At exactly 9 p.m. on Christmas Eve 1906, wireless operators aboard U.S. Navy vessels and United Fruit Company ships witnessed a miracle.

Accustomed only to hearing transmissions of short and long pulses - representing the dots and dashes of Morse code - wireless operators on that historic night before Christmas actually heard voice and music over the airwaves.

That first-ever radio broadcast was a product of the pioneering work of Reginald Fessenden, whose contributions to the development of radio as we know it have never garnered the accolades accorded such notable figures as Guglielmo Marconi and Lee de Forest.

Yet, Fessenden was the first to transmit audio by electromagnentic waves. He did so by developing a transmitter that employed "amplified modulation," more commonly known today as AM.

So it was on that Christmas Eve, at the dawn of what would come to be known as the American Century, that Mr. Fessenden was in a Brant Rock, Massachusetts transmission shack, which boasted a 420-foot top-loaded umbrella antenna and which sent his broadcast to radio-enabled ships in the central and south Atlantic Ocean.

Fessenden "opened the door to technological advances that have improved the lives of Americans and individuals around the world," stated President George W. Bush, marking the centennial of the pioneer's history-making radio broadcast.

It began innocuously, with the message "CQ, CQ, CQ" in Morse Code, which was a general call to all ships or ground stations in range. Then came a Christmas program, introduced by Mr. Fessenden, who, as coincidence had it, was the son of an Anglican minister.

It began with a recording of a soloist singing Handel's "Largo," played on an Edison phonograph (invented by Mr. Fessenden's old boss). Readings were to follow by Mr. Fessenden's assistant, his wife, Helen, and his secretary, but all three were overcome by "mic fright."

So Mr. Fessenden made a cameo, violin in hand, treating listeners to his cover of the Christmas favorite "O Holy Night."

Then the first radio broadcast in history concluded with the prayerful words from the Book of Luke that resonate as much in our troubled times today as they did nearly 110 Christmas Eves ago:

"On earth peace, good will to men."

REPRINTED FROM THE ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER

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