[BC] Fessenden was 1900, actually

[VJB]

Although it is nice to mark 100 years since the 1906
Christmas Eve signals transmitted and noted here,
Canadien experimenter Reginald Fessenden's first AM
transmission took place in 1900 from Cobb Island,
Maryland, at the south end of the Chesapeake bay.

We celebrated 100 years since that event by taking a
vacuum-tube AM shortwave station out to Thomas Point
Lighthouse, more than a mile offshore in the
Chesapeake Bay.

Details at http://amfone.net/K3L/

and

http://www.ewh.ieee.org/reg/7/millennium/radio/radio_unsung.html

Excerpt below:

Fessenden's new lab was at Cobb Island in the Potomac
River, where he was experimenting with a receiving
station at Arlington, Virginia, fifty miles away. He
and his assistant Thiessen had perfected Morse
transmissions using a new generator they had bought,
and in October of his first year Fessenden
experimentally hooked up a microphone to the improved
system. On December 23, 1900 Fessenden said into his
microphone, "One, two, three, four. Is It snowing
where you are Mr. Thiessen? If so telegraph back and
let me know." Thiessen replied by telegraph in Morse
code that it was indeed snowing. In great excitement
Fessenden wrote at his desk, "This afternoon here at
Cobb Island, intelligible speech by electromagnetic
waves has for the first time in World's History been
transmitted." 

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