A Canadian, Reginald Aubrey Fessenden was the first person to prove that voices and music could be heard over the air without wires.

Marconi, on the other hand, is given credit for radio even though his theory on sound waves was wrong and even though he was still sending only Morse code signals when Fessenden made his first “broadcast.” 

In 1886, when he was 20 yrs old, he was hired for Thomas Edison’s machine shop where he so impressed his superiors that Edison invited him to work in the labs.

At the Western university of Pennsylvania, Fessenden explored his major interest, the study of Hercules sound waves. Marconi believed waves were generated by creating a spark that caused a whiplash effect, but Fessenden rejected this concept, theorizing correctly that sound waves continuously rippled outward — like water when a stone is dropped into it. Further experiments led him to suggest that, if the waves could be sent at a high frequency, it would be possible to hear only the “variations due to the human voice.”

In 1900 he joined the US Weather Bureau on the understanding that the bureau could have access to any devices he invented but that he would retain ownership. This suited Fessenden perfectly. Within months he improved their Morse code systems for weather forecasting, and in his own experiments transmitted voice a mile away for the first time. In 1902, however, a Bureau superior demanded a share of his patents. Rather than submit, Fessenden complained to President Theodore Roosevelt, but his letter was returned to the Bureau and he was forced to resign. 

His greatest achievement that year, however, occurred at 9 p.m., Christmas Eve, 1906, when wireless operators of several United Fruit Company ships in the Atlantic, tipped off to expect something unusual on their NESCO-provided sets, heard Fessenden transmit a recording of Handel’s “Largo” on an Ediphone, play “Oh Holy Night” on the violin, and read from the Bible before wishing them a Merry Christmas. 

The phenomenal interest in radio in the 1920s increased his demands for settlement of his lawsuit, and he finally gained recognition for his pioneer work. The Institute of Radio Engineers presented him with its Medal of Honour, and Philadelphia awarded him a medal and cash prize for “one whose labors had been of great benefit to mankind.” Finally, in 1928, he won an out-of-court settlement for $500,000 for his patent lawsuit.

Fessenden, then 62 and with a heart condition, decided to return to Bermuda where he had met his wife, Helen, more than 40 years earlier. There, the man called by the head of General Electric Laboratories “the greatest wireless inventor of the age — greater than Marconi,” died in January, 1932, largely a forgotten man.