THE HISTORY OF GEOPHYSICAL PROSPECTING
PART SEVEN - REGINALD FESSENDEN

Chapter 17  -  Electrical Engineer and College Professor

In his preface to "Radio's Hundred Men of Science,' Orrin Dunlay stated that "The Big Ten would be: Faraday, Henry, Maxwell, Hertz , Marconi, Fessenden, Fleming, De Forest, Armstrong and Zworykin." Elihu Thomson called Reginald Fessenden, "the greatest wireless inventor of the age - greater than Marconi." As we shall see in the next chapter, Fessenden’s inventions in the transmission of sound were as unique as his wireless inventions.

Reginald Aubrey Fessenden was born in East Bolton, Quebec, on October 6, 1866. His forbears came from Kent, Yorkshire and Northumberland. His father was an American minister, who filled more Canadian, pulpits than he did those of New England, where he was born. Reginald's mother was a highly intelligent and gifted lady of great personal charm. At the age of nine, after a period of careful horne tutoring, Reginald entered De Veaux Military School in Niagara Falls, New York, and two years later was transferred to the Trinity School at Port Hope, Ontario. Defective vision made glasses necessary from his early years. Reginald wrote from Trinity that his eyes were very sore and that he went to bed with a wet handkerchief over them. In 1881 an eye operation became necessary. For over a year thereafter, Fessenden was kept out of school and not allowed to read.

Reginald then returned to Trinity School for two terms to prepare to take the honors examination. He won third place in this examination, which somewhat displeased him for he was accustomed to the tcp position in his class. He entered Bishop's College at Lennoxville, Quebec, the next fall. His college curriculum gave no hint of his future career except that he did acquire a strong foundation in mathematics. He took his degree from Bishop's in Classics. Fessenden's rise to the rank of a foremost scientist was not a matter of instruction. As incredible as it may appear, his profound knowledge of physics, chemistry, electricity and mechanics was self-taught; the result of reading in libraries and experimentation in the laboratory.

Fessenden's first job after finishing his classical education was as Principal of the Whitney Institute on the Island of Bermuda. Not only was he Principal of Whitney, he was the entire faculty and teaching staff. Scott Pearman a long time friend of the Fessenden family, secured this Bermuda position for Reginald. Pearman had nine lovely nieces and one of the prettiest, Helen Trott, caught Reginald's eye. There were picnics, horse back rides, fishing and swimming. All the young people had a fine time on the Islands.

At Whitney Institute, Fessenden being the teacher in every subject, found it necessary to start reading in his subject of least competence, the natural sciences, and he found them absolutely fascinating. In no time at all the young man had decided what he wanted to do in life; he wished to become an inventor. Logical reasoning led Fessenden to the conclusion that the proper way to become an inventor was to work in close association with the most, skilled of inventors, Mr. Thomas A. Edison. Fessenden taught at the Whitney Institute for two years. He now had sufficient money to make a try for employment with Edison. His understanding with Helen Trott now became a formal engagement. She would wait patiently until Reginald made good in New York. Then he would send for her and they would be married in America.

Alas for day-dreams! Upon arrival in New York, Edison turned down the young man's application for a job in his laboratory. Undaunted, Reginald hired on as a tester with the Edison Machine Works. For several months he helped lay down telephone conduits in New York City. His work was highly satisfactory but the circumstance that brought him to the attention of Mr. Edison was the fact that Fessenden made not one, but two, notable improvements in the art of laying cables. At the conclusion of the Edison Machine Works contract, Reginald was given a position as one of Thomas Edison's assistants at the Llewellyn Park Laboratory. The month was December, 1886.

The Llewellyn Park Laboratory possessed a most complete library on electricity, chemistry, mechanics, engineering, mining and physics. Fessenden read in this library at every available opportunity, including his lunch hour. Arthur Kennelly and Reginald Fessenden became close friends. They read advanced mathematics together and they did extra laboratory experimentation together. The two bright minds challenged each other and made for rapid progress in mastering the techniques of the new science. Within a few years, Kennelly was destined to become Professor of Electrical Engineering at both Harvard and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Fessenden was thinking about Helen and how long it would be before they would be united. Before the end of 1887 he had a promotion and he flashed the good news back to Bermuda, "I am now Head Chemist for the Edison Laboratory.“

