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A voice heard at sea
published: Tuesday | December 26, 2006 <DIV class=KonaBody yJQdZ="true">
Dan Rather
"Twas the night before Christmas, 1906, when something happened that stirred the world and stirs it still. On that dark evening, radio operators aboard ships off the northernAlantic coast heard a whoosh of static issue from their sets, followed by something altogether new: a human voice.
Until that moment 100 years ago, all that had been heard coming out of 'the wireless' were the dots and dashes of Morse code. Radio was simply a way for ships at sea to use the telegraph technology that had revolutionised land-based communications. It was considered a utilitarian invention, a tool with very specific applications.
A man named Reginald Fessenden changed all that. Few are familiar with the name today, but his was the voice that came crackling over those shipboard radios on that long-ago Christmas Eve, transmitted from a small tower on Brant Rock, Massachusetts. To the wonder of his small group of listeners, he played O Holy Night on violin and read some biblical passages as part of a short holiday programme. It was the first radio broadcast, the first use of voice and music to entertain, inform and inspire listeners far away. And, despite its novelty, that history-making broadcast was soon all but forgotten.
The technology that made it possible endured, though it wasn't until the 1920s that commercial radio as we know it truly got under way. By the end of that decade, television was in its earliest infancy, though it would be another decade before it even approached a form we would recognise today. The rest of the story, it seems safe to say, is one with which we are all well familiar.
Unprecedented innovation
Looking back over a century of such unprecedented innovation, from the unlocking of the atom to journeys into space, it is hard if not foolhardy to try to identify one that stands above the rest.
The emergence of broadcast media might not deserve pride of place among the century's momen-tous developments, but none other has been in so many places, at so many times. Broadcasts from virtually every spot on Earth to the surfaces of the moon and Mars have taken us there, too.
Radio and the media that have followed in its wake have not only remade our world; they have also fundamentally changed the ways in which we humans relate to one another. For better and for worse, Reginald Fessenden's lone voice has been multiplied into a seemingly- infinite array of voices reaching us from all over the world. At their best, these voices can teach, illuminate and even enlighten us, to paraphrase Edward R. Murrow, the father of broadcast journalism. And at their worst, they can spread thoughts of intolerance and even murderous hatred. They can convey news of a moon landing or the fall of the Berlin Wall, and they carry incitements to commit genocide, as they did in Rwanda in 1994.
The media voices have become all but ubiquitous, and for some, unfortunately, they can seem more real than the voices of the living, breathing people around them. There are places in America where one is more likely to be familiar with the Thursday night TV line-up than the names of one's neighbours.
What started out as a simple tool is still, 100 years later, only as good or as bad as the uses to which we put it. But as we mark a century linked to one another through broadcasting, we might remember that it all began with a solitary voice in the night, transmitting a message of peace on Earth, goodwill toward men.
Dan Rather is an American television broadcaster. </DI
A voice heard at sea
published: Tuesday | December 26, 2006 <DIV class=KonaBody yJQdZ="true">
Dan Rather
"Twas the night before Christmas, 1906, when something happened that stirred the world and stirs it still. On that dark evening, radio operators aboard ships off the northernAlantic coast heard a whoosh of static issue from their sets, followed by something altogether new: a human voice.
Until that moment 100 years ago, all that had been heard coming out of 'the wireless' were the dots and dashes of Morse code. Radio was simply a way for ships at sea to use the telegraph technology that had revolutionised land-based communications. It was considered a utilitarian invention, a tool with very specific applications.
A man named Reginald Fessenden changed all that. Few are familiar with the name today, but his was the voice that came crackling over those shipboard radios on that long-ago Christmas Eve, transmitted from a small tower on Brant Rock, Massachusetts. To the wonder of his small group of listeners, he played O Holy Night on violin and read some biblical passages as part of a short holiday programme. It was the first radio broadcast, the first use of voice and music to entertain, inform and inspire listeners far away. And, despite its novelty, that history-making broadcast was soon all but forgotten.
The technology that made it possible endured, though it wasn't until the 1920s that commercial radio as we know it truly got under way. By the end of that decade, television was in its earliest infancy, though it would be another decade before it even approached a form we would recognise today. The rest of the story, it seems safe to say, is one with which we are all well familiar.
Unprecedented innovation
Looking back over a century of such unprecedented innovation, from the unlocking of the atom to journeys into space, it is hard if not foolhardy to try to identify one that stands above the rest.
The emergence of broadcast media might not deserve pride of place among the century's momen-tous developments, but none other has been in so many places, at so many times. Broadcasts from virtually every spot on Earth to the surfaces of the moon and Mars have taken us there, too.
Radio and the media that have followed in its wake have not only remade our world; they have also fundamentally changed the ways in which we humans relate to one another. For better and for worse, Reginald Fessenden's lone voice has been multiplied into a seemingly- infinite array of voices reaching us from all over the world. At their best, these voices can teach, illuminate and even enlighten us, to paraphrase Edward R. Murrow, the father of broadcast journalism. And at their worst, they can spread thoughts of intolerance and even murderous hatred. They can convey news of a moon landing or the fall of the Berlin Wall, and they carry incitements to commit genocide, as they did in Rwanda in 1994.
The media voices have become all but ubiquitous, and for some, unfortunately, they can seem more real than the voices of the living, breathing people around them. There are places in America where one is more likely to be familiar with the Thursday night TV line-up than the names of one's neighbours.
What started out as a simple tool is still, 100 years later, only as good or as bad as the uses to which we put it. But as we mark a century linked to one another through broadcasting, we might remember that it all began with a solitary voice in the night, transmitting a message of peace on Earth, goodwill toward men.
Dan Rather is an