100th Anniversary of Broadcast Radio

This Christmas Eve is the 100th Anniversary of Broadcast Radio, and it was achieved by a Canadian, eh!

Personally, I can’t imagine what our world would be like today if it hadn’t all started with AM radio. With no AM radio, there’d be no FM radio, no television, possibly no moving pictures (movies), and certainly no Podcasts!

I've pulled a little information from Wikipedia to help fill you in.

Reginald Aubrey Fessenden (6 October 1866 – 22 July 1932) was a Canadian inventor, and rival of Italian Guglielmo Marconi. Fessenden is best known for his work in early radio. Three of his most notable achievements include: the first audio transmission by radio (1900), the first two-way transatlantic radio transmission (1906), and the first radio broadcast of entertainment and music (1906).

On the evening of 24 December 1906 (Christmas Eve), Fessenden used the alternator-transmitter to send out a short program from Brant Rock, which included his playing the song O Holy Night on the violin and reading a passage from the Bible. On 31 December, New Year's Eve, a second short program was broadcast. The main audience for both these transmissions was an unknown number of shipboard radio operators along the Atlantic Coast. Although now seen as a landmark, these two broadcasts were barely noticed at the time and soon forgotten — the only first-hand account appears to be a letter Fessenden wrote on 29 January 1932 to his former associate, Samuel M. Kinter. There are no known accounts in any ships radio logs, nor any contemporary literature, of the reported holiday demonstrations. In addition, Fessenden does not appear to have made any additional broadcasts intended for a general audience, and was actually promoting the alternator-transmitter as ideal for point-to-point wireless telephone service. Still, in retrospect, it was an important glimpse of the future of radio. (Although primarily designed for transmissions spanning a few kilometers, on a couple of occasions the test Brant Rock audio transmissions were apparently overheard by NESCO employee James C. Armor across the Atlantic at the Machrihanish site).

Here is the full background information from Wikipedia, and a link to the SlashDot posting where I first learned of this significant (Canadian) milestone.