Article produced by the Fessenden Project Team in
Campbeltown.
My first introduction to Fessenden was sometime in the 1950's whilst
collecting gulls eggs near the Eenans. I remember asking "what were
the gigantic concrete structures near the Gauldrons." The answer was
either "they were something to do with the war" or "something to do
with the nearby airfield." This answer seemed to satisfy me at that
time....
Next meeting was in the late 1980's - whilst sitting
in a dentist's surgery in Wick I picked up the Scots Magazine and
there in front of me was an article adorned with a photo of the site
in 1906, including one of the mast. Having a career in Electronics
in Civil Aviation, this article always remained at the back of my
mind.
Many years later whilst on the internet, I searched for the name
Fessenden and was presented with, all I can say, was a bewildering
amount of information about a man I felt I should have known more.
This internet find led me to the website of Dave Riley in
Marshfield/Brant Rock - the location of the site in USA mirrored by
Fessenden's Machrihanish station. I sent a few comments to Dave and
by return found that he had been in correspondence with local man
Duncan McMillan. This was about the site and in particular how to
raise the profile of Fessenden, especially as it was approaching the
100th anniversary of the site and his achievements. Since then we've
been involved in much work with the Laggan and Campbeltown Community
Councils, TV and Radio interviews both here and across in
Massachusetts, plus had much Newspaper coverage again here and in
Massachusetts. This work still goes on however will be ending at
Christmas 2006 - hopefully.
Reginald
Aubrey Fessenden was born in Lakeside Drive Knowlton, Broome County
Quebec, in 1866. His descendents were from Kent and his father, an
Episcopalian Minister, headed a well respected family. Reginald's
father expected his son to follow in his footsteps. Reginald
however, from an early age, didn't agree and as his Grandfather said
"this lad is of finer clay."
In fact Reginald is quoted as saying "my parents
despaired of me." Reginald would close his eyes and dream of being
able to send voices around the world without wires, to which his
mother said "there's no future in that." Reginald's idea of the
voices were spawned from attending lectures by Alexander Graham Bell
and conversations with his Uncle Cortez - a Physics teacher, also
well respected.
From an early age Reginald appeared to show a most
logic and intuitive mind. At 15, he entered Trinity College School
where he excelled in Maths and was always the head of his class. At
17, he left to become the Head of Whitney Institute in Bermuda where
he met his beloved Helen, later to become his devoted wife. Helen
said of his upbringing "he came from a loving house plus all his
relatives had strong traits in medicine, law and held a strong
belief in the Deity."
Reginald left Bermuda and worked for Thomas Edison
soon being promoted to his Chief Chemist. Whilst with Edison, he
devised the still used method of heat sealing the base of the glass
envelope whilst still maintaining the wires in a vacuum through the
base. He also pioneered the use of cheaper filament metals making
the bulbs much more affordable to the public. His main interest
however was always investigating the science of electromagnetism and
reading the papers produced by the prominent scientists in this
field.
Throughout his career, Fessenden seemed to have
difficulty in working with people, possibly verging on the
eccentric. He certainly struck a fine figure, being over 6ft,
sporting a head of ginger hair and a full beard. He is also reported
to have had the habit of walking about with a large flowing cloak,
formidable to say the least, and not to be argued with.
In 1890 Fessenden moved again and worked with the
U.S. Weather Bureau, where he devised a simpler method of Morse code
and established a network of radio stations along the Eastern
seaboard using the "cutting edge" spark transmitters, now making
their appearance. He was by this time, devising again new and I
suppose "earth shattering" breakthroughs in this new science.
In the years 1850 to 1900 many people were
investigating "wireless waves" or Hertzian waves and names such as
Braun, Brady, Pokov and Marconi all closely watched each others'
progress in this new science. Earlier, the very possibility of
wireless waves had been founded by Clerk-Maxwell researching into
the maths of electromagnetism. Those research's were so perfect and
their maths so precise, that it took mathematicians 40 years to
appreciate their significance. Even years before Maxwell, Lord
Kelvin found that whilst discharging a Leyden jar, unmistakable
"external" electromagnetic waves were produced. Those famous names
and many others were contemporary's of Fessenden and their work
closely followed.
In 1900 there is documentary evidence that Fessenden
had already devised a crude method of sending speech on a rough
spark transmission, whilst he worked with the weather bureau. The
contact was with Cobh Island MD on December 3rd 1900. He had already
invented insulating tape by this time incidentally.
In a spark transmitter, very simply, the radiation is
produced by the discharge of high energy across a small "spark
gap" that is controlled not so basically by a Morse key - press the
key make the spark!!.... Unfortunately the process of keeping the
spark going for any length of time presents problems and although
alright for Morse, would never be any use for speech transmission.
