OBX Important in Radio's Development
Scientist sends first music from Buxton to Manteo

by Rick Kinnaird

Heading south on NC 12 just before you get to Buxton, you may have noticed an historical highway marker titled “Radio Milestone.”

History has noted Guglielmo Marconi to be the father of radio. He supposedly attained this status by sending a signal across the Atlantic Ocean, proving for the first time that radio waves could travel farther than direct line of sight.

However, the likelihood that Marconi really heard a signal and not just static is very unlikely. His equipment wasn't that good, he knew what signal was being sent (the letter ‘S’) and he was the only one that heard the signal. Marconi, and most others at that time, believed radio would only be useful for sending Morse code to ships at sea.

It was Reginald Fessenden, a Canadian scientist, who believed it would be possible to transmit human voices over the air waves and did so before Marconi ever sent his famous “message” across the Atlantic in 1901. In 1900, Fessenden successfully transmitted a voice while he was conducting experiments for the Weather Service at Cobb Island, Virginia. The next year he moved his operation to the Outer Banks and, in April 1902, transmitted tones for the first time from a tower in Buxton to a tower in Manteo.

Fessenden spent a good part of his life defending his patents and claims, all with little commercial success. But he discovered heterodyning, the principle behind all modern radio. He, not Marconi, truly is the father of radio.

Fessenden is also the father of pagers, beepers, garage door openers, smoke screens, tracer bullets, sonar and 500 other things he patented during his lifetime.