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.
Reginald Fessenden
Fessenden's ultimate plan for an audio-capable transmitter was to take a basic electrical alternator, which normally rotated at speeds that produced alternating current of at most a few hundred cycles-per-second (hz), and greatly increase its rotational speed, in order to create electrical currents of tens-of-thousands of cycles-per-second (kHz), thus producing a steady continuous-wave transmission when connected to an aerial. However, it would take many years of expensive development before even a prototype alternator-transmitter would be ready, and a few years beyond that for high-power versions to become available. One concern was whether at these high speeds the alternator might disintegrate due to the high rotation speed tearing it apart. Because of this, as a precaution, while the alternator was being initially developed it was "placed in a pit surrounded by sandbags".