USS Fessenden (DE-142)
She was named in honor of Reginald Aubrey Fessenden, born in Brome County, Quebec, Canada, 6 October 1866. He served as head chemist with Thomas Edison's East Orange, New Jersey, laboratories. In 1890 he began concentrating on electrical engineering, and through the next years made many important inventions and improvements in existing devices. His great contributions in the field of radio (particularly the invention of radio-telephony were of marked benefit not only to the Navy but to all seamen. He died 22 July 1932, at his home on Bermuda.
Golden Age of Radio
On Christmas Eve 1906, Reginald Fessenden is said to have broadcast the first radio program, consisting of some violin playing and passages from the Bible. While Fessenden's role as an inventor and early radio experimenter is not in dispute, several contemporary radio researchers have questioned whether the Christmas Eve broadcast took place, or whether the date was in fact several weeks earlier. The first apparent published reference to the event was made in 1928 by H.P. Davis, Vice President of Westinghouse, in a lecture given at Harvard University. In 1932 Fessenden cited the Christmas Eve 1906 broadcast event in a letter he wrote to Vice President S.M. Kinter of Westinghouse. Fessenden's wife Helen recounts the broadcast in her book "Fessenden: Builder of Tomorrows" (1940), eight years after Fessenden's death. The issue of whether the 1906 Fessenden broadcast actually happened is discussed in Donna Halper's article "In Search of the Truth About Fessenden" and also in James O'Neal's essays. An annotated argument supporting Fessenden as the world's first radio broadcaster was offered in 2006 by Dr. John S. Belrose, Radioscientist Emeritus at the Communications Research Centre Canada, in his essay "Fessenden's 1906 Christmas Eve broadcast."