[Elecraft] A Bit of History

[Bill W5WVO]

Ron D'Eau Claire wrote:

> Some recordings of Fessenden's early transmissions (done on
> wax Edison cylinders) available on line at
>
> http://www.hello-radio.org/historyofradio.html

This page asserts,

      "Listen to Fessenden's first voice transmission on December
      23, 1900 -- he says, Hello! Test, 1, 2, 3, 4. Is it snowing
      where you are Mr. Thiessen?"

This is a nice page for ham radio. However, the voice heard in the audio clips 
is not that of Reginald Fessenden, but rather that of John S. Belrose of the 
Communications Research Center, Ottawa, Canada. Mr Belrose constructed 
emulations of early spark-based transmitters in 1994. His outstanding (and 
very early) web page can be accessed at 
http://www.hammondmuseumofradio.org/spark.html. To quote briefly from this 
page,

      "On the 23 December 1900, Fessenden, after many unsuccessful
      tries, transmitted words without wires. The speech you hear
      is the voice of the author [Belrose], using the transmitter as
      described above (the best transmission out of several recorded),
      but the words are those used by Fessenden the inventor."

The audio clip linked from the word "hear" above, recorded by Belrose, is the 
same one used on the http://www.hello-radio.org/historyofradio.html page. 
Listen to both of them several times, and it will leave you with no doubt that 
they are the same recording. Apparently the author either misread Belrose's 
statement quoted above and really thought the recording was of Fessenden's 
voice, or he figured it was just more satisfying to say that it was!  :-)

Bill / W5WVO