In 1890, the whole Edison Laboratory was shut down because of financial difficulties. Fessenden went to work for the United States Company, the eastern branch of Westinghouse Electric. At this plant in Newark, New Jersey, Fessenden served as an electrician in charge of designing dynamos and other electrical equipment. Miss Helen Trott came to New York City in September of 1890 and became Mrs. Reginald Fessenden. Reginald insisted on one extravagance; they bought a beautiful wedding ring for Helen from Tiffanys. There were all too few dollars with which to start housekeeping, but the happy couple cared for nought now that the long period of waiting was over and they were at last united. The new bride did not like to be called "Mrs. Reggie," so Fessenden's nickname was shortened to just plain Reg, and Reg he remained to his friends the rest of his life.

Reginald Fessenden had become a specialist on insulation with Edison; his principal contribution as Chief Chemist. Now this specialty was to stand the young man in good stead at the very outset of his married life when more income was becoming a frustrating necessity. The Stanley Company in Pittsfield, Massachusetts, hired Reginald Fessenden in 1891 as Chief Electrician at a considerably higher salary than he was making at Westinghouse. In 1892, Stanley sent Fessenden to England to study high potential electrical rnethods. This work gave Fessenden the opportunity to visit J. J. Thomson and the Cavendish Laboratory at Cambridge University. He learned high potential methods but he learned much more. For the first time he saw the possibilities of long and dedicated research within a great university. He asked deep and demanding questions about electricity and physics of the mature minds at Cambridge.

Upon his return from England, Reginald Fessenden was offered the professorship of electrical engineering at Purdue University. His experience in England had made the prospect of his own laboratory and the library facilities of a university, quite tempting. When he finished his high potential work with the Stanley Company, Fessenden resigned to become Professor of Electrical Engineering at Purdue.

Life at Lafayette, Indiana, was a happy one for Reg and Helen Fessenden. The faculty wives took Mrs. Fessenden into their inner circles. She enjoyed the social and intellectual life of the school. Helen had had an excellent education in English schools and on the Continent, before she had met her future husband in Bermuda. Now she reveled in all the advantages of a college town. Reg did not find much time for the kind of electrical experimentation he wished to pursue. Still, Helen was having the time of her life and that made Reg glad. The moment of supreme joy for the young couple came in 1893, when their only child, a boy, was born in Lafayette and named Reginald Kenneth Fessenden.

Mr. George Westinghouse had many times regretted having lost such a talented employee as Fessenden. Now George Westinghouse of the Westinghouse Electric Company came to see Fessenden in Lafayette. In the conference that to followed, Fessenden was urged to take the newly created chair of electrical engineering at the University of Pittsburgh. To make the change of schools worth while, George Westinghouse offered Fessenden a thousand dollars bonus and the assurance of a weIl paying research assignment in his spare time with the Westinghouse plant in Pittsburgh. He was to start work on a special incandescent lamp problem at the Westinghouse Works. The University of Pittsrgh was then called Western University.

It was too good an opportunity to miss. The Fessendens moved to Pittsburgh, where Reg was kept busy, setting up the new department of electrical ingineering at the University and with his lamp project in the Westinghouse laboratory. Shortly after Wilhelm Rontgen discovered X-Rays in 1895, Fessenden was given the assignment of designing an X-Ray machine for the University of Pittsburgh. The faculty and the faculty wives were as friendly and kind as they had been at Lafayette and once more the Fessendens were absorbed in the social life of the Pittsburgh college.

Seven years passed quickly at the University of Pittsburgh. The campus llfe was pleasant enough but Fessenden began to wonder if he was getting anywhere. The teaching load was becoming burdensome and there seemed to be less and less time and opportuuity for independent research. Reg knew that it was high time for him to return to the pursuit of his original love, invention, and to leave academic halls behind. The chance came in the year 1900 and Fessenden was quick to grasp the opportunity offered.

He went to work as a wireless expert for the United States Weather Bureau after resigning his place as head of the department of electrical engineering for the University of Pittsburgh. His station was at Cobb Island, Maryland, some sixty miles down the Potomac River from Washington, D. C. His assignment was to figure out a communications system which would allow weather information to be sent between weather stations; more espeeially was it important for him to provide the apparatus that would make weather conditions and weather data available to ships at sea.