Breakthroughs from Our Past: Honouring a Canadian Inventor
When Reginald Fessenden announced a Christmas Eve radio program that included Handel’s “Largo” and his own violin-and-vocal rendition of “O Holy Night,” his listeners were transfixed. They had never heard such a thing before. No one had. The year was 1906, and Fessenden was unveiling his new discovery: a means to broadcast voice over radio. Received by ships more than 1,600 kilometres away in the Caribbean, Fessenden’s transmission was the inaugural broadcast of radio as we know it–and a significant leap over Marconi’s trans-atlantic Morse code five years earlier.
The story should be well-known, at least to Canadians, but Fessenden – who was born in 1866 in East Bolton, Quebec, and died in Bermuda in 1932 – has unaccountably lingered on the sidelines of history. “He was a brilliant inventor, with over 500 patents to his name,” says his great-nephew John Blachford, BEng’59, PhD’63. Among Fessenden’s other innovations: a fire retardant and a sonic depth sounder, which could be used to measure ocean depths or detect submarines. "He couldn't get support from the Canadian government, so Fessenden did most of his work in the United States – but he never received recognition there, because he was Canadian. His name should be more prominent.”
Blachford is raising Fessenden’s profile with a $1.25-million gift, which will be joined by a $750,000 gift from another McGill alumnus, to create a $2-million endowment for the Fessenden Professorship in Science Innovationin McGill’s Faculty of Science. The Professorship, which will encourage the commercialization of research, will be awarded on a two-year basis to help a faculty member develop an innovative research idea to the stage where it could prove viable in the marketplace.
“Fessenden himself took a scientific approach to his own inventions, and liked to be able to explain how his inventions worked,” says Blachford, President of H.L. Blachford, who has also distinguished himself in the laboratory, creating noise-reducing materials and lubricants. His gift has been supplemented by one of $250,000 from his son, Erik Blachford, previously CEO of Expedia and currently CEO of Terrapass, to create three Reginald Fessenden Prizes in Innovation, which will be awarded annually undergraduate to a professor, a graduate student and an student, to promote and recognize innovative thinking in the field of science.
So,just what makes a good inventor? “I think you have to be able to combine knowledge from very different fields,” Blachford suggests. “It’s a matter of making connections.”