Reginald A. Fessenden House
Reginald A. Fessenden was born Quebec in 1866, and entered Bishop's University as a precocious young mathematical prodigy, but left in 1884 without graduating. In 1886, he took a position at the Edison Machine Works, working for inventor Thomas Edison. During an academic period teaching at Purdue University and at the University of Pittsburgh, Fessenden engaged in research on the nascent subject of wireless telegraphy. Much of the rest of his life he was employed in industry, either directly or as a consultant, but was often living near poverty, and produced a stream of inventions. In 1904 he invented the rotary spark-gap transmitter, and in 1906 he built a large transmitter in Massachusetts from which he successfully made a voice transmission. He also discovered the means to recombine separate frequencies to form a coherent audible sound. At his death he was described by inventor and businessman Elihu Thomson as "the greatest wireless inventor of the age, greater than Marconi."
Samuel C. Fessenden
Born in New Gloucester, Maine, Samuel Fessenden graduated from Bowdoin College in 1834 and from Bangor Theological Seminary in 1837. He was ordained and installed as pastor of the Second Congregational Church of Thomaston, Maine from 1837 to 1856. He then established the "Maine Evangelist" and began to study law. He was admitted to the bar and began practicing in 1858, eventually becoming judge of the Rockland municipal court.