Fessenden realised this and was determined to devise
a new system able to carry speech. Years before when out with his
Uncle Cortez, he had reasoned that the radio wave must propagate
like ripples from a stone thrown into a pond and not as Marconi had
envisaged like a "whiplash effect." In other words, the wave must be
continuous and thus "spark" would never be any use in sending
speech.
In 1900, Fessenden again moved on and this time
established his own firm called the National Electric Signalling
Company (N.E.S.C.O.) He was backed by two American millionaires,
Given and Walker. However he found that Government red tape was
rearing its head and he was refused a license to erect radio masts
in his own country of birth Canada. In fact Marconi was given the
license. Fessenden tried to establish a company in Canada at that
time but his millionaire friends refused to back this venture and it
came to little.
All through this time Fessenden was amassing patents
under his belt, some of those being used by his rivals, however
through business ineptitude, little money was coming to him.
Apparently Fessenden was more interested in the experimentation side
than in the finance. At this time, basic spark transmitters existed
and Fessenden indeed used those again, developing more advanced
methods of both transmitting and receiving signals. His method of
heterodyning signals is still in use today. Telegraphic undersea
cables existed across the Atlantic at this time, however were not
reliable and were also costly to utilise. To cross the Atlantic by
"wireless" would bring in well needed funding and so the target was
in the sight... but also for his rivals.
Fessenden was indeed in this race but still dreamed of the voice and
speech over the radio that was the way to the future as he saw it.
In 1901, Marconi backed by the UK Government and who
now had his masts in Newfoundland at Signal Hill, was reputed to
have sent a signal the letter(s) from Poldhu in Cornwall. This was
however a "claim" and many say the "jury remains out" as to whether
he indeed managed this. In any case it was only one way if anything.
This was of course using "spark" technology. Marconi never went down
the speech path even in later years.
The Fessenden's few years of moving into the business
environment took them to Newark N.J. Pittsfield MA and Pittsburgh
PA. During those moves he must have met many kings of industry and
finance. Fessenden took the chair at Allegheny College and this led
him to meet the greatest academic minds of the time. Names like J.P.
Morgan and George Westinghouse, Baldwin and many others. Whilst he
was there, he published a major study of the "Deluged Civilisation"
of the Caucasus Isthmus through the Massachusetts Bible Society.
This was a massive work however it was helped by a system he
invented - microfilm..
Fessenden throughout his life did not suffer the
legal system well and as a result must have left some of his life
and health behind him in sometimes futile courtroom bickering and
dramas.
In 1905, a piece of land was
leased from Capt Mac Neil of Lossit Estate near Uisead Point for a
period of 6 years, Lord Strathcona being involved in the
transactions. Why there??
In those days, it was not clear whether radio waves would clear
hills etc and this was the best "track" available from the UK to
Brant Rock, Fessenden's main station. Plus they also thought that a
mythical wall of water 120ft high existed between them due to the
curvature of the earth.
The Kennelly Heaviside layer not been
credited as yet. Incidentally Fessenden's son was called Kennelly
after the later.
The station in Machrihanish was begun after Glasgow
Fair in 1905. The N.E.S.C.O. company used the Brown Hoisting
Machinery Company of Cleveland to erect the mast. The firm Locke
Insulator Company of Victor N.Y. supplied the antenna insulators and
Neil McArthur was used to cut the roads and other work at the site
as a sub-contractor.
The Station Manager at Machrihanish was a Mr Glaubitz.
The mast was completed after some delay on 28th December 1905 It
consisted of 8ft long metal tubes of 3 feet in diameter, bolted
together and eventually taking the mast to 450ft. Each 100ft section
was guyed off to massive tethering points. The mast sat on a ball
and socket device, which in turn was insulated from earth. Each guy
was also insulated. Three buildings were erected to house the
machinery the operators using the smaller building. The entire area
near the station had a counterpoise "earth" of hundreds of wires
buried below the surface in a grid formation and joined together
eventually returning to the mast base but insulated from the tower
proper. It should also be noted that as there was no electricity on
the site the power had to be supplied by a coal fired steam engine
The rotary spark-gap machinery was driven by belts from this engine.
Electricity did however exist at Lossit at this time... but that's
another story. There were some problems in getting the station
working and a Mr Armor left N.Y. on the Saturday before Christmas,
arriving at Machrihanish on January 2nd at 5pm after a very rough
passage - the last few miles in a horse and cart!! The station was
however soon ready for receiving . A Mr Shields from the U.K. Patent
office was also on site to view the experiment.
