Montreal Gazette on centennial of 1st radio broadcast

[Mark Laurence]

Saturday's Montreal Gazette has a big (most of page 3) article on the  
100th anniversary of the first radio broadcast, and the controversy  
surrounding the claims of inventor Reginald Fessenden.  He's from  
Quebec, the broadcast originated near Boston.  The article cites  
Radio World, recently stirring up doubts about why this momentous  
event didn't get reported until 1932.  Or maybe it was reported in  
1928: the Gazette says "two historians have found evidence that  
precedes the 1932 letter – though only by four years.

“'As far as we can determine, the first published (their italics)  
statement concerning the Christmas Eve 1906 broadcast occurred more  
than two decades later, when Westinghouse vicepresident H.P. Davis  
spoke at Harvard University in April 1928,” Donna Halper and  
Christopher Sterling wrote in a paper prepared for the 2006 edition  
of the Antique Wireless Association Review.'"

It's too bad, but the article online is only available to Montreal  
Gazette subscribers.  But there's a shorter CP article viewable  
here:  http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/LAC. 
20061223.RADIO23/TPStory/National

I don't want to quote too much from the copyrighted article, but it  
reaches a nice conclusion:

"The wonder of what he did – sending voices and music across the  
empty air, to resound through the headsets of wondering listeners  
many miles away – is a piece of magic that recurs every time we turn  
on a radio today."