Reginald Fessenden, Pioneer Of Wireless Radio

By April 1902, Fessenden knew he was closing in on an answer. ''I have more good news for you,'' he wrote his attorney, ''You may remember I telephoned about a mile in 1900 -- but thought it would take too much power to telephone across the Atlantic. Well, I can now telephone as far as I can telegraph, which is across the Pacific Ocean if desired. I have sent varying musical notes from Hatteras and received them here with but three watts of energy, and they were very loud and plain, i.e., as loud as in an ordinary telephone. The new receiver is a wonder!''

But his success with his invention was soured by a deteriorating relationship with the Weather Bureau. Fessenden eventually resigned from the project, and little more was accomplished on the Outer Banks. ''As arranged, Reg left the bureau in August, 1902. The work between Manteo and Hatteras was continued by the bureau in a desultory fashion for a few months, then the stations were closed and the equipment ordered sold at auction,'' Helen remembered.

But Fessenden, secure with financial backing from a pair of wealthy Pittsburgh businessmen, applied his results to a grander version of his vision on the Massachusetts coast. On Christmas Eve 1906, wireless operators on scores of ships and ham radio operators along the New England coast were stunned to hear Christmas carols cutting through the static and staccato rhythm of the Morse code.

Fessenden was famous; his celebrity worldwide. But the perfidy and intrigue of the business world confounded Fessenden. He never managed to secure the financial returns he thought he deserved from his inventions. ''Time and again fine endeavor and splendid inventive genius were thwarted and wrecked by the greed of promoters and sycophants,'' Helen recounted.

With his health failing, Fessenden retreated to Bermuda, where he spent his final days. When he died in 1932 millions around the world heard the news on the invention he had helped to perfect -- their radios.