CHATHAM MARCONI SPEAKER SERIES
Reginald Fessenden:
Brilliant Inventor, Unsuccessful Radio Entrepreneur
October 2nd @ 7PM
Reginald Aubrey Fessenden, a Marconi contemporary, made significant advances in radio technology from 1900 to 1911. His work was focused on continuous wave transmissions with the goal of transmitting sound over radio waves. He was the first to demonstrate practical radio telephony and several of his other innovations made their way to the Chatham RCA station. However, his track record commercializing inventions was less impressive. Some of his inventions were ahead of their time but he was also unable to manage ownership issues with financial partners. We’ll look at his life, selected radio inventions, business activity and contrast his contributions to that of Guglielmo Marconi.
Tom Inglin
Tom Inglin earned a PhD in Organic Chemistry and spent 35 years in Consumer and Healthcare Product Development. He holds 12 patents, is a Registered Patent Agent and Adjunct Professor at the University of Cincinnati School of Pharmacy. His lifelong interest in radio began at a young age when he imagined radio waves traveling across the Atlantic Ocean to France while visiting his grandparents at the New Jersey shore. It wasn’t until later that he realized he was sometimes looking West across the Delaware Bay. An amateur radio operator since high school, his retirement volunteer gig at the Marconi/RCA Wireless Museum is a dream come true. He is currently a museum docent and Secretary of Chatham Marconi’s Board of Directors.
Crossing the Atlantic by Voice:
AT&T's New Jersey "Pole Farm”
and the Story of Short Wave Radiotelephony
Dennis Waters
November 6 @ 7PM
By the early 1900s, Americans could place a telephone call to almost anywhere in North America, but not overseas. To resolve this issue, in 1928 the American Telephone and Telegraph Company (AT&T) purchased more than 800 acres of productive farmland in central New Jersey to build what became the world’s largest radiotelephone shortwave transmitting station. It was named “The Pole Farm” after the thousands of tall antenna poles that were installed on the site. At its peak in the early 1960s it was a high-tech wonder, delivering millions of telephone calls across the Atlantic Ocean to Europe, Africa, South America, and the Middle East. Changing technology made shortwave radiotelephony obsolete and the site was closed in 1975, reverting once again to farmland. The Pole Farm is now a county park, providing passive recreation for thousands while retaining traces of its historic high-tech past.
Dennis Waters is an author, scientist, and retired internet entrepreneur. His first book, Behavior and Culture in One Dimension, was published by Routledge in 2021. He is a Visiting Scientist at Rutgers University studying the lichens of Central New Jersey, and for twelve years was Township Historian in Lawrenceville, NJ. He received his PhD from the Thomas Watson School of Engineering at Binghamton University.