In 1906 at a remote site in Machrahanish, the first voice was heard in all the world by a radio receiver there. It was the voice of Adam Stein who was testing the voice accomodations of the transmitter located in Brant Rock, Mass. Not only was it a Scotland first but the voice came all the way from the colonies...
Very interesting stuff here! I am familiar with the Marshfield and Brant Rock area as we are located in Braintree, MA!
What a shame there are no monuments or places. Wouldn't it be great if both sides of the Atlantic built a small museum where they could recreate the famous broadcast.
Small world. When I webbed out to the Highlander Radio I didn't know it was Braintree Highlands... I was at a URL that mentioned this place and I thought I was in Machrahanish, Scotland... I guess everyplace is the same distance away on the net..
Yes, the Fessenden people are gearing up for the 100th anniversary of the world's first radio voice broadcast.
There should be up coming events leading to Christmas Eve of 2006, then New Years Eve a week later. Much will be done on the net as well as on ham radio.. We also have the left over Coast Guard Radio Station site in Marshfield.. http://www.radiocom.net/NMF where a possible museum will be established...
We are collecting all the info we can get by then and hope to have a special stamped envelope and radio cards printed up.
Are you really in Braintree Highlands?
I went to the Machrihanish web site and see that they already know about Mr. Fessenden as there were more write ups than I had seen before..
Nathan Stubblefield, born in 1860, was an eccentric melon farmer from Murray, KY. He was a voracious reader and styled himself as a self-taught scientist and inventor. As early as 1885, he had invented several different wireless telephone devices. And wireless telephony is, of course, for all intents and purposes, radio. This was years before Marconi got official credit for inventing radio.
(Even without Stubblefield, Marconi still wouldn't be the true inventor of radio - Nikola Tesla invented it before Marconi. Marconi, in fact, used Tesla's own patents as research materials. Tesla, in turn, was among the curious onlookers in attendance at Stubblefield's 1902 wireless demonstration in Philadelphia.)
In 1892 Stubblefield performed the world's first wireless broadcast in Murray, broadcasting speech and music. Later he gave a very successful demonstration on the Potomac in Washington, D.C., yet still success eluded him without proper marketing.
Stubblefield was very secretive and mysterious about his inventions, and only became more and more so as years progressed. He entered into a business partnership with a company that promised to market his wireless telephone but instead let it languish, suppressed his patent, and paid him only $800 and a trunkful of worthless stock certificates.
Stubblefield died a crazed hermit in his shack in the wilderness. He destroyed all his prototypes, fearful of his inventions being stolen again by big-city slickers. He was buried in Stubblefield Cemetery in Murray, KY.
In the years since, many important voices have given Stubblefield the credit he is due, but the history books still have yet to include him. To this day there are debunkers who try to side-step Stubblefield's pioneering work by claiming that his inventions only utilized induction transmission, not radio transmission. This is not true, and even if it were, the term "radio" had a vaguer definition in those days, effectively referring to any form of wireless transmission, regardless of the means. Any idiot with common sense, then or now, can tell you that if it broadcasts wirelessly, it is radio. The word radio was originally a contrived term meant to supplant the slightly more mystical term "ether" that had been in vogue.
I am not trying to steal anyone's thunder but everyone in Kentucky KNOWS that wireless radio was invented in 1902 by Nathan B. Stubblefield of Murray, Kentucky. Just wanted to set the record straight fellers!
free2Bme, Marconi got the first patent on wireless radio in 1896 when he transmitted signals for a distance exceeding 1.6 km(more than 1 mi). So I suppose since he got the patent he got the credit for it.
My husband is into amateur radio big time and has alot of books on this subject.
I keep seeing Stubblefield material but nothing can be found as to his invention so far as I've looked to see what he was about. There was another fellow who gave first knowledge and intention in Va. who used kites between mountains. That was Dr. Mahlon Loomis in the 1880s? His theory was OK but he never actually sent a message...
Tesla was best of his ilk. He figured AC and RF way before the rest. His ability to transfer power over the air was not very successful but he pioneered much... The spoken word became much more powerful than electricity over the air...
Actually Amos Dolbear had a 2 way radio system running @ Tufts University way before Marconi 'invented' radio. 1886? In fact it was Edison who had wireless telegraph installed on trains in 1891 but pulled them off because there was not enough call to make it commercially successful. When Marconi came over to interview Edison about his train to station wireless, he ( Edison ) gave the idea and package to Marconi to go and 'invent'...
Fessenden made the very first documentable voice over the air transmission on Dec. 23rd, 1900 for a distance of one mile while he was under contract with the U.S. Weather Bureau... In 1906 he was about to make a demonstration of inter contental voice radio telephone for the big time investors but a storm blew the Scottish tower down. So to save face and recover something he instructed all the ships to have a listen on Christmas eve, and as promised, there was a voice broadcast program which was repeated on New Years Eve. ( First Broadcast ) With hundreds of inventions and having to spend most of his time in court defending them, he took ill and died in Bermuda in 1932... A local ham I knew heard that broadcast as there were no radios as we know them in widespread use in people's homes... He was a ham before there were hams. Arthur Donovan W1HM in Rockland was that man...
Fessenden was also the first to perform 2 way wireless with Europe...
Still trying to establish a ham radio connection with Macrihanish, Scotland for the 100th...
Can you tell me about the area. Is Machrihanish a full blown town or a suburb of a larger place such as Campbeltown? Is it easy to get to by air from say London or better to drive...
Can you tell me about the area. Is Machrihanish a full blown town or a suburb of a larger place such as Campbeltown? Is it easy to get to by air from say London or better to drive...
Thanks, I went ot that site and left a message...
Machrihanish is not a very big place at all...
It's on the Mull of Kintyre (made famous by the Paul MacCartney song!) and you could fly to Glasgow or Edinburgh and then drive from there...
Interesting subject. here is a URL on Tesla if anyone is interested.http://www.frank.germano.com/index2.htm Sounds a little like the Weekly World News, but sets the imagination wandering a little.
Seems that history is full of dates and credits, and whoever is lucky enough to be mentioned first and the most seems to get the credit for whatever.
Leo, who can at least turn the radio on (well, usually)
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Consistency. It's only a virtue if you're not a screwup.
Ita erat quando hic adveni.
Time is a great teacher, but unfortunatley it kills all its pupils. - Hector Berlioz
"No matter where you go, there you are." - R. Young
Yes I would like to go there within the next two years or so. I am taken most by Fessenden and his sister radio station that was in Macrihanish. In the mean time am looking for radio hams in the area so that some info can be learned in conjunction with http://www.radiocom.net/Fessenden Machrihanish was also the FIRST station to have two way radio contact across the Atlantic. I would like to know where the archives are and local newspapers which have archives from those days on 1905/06..
Hi Leo,
Tesla must have been the best brain who understood AC, RF and transformers... He like Fessenden was more taken with his work than building business... Marconi was the first with the most and although admittedly did not invent radio, he did bring it foward to good use... He and Sarnof ( RCA ) were the business genieus...
Thanks for all the feedback...
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