Using predetermined times and wavelengths signals
were received in the beginning of January 1906 (Jan.2nd) loud and
clear. Machrihanish was soon ready to transmit and to the delight of
Fessenden at Brant Rock, signals were soon and repeatedly sent both
ways Machrihanish to Brant Rock and vice versa. Cables were
continually sent for weeks for onward passage from Campbeltown
Telegraph office onto the existing cable network. There is some
conjecture as to who actually heard the first messages. Credit was
given to Mr Armor but the Head Operator, a Mr Beakes was also
present and listening. It should be noted that this was the First
repeated crossing of the Atlantic by radio.
Signals however dropped out during springtime due to
the longer daylight hours with their higher absorption. Autumn 1906
and the stations would be preparing to commence the telegraphic
service once again. As mentioned earlier Fessenden was always
dreaming of the speech over the radio systems and had been
experimenting in this area. He had developed what is called a High
Frequency Alternator - a large rotary machine capable of producing
high voltage outputs, the frequency of which rises into the radio
spectrum and this will, with additional components, produce a radio
wave the frequency which is dependent on the speed the machine is
run., thus avoiding the "spark gap" system. After much work on this
system and constructing machines with unheard of wooden armatures,
he now, to cut the story short, had his Continuous Wave method of
producing the "wireless" signal as opposed to the on-off method of
the spark. Progress indeed again and another first for Fessenden.
This system was indeed used until superseded by the thermionic valve
invented by Sir Ambrose Fleming in London in 1904 and complemented
by Lee De Forrest in U.S.A. in 1907 could be utilised commercially.
In November 1906 Brant Rock and Machrihanish were
operational but both undergoing some engineering modifications. rant
Rock was modifying a new system between itself and another station
in Plymouth Mass. about 12 miles away. Machrihanish on the other
hand was listening and obtaining various data as to the absorption
levels to be expected when communication re-commenced per the
schedules. They were also listening in case any cables were by
chance sent to them to avoid the high cable charges by land.
Brant Rock was often on the air with the Plymouth station with a new
wireless telephone system between them.
Fessenden and his engineers incidentally had often noticed a strange
and remarkable phenomenon which showed that speech could be
transmitted by speaking in close proximity to his rotary spark gap
but never investigated it at the time.
You
can imagine Fessenden's surprise to receive later in Nov. a
registered letter marked Personal from one of the Machrihanish
operators in which he detailed the time and date of reception of the
voice, loud and clear, of Mr Stein one of his engineers, instructing
the Plymouth station on how to run up their generators. The report
was not sent by cable so as not to run any risk of premature
disclosure. This was the first time human voice had ever been heard
across the Atlantic by radio. The records were checked and there was
no doubt it had been heard at Machrihanish.
It must be said however that the quality left much to be desired for
broadcasting music. The operator at Machrihanish was again Mr
Armor..Also in this document (Scientific American 1918 Sept. 8th)
Fessenden makes reference to the "false claim that signals were sent
from Poldhu in Cornwall to New Foundland in 1901" by Marconi .Mr
Armor when he heard the speech at Machrihanish wrongly thought that
it was the above phenomena of speaking near the spark gap causing
the modulation, however it was Fessenden using his new very recently
perfected H.F. Alternators, his microphone being in series with the
antenna proper. Later checks were conducted to verify that the spark
gap phenomena did exist as explained.
However on December 6th, due to a gale, one of the
mast guys broke, and unfortunately, due to the increased pressure on
the remaining guys, they each broke in turn, the mast buckling. Two
sections landed near to the operators hut and the remaining
structure landed in the direction of where the lifeboat shed is now
situated. Photo's exist of the mast on the ground but unfortunately
are of poor quality. This was a disaster, when Fessenden was so
successful in the project and although they claimed the mast would
be re-erected it never came to place due to financial constraints
upon N.E.S.C.O in U.S.A.
Fessenden wasn't finished yet however and his finest
triumph was yet to come - unfortunately without Machrihanish's help
this time.
He had, as mentioned earlier perfected his High
Frequency Alternators. Approaching Christmas 1906, he cabled his
listening operators on various ships etc, to listen at 9pm on
Christmas Eve, to receive an important message. Whereupon at the
prescribed time they were stunned to hear instead of the usual "
Morse spark" transmissions, Fessenden playing "Holy Night" on his
violin, reading passages from the Bible and ending by wishing them
all a Merry Christmas. This was the first ever published radio
broadcast and another triumph for Fessenden. This was also the first
time that voices had been heard over the air with Fessenden's new
system of what is called Amplitude Modulation - A system still used
today worldwide.
Part 4
Why did it fall...
The system of jointing the guys had been used before
in bridges in the USA and had given no problems so why now?
The method of joining the thick cables, was to push the end of the
stranded cable into what looked like a type of " filter funnel"
after treating the ends with hydrochloric acid to act as a flux .
The end, after coming through the small part or neck of the device
is splayed out and in some cases a wedge is hammered into the cable.
The ends are placed alongside the funnel sides and molten zinc is
poured into the splayed ends along the inside of the funnel. The
zinc solidifies and forms a plug of cable and metal thus preventing
the cable from pulling back. The other cable end is treated in the
same way on an identical funnel all attached together on a base
plate.
On examination locally it was found that the zinc had
not been heated to a high enough temperature and had not combined
with the cable, plus it had a crusty appearance rather like a poor
solder joint. This may have looked ok externally but when any strain
was put on the joint, it simply pulled through the funnel. The
jointing was reported to have been done by a sub-contractor.
Thus came the end of Fessenden's involvement with
Machrihanish.
Fessenden however, carried on and devised the first
ever device to enable ships to measure the depth of water below
them, e.g. the "Echo Sounder." He however called it his "Fathometer."
In 1916 he had a device forerunning the "Sonar" used by ships today.
This was able to detect icebergs... and had a certain ship called
the "Titanic" in 1912 had one fitted, history may have been very
different.
The scope of Fessenden's inventions are much too
large to be scripted here, suffice to say that next time you switch
on the "wireless" or TV or use your mobile phone, just think where
and who to thank. Well perhaps not the mobile phone!!! TV - oh yes,
he had the first TV operating in USA in 1919.
In all, Reginald Fessenden is credited with over 500
patents from insulating tape to tracer bullets...a wide range
indeed.
Fessenden fell out again with his backers and left radio work
However his High Frequency Alternators, because of their complexity,
high cost and limited range of frequencies, would never be used for
public broadcasting but they did make superb Long wave transmitters
and were used for transoceanic services well through the 1940's. In
fact by 1919 his alternator-transmitter patents were considered so
valuable that the question of ownership triggered the formation of
the Radio Corporation of America. Because of national security
reasons, the U.S. Government did not want the British owned Marconi
Company to gain control of the alternator-transmitter rights.
Hopefully a small memorial will be erected on the
Machrihanish site in due course. What happened there is just too
important to forget. We hope you agree.
Epilogue
Reginald Fessenden sometimes broke, sometimes rich,
managed to claim monies from many of those who had unlawfully used
his patents. He retired to Bermuda, where he died in 1932. He was
survived by his wife Helen Trott Fessenden, who died in 1941. His
monies host a Scholarship Fund in Bermuda to this day.
What he said of himself "My parents despaired of me.
They saw my future as a church minister, but when I closed my eyes
and dreamt, I saw an invention that could send voices around the
world without using wires or cables. There's no future in that, my
mother told me, and she was both right and wrong." In my lifetime, I
developed hundreds of inventions, including the electric gyroscope,
the heterodyne, and a depth finder. I built the first power
generating station at Niagara Falls and I invented radio, sending
the first voice message in the world on December 23rd 1900. But
despite all my hard work, I lived most of my life in near poverty. I
fought years of court battles before seeing even a penny from my
greatest inventions. Worst of all, I was ridiculed by journalists,
businessmen and even other scientists, for believing that voice
could even be transmitted without wires. However by the time of my
death, not only was I wealthy from my patents, but all of those
people who had laughed at my ideas were twisting the dials on their
newly bought radios to hear the latest weather and news."
Also like Michael Dell and Bill Gates he never
finished college...
Finally.
The
site today is still recognisable as a radio station. The mast is
of course long gone, as is the counterpoise earth mat but the
massive guy anchor points are still there and even the building
foundations can be recognised from 1906 photographs. The mounting
bolts of the machinery are still embedded in the concrete. The mast
base is also very evident with the counterpoise earth strips still
in situ and with insulator shards littering the surrounding ground.
The very base of the chimney can also be seen which was used by the
steam engine.
Reginald
Aubrey Fessenden is buried in St Marks's Church Cemetery in Bermuda.
On his grave are the words "By his genius distant lands converse and
men sail unafraid upon the deep." His wife Helen died in 1941.
His grave is surmounted by hieroglyphics which when
translated say.
"I am yesterday and I know tomorrow"
This article was produced by the Fessenden Project
Team in Campbeltown.
Duncan McArthur
Duncan McMillan
William Durrance
Col. Mac Neil, Lossit
March 2006
