[CW] Continuous Wave much better than spark

[D.J.J. Ring, Jr.]

I wasn't there, but if you have any citations, I'm in Marshfield, MA and
some (but not most) of the Fessenden collection is here, the rest if I
remembeer correctly is in North Carolina.
Unless I'm totally wrong, his wife, Helen wrote in her biography of her
husband, Reginald Fessenden, that Westinghouse was unable to produce a very
high frequency alternator and it was the work of her husband's engineers in
Washington DC that perfected the alternator and resulted in its use in
Brant Rock in 1906.

Here's what Helen Fessenden says in Empiries of Tomorrow, in 1940.
https://archive.org/details/fessendenbuilder00fessrich

Mr. Kintner [Genera; Manager of National Electric Signaling Company - NES
Co.] vividly describes the development of this
final method.

" how to make the continuous waves was not so apparent.

Fessenden boldly said, "Take a high-frequency alternator of
100,000 cycles per second, connect one terminal to the
antenna and the other to the ground, then tune to reso-
nance. ." That looks simple now, but it wasn't then I
assure you.

I remember very distinctly the impression I formed when
Fessenden told me of his plan. First I asked him how he
could get sufficient voltage and he said, "Several hundred
volts will be ample, as by resonance I can raise the voltage
in the antenna one hundred times, which will be all that
I require." Even then I was sceptical because I didn't know
of any 100,000 cycle machines neither did he, but he was
already working on it and after about five years of strenuous
effort and considerable expense, his first machine was de-
livered to him at Brant Rock, Massachusetts, in September



WIRELESS TELEPHONY 149

1906. From this machine he was able to get 750 watts at
80,000 cycles." (Pittsburgh's Contributions to Radio)

But it wasn't so simple as that; there were difficulties and
intermediate stages of which Mr. Kintner did not know. It
was a far cry between the high-frequency alternator as re-
ceived from the manufacturers and the transformation it
had to undergo before it was capable of giving the 80,000
cycles required for telephonic transmission. The high-fre-
quency alternator that was delivered in 1906 by the General
Electric Company which had been doing the work on it,
came with the statement that in the Company's opinion it
was not possible to operate it above 10,000 cycles.

Thereupon Reg scrapped everything but the pole pieces-
designed a new armature and had it built at his Washing-
ton shop. After this rebuilding by Fessenden machinists
under Fessenden supervision the alternator gave from 70,
to 80,000 cycles and about one-half kilowatt of electric wave
radiation.

A second dynamo built to a different type in the Wash-
ington shop with an 8 inch armature gave the same power
but 100,000 cycles and operated as reliably as any other dy-
namo until 1911.

To his own engineers, Mr. Stein, Captain Hill and Mr.
Mansbendel, Reg always felt profoundly grateful for splen-
did cooperation in this difficult work. To the General Elec-
tric Company engineers Messrs. Steinmetz, Alexanderson,
Dempster and others, he also felt a debt of thanks for their
very earnest efforts to fulfill his admittedly unusual speci-
fications. They did their best but that best could give only
10,000 cycles as against the 80 to 100,000 cycles that he de-
manded.

When Fessenden had showed the way with his two home-
built, high-frequency alternators, the General Electric Co.
began to see light and went seriously to work. As the
world knows, under Dr. Alexanderson the high-frequency
alternator was carried to great perfection and Fessenden
was generous with enthusiastic praise for what he accom-



150 FESSENDEN BUILDER OF TOMORROWS

plished. But as far as the world is permitted to know Alex-
anderson is given sole credit for the invention. It is a good
instance of what big organizations can do in the way of
manipulating History, by blotting out here and building up
there till the desired impression is indelibly etched on the
public mind.

Many years later Reg in a letter to Mr. Albert G. Davis
at that time Vice-President and head of the Patent Depart-
ment of the General Electric Company, wrote.

". . . Of course for business reasons your company has never
given me credit for this (High Frequency Alternator), but
if you will look at the back correspondence you will see
that I built the first one after the G. E. engineers had said
that nothing above 10,000 was possible: and that Alexander-
son, who is a splendid engineer) did not come in until after
three months running at 100,000."

