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Pitt celebrates 100 years of radio

By Allison M. Heinrichs
TRIBUNE-REVIEW
Saturday, November 11, 2006 


Reginald Fessenden was a man ahead of the times. 
Today, the University of Pittsburgh is celebrating the 100th anniversary of the first radio broadcast of the human voice, made by Fessenden, the first chair of what became Pitt's electrical engineering department. 

"He was the earliest developer of voice radio," said Rick Harris, a broadcasting historian and co-author of the book "When Radio Was Young." "He was really ahead of his time, I think by maybe 10 years or so because it took that long for it to become mainstream." 

In the 1890s, Pittsburgh entrepreneur and engineer George Westinghouse recruited Fessenden to work at the Western University of Pennsylvania, now the University of Pittsburgh. There, Fessenden became interested in Guglielmo Marconi's work transmitting Morse code by radio and began experiments in transmitting the voice. 

He left Pitt in 1900 and continued his experiments along the East Coast. In late 1906, Fessenden made the first public broadcast by radio to ships in the Atlantic Ocean -- personally playing "O Holy Night" on violin, singing one verse and then reading a Bible passage. 

"There were radio operators out at sea that were just used to hearing Morse code and, all of the sudden, they heard a man speaking and music being played," Harris said. 

More than a decade later, Pittsburgher and radio hobbyist Frank Conrad began playing music on air through a transmitter in his garage. Westinghouse, who employed Conrad, got wind of the popularity of Conrad's pet project and applied for a call sign in 1920. On Nov. 2 his application was approved, and KDKA became the first commercial radio station just in time to broadcast election results naming Warren G. Harding the next president. 

It wasn't the use that Fessenden had in mind. 

"He really wasn't trying to invent radio as we use it, he wanted to invent a wireless telephone," said Marlin Mickle, professor of electrical and computer engineering and telecommunications at Pitt. "Every time you pick up a cell phone, that's what he wanted. It took about 70 years, but that's what he was after." 

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