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Famous Engineers
> How We Went From Tapping Code to
Radio Shows
It’s Christmas Eve, 1906. A Morse code operator on a United Fruit ship in the Atlantic Ocean moves closer to his receiver. Instead of the usual, primitive taps of Morse code, he hears a man speaking over the receiver, followed by music. And so began the world’s first long distance radio transmission.
The man’s voice heard up and down the Eastern seaboard that night was Professor Reginald Fessenden. But, that historic night was made possible by an alternator developed by a young engineer who had recently emigrated to the U.S. from Sweden.
Born in Upsala, Sweden in 1878, and graduated as an electrical engineer from Stockholm’s Royal Institute of Technology, this engineer’s career was shaped by the reading of one book that made a lasting impression.
From Stockholm, armed with his degree in electrical engineering, he moved to Berlin’s Technical University to do graduate work. During the course of his studies in Germany, he read the book “Alternating Current Phenomena” by Dr. Charles P. Steinmetz. He was so impressed by Dr. Steinmetz’s book, that he set a goal of working with Dr. Steinmetz and his employer, General Electric.
Reaching the goal meant that a move to the Unites States was necessary. He took an interim job with C&C Electric Company in New Jersey before hiring on with Steinmetz at General Electric’s Schenectady, NY facility.
The first major task assigned to him was the development of a variation of the “spark transmitter,” a machine used for transmitting the short bursts of tone that became Morse code. This new transmitter would have a continuous wave that was capable of transmitting the human voice. Working with Fessenden, the 100 kilohertz alternator was completed in two years. In 1906, connected to Fessenden’s transmitter, this alternator carried the human voice over the air waves for the first time.
Who was this pioneer of the communication industry?
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Ernst Alexanderson continued his work at General Electric after the invention of the Alexanderson Alternator, but he also began working for the company that was formed to capitalize on this and other communication advancements, the Radio Corporation of America (RCA).
After serving as chief engineer of RCA for five years, Alexanderson returned full time to General Electric in 1924, where he worked on the transmission of pictures. He was able to complete the first transatlantic fax in 1926, transmitting a picture to Europe in just under 2 minutes. Of perhaps greater commercial importance, he had already begun work on television broadcasting. In fact, in 1927 his home was the site of TV’s first home reception.
Alexanderson’s passion for the communications industry continued to spark further advancements including a system for transmission of color television in 1930; an audio recording system that used film in 1927; a telephone system for connecting trains; a telegraphy system for the military; and a radar altimeter, which predated the radar system developed by the British 20 years later. During World War II he designed the
amplidyne, an electrodynamic amplifier. In 1945 he invented a portable sound recorder, and in 1955 he patented a color television receiver.
This prolific inventor continued work well into his later years. He died in 1973 at the age of 97. He was posthumously elected to the Inventor’s Hall of Fame in 1983.
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