Fessenden

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. A surname most famously borne by Reginald Fessenden, the Canadian inventor who made early radio voice broadcasts
2. Family name of Reginald Fessenden, a Canadian-born inventor known for pioneering wireless voice transmission
3. The surname of an inventor, Reginald Fessenden, who was a pioneer of radio broadcasting in the early twentieth century

Etymology: In Christmas Eve 1906, a Canadian-born inventor named Reginald Fessenden broadcast the first program of voice and music sent over the air, from a station at Brant Rock, Massachusetts. Ship radio operators along the Atlantic coast, who expected only Morse code, reportedly heard a man reading from the Bible and a violin playing "O Holy Night." Fessenden had been working on a continuous-wave transmitter, a major advance over the spark-gap method that carried only dots and dashes. Its use today is largely as a family name, and it is most widely associated with Reginald Fessenden himself.