quick-failed" this GA nomination because it appears to have a complete lack of reliable sources. Please see Wikipedia:Verifiability. Johnfos 04:18, 3 October 2007 (UTC)
I am disputing the contention that the artilce has a complete lack of reliable sources. The references list found under 'Further reading' seem reliable to me. It does not contain any in-line citations but the references are reliable Cheers! Wassupwestcoast 00:04, 4 October 2007 (UTC)
—Preceding unsigned comment added by 72.94.240.51 ( talk) 04:48, 14 June 2008 (UTC)
According to broadcast historian Donna Halper of Emerson College, " Fessenden never spoke of a Christmas Eve broadcast at the time and only mentioned it once, in a 1932 letter just before his death. If such a broadcast did happen, Halper says, it may well have been a bit of holiday fun amidst more serious experiments and demonstration broadcasts that took place, fully documented, on other dates in December." See http://www.rwonline.com/pages/s.0106/t.502.html
Hello fellow Wikipedians,
I have just modified one external link on Reginald Fessenden. Please take a moment to review my edit. If you have any questions, or need the bot to ignore the links, or the page altogether, please visit this simple FaQ for additional information. I made the following changes:
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(last update: 5 June 2024).
Cheers.— InternetArchiveBot ( Report bug) 16:52, 6 December 2017 (UTC)
On the first radio broadcast in 1906, Fessenden actually played on his violin a song by Gounod called "Adore and Be Still", and sang the last line of it as well ("Adore and be still"). He later misremembered the title as "O Holy Night", but it was clearly "Adore and Be Still": [1], [2], [3]. The incorrect myth that it was Adam's "O Holy Night" (which Fessenden never even said or wrote) has been perpetuated over the years by various pop-culture publications, but it's just a myth. Softlavender ( talk) 01:46, 10 December 2017 (UTC)
German physicist Alexander Behm invented echo sounding system in 1912. -- 92.76.97.5 ( talk) 14:26, 22 September 2020 (UTC)