In his reply of November 15, 1924 Mr. Davis said:

". . . As far as concerns the high frequency alternator, I
thought that we had always given you credit for the work
which you did in this connection. Alexanderson never
claimed to have invented the high frequency alternator,
as such, but merely to have invented certain structural fea-
tures which worked very well in practice. His patents were
limited to what he invented." (in testimony, Federal Trade
Commission, Docket 1115, p. 4433. Library of Congress.)

Surely a disingenuous statement. For even though Alex-
anderson himself may not have claimed the invention, the
General Electric Company has sedulously permitted and
encouraged the attribution of it to him, so that even in pub-
lications such as "The Radio Octopus" (American Mercury,
August 1931) written to reveal the iniquities of the Radio
Trust, the writer, Dane Yorke, accepts implicitly the Alex-
anderson Myth, in regard to conception and reduction to
practice of this invention.

". . . During the war, it seems, the General Electric Com-
pany put into use a very valuable wireless device known as
the Alexanderson alternator. After the war, impressed by the



WIRELESS TELEPHONY 151

device, the British Marconi Company offered General Elec-
tric a $5,000,000 contract provided it were given exclusive
rights. The deal was nearly closed when President Wilson,
then in Paris at the Peace Conference, sent two high officers
of the Navy to protest against the granting of exclusive rights
to the British Marconi Company. So fundamentally impor-
tant was the Alexanderson device to wireless transmission
that without its use the United States would be effectively
barred from the radio field. The cable systems of the world,
argued President Wilson's representatives, were already
under complete foreign control; to surrender air communi-
cation also would be a tragic mistake.

But Owen D. Young and his associates of the General Electric
Company pointed out that much money had been spent in
developing the Alexanderson apparatus. Save for the Mar-
coni Company there was no real market for it, and thus
no seeming hope of any return on General Electric's invest-
ment. Here the official story grows vague. . . ."

Another group of investigators out to tell the truth as
they see it "Empire of the Air" Ventura Free Press, Ven-
tura, California, while attributing the invention to Fessen-
den and referring to the early abortive efforts of the Gen-
eral Electric Company to build a high-frequency alternator
for him, appear nevertheless not to know of the two per-
fectly operative, high-frequency dynamos built by Fessenden
with which he accomplished regular wireless telephonic
transmission up to several hundred miles (exclusive of
freak transmission) between 1906 and the close of 1910.

In the fall of 1906 wireless telephone work went on be-
tween Brant Rock and Plymouth a distance of eleven miles,
also between Brant Rock and a small fishing schooner. A
well known technical journal November 10, 1906 alluded
rather incredulously to this latter feat. It is headed "A New
Fish Story" and reads as follows:

"It is stated from Massachusetts that the wireless tele-
phone has successfully entered the deep sea fishing industry.
For the last week experiments have been conducted by the
wireless telegraph station at Brant Rock which is equipped
with a wireless telephone, with a small vessel stationed in



152 FESSENDEN BUILDER OF TOMORROWS

the fleet of the South Shore Fishermen, twelve miles out of
Massachusetts Bay. Recently it is asserted, the fishermen
wished to learn the prices ruling in the Boston market. The
operator on the wireless fitted boat called up Brant Rock
and telephoned the fishermen's request. The land operator
asked Boston by Wire and the answer was forwarded back
to the fishermen. This is a rather fishy fish story."

It was realized that the use of the wireless telephone
would be seriously curtailed unless it could operate in con-
junction with wire lines, so relays were invented both for
the transmitting and receiving ends. Transmission itself
was more perfect than over wire lines. Since development
was so far advanced, it was decided on the heels of the
Machrihanish disaster to issue formal invitations to a demon-
stration of the wireless telephone. The invitation to the
American Telephone Journal of New York City follows:

Brant Rock,
Dec. 11, 1906.
"Dear Sirs:

A limited number of invitations have been issued to wit-
ness the operation of the National Electric Signaling Co.'s
wireless telephone system between Brant Rock and Ply-
mouth, Mass, over a distance of between ten and eleven
miles.

The tests will be as follows:

1. Transmission of ordinary speech, and also transmission
of phonographic talking and music by wireless telephone
between Brant Rock and Plymouth.

2. Transmission of speech over ordinary wire line to wire-
less station at Brant Rock relaying the speech there auto-
matically by telephone relay and automatically transmitting
the speech by wireless to Plymouth, transmitting same at
Plymouth automatically directly or by telephone relay over
regular wire lines. Invitations have been issued to the fol-
lowing gentlemen, " (here follows a list of the guests,
including Dr. A.E.Kennelly, Professor Elihu Thompson
etc. and a request to the Telephone Journal to send a
representative.)

Yours very truly

(signed) National Electric Signaling Co."



WIRELESS TELEPHONY 153

A report of these tests appeared in the American Telephone
Journal of January 26, and February 2, 1907, the Editor
having attended the tests in person.

This article unequivocally confirms the success of this
demonstration of the wireless telephone and is in the nature
of a landmark and an historical record; so much so that on
the occasion of a formal meeting of the Radio Institute in
New York City, at which Fessenden gave a talk on "In-
venting the Wireless Telephone and the Future," (Jan. 19,
1926) he presented a Photostat and Certified copy of the
article to the Library of the Radio Institute.

On Christmas Eve and New Year's Eve of 1906 the first
Broadcasting occurred. Three days in advance Reg had his
operators notify the ships of the U.S. Navy and of the
United Fruit Co. that were equipped with the Fessenden
apparatus that it was the intention of the Brant Rock Sta-
tion to broadcast speech, music and singing on those two
evenings.

Describing this, Fessenden wrote:

"The program on Christmas Eve was as follows: first a
short speech by me saying what we were going to do, then
some phonograph music. The music on the phonograph
being Handel's 'Largo'. Then came a violin solo by me,
being a composition of Gounod called 'O, Holy Night', and
ending up with the words 'Adore and be still' of which I
sang one verse, in addition to playing on the violin, though
the singing of course was not very good. Then came the
Bible text, 'Glory to God in the highest and on earth peace
to men of good will', and finally we wound up by wishing
them a Merry Christmas and then saying that we proposed
to broadcast again New Year's Eve.

The broadcast on New Year's Eve was the same as before,
except that the music was changed and I got someone else
to sing. I had not picked myself to do the singing, but on
Christmas Eve I could not get any of the others to either
talk, sing or play and consequently had to do it myself.

On New Year's Eve one man, I think it was Stein, agreed
to sing and did sing, but none of the others either sang or
talked.



154 FESSENDEN BUILDER OF TOMORROWS

We got word of reception of the Christmas Eve program
as far down as Norfolk, Va., and on the New Year's Eve
program we got word from some places down in the West
Indies."

It is not surprising that it was widely heard even beyond
the group of Fessenden equipped boats for as he further
states

"As a matter of fact, at the time of the broadcast, prac-
tically everyone was infringing the liquid barreter. When
the broadcast was made, practically every ship along the
coast was equipped to receive it."

One other happening of this period of the wireless tele-
phone was a private communication about November 1906
from one of the Machrihanish operators to Fessenden. He
wrote that he had been listening at the Scottish station and
had heard a voice which he recognized as Mr. Stein's voice,
quoted what he had said and gave the time at which he
heard him, but so astounding did it seem to him that he re-
frained from discussing it with anyone until Professor Fes-
senden should advise him in regard to it.

The matter was at once investigated and without giving
any hint as to the reason for finding out, it was established
that on the specified date and hour the words quoted were
spoken by Mr. Stein in the Brant Rock-Plymouth transmis-
sion.

The operator's theory to explain the occurrence was that
Mr. Stein must have been standing near the rotary gap and
that the arc had been the medium of transmission of speech,
which was, as Reg said, an ingenius explanation and could
under certain conditions produce such results.

What the operator did not know was that the high-fre-
quency dynamo had just been received at Brant Rock from
the Washington shop and was being tested on the Brant
Rock-Plymouth transmission. A second time he wrote that
he had heard talking from Brant Rock and Reg was just
preparing a schedule of telephonic tests between Brant



WIRELESS TELEPHONY 155

Rock and Machrihanish when the disaster to the tower cut
the work short.

In July 1907 the range of our commercial wireless tele-
phone was considerably extended; speech was successfully
transmitted between Brant Rock and Jamaica, Long Island,
a distance of nearly 200 miles, in daylight and mostly over
land; the mast at Jamaica being approximately 180 feet high.
73

DR
N1EA
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://mailman.qth.net/pipermail/cw/attachments/20210506/240de6fb/attachment-0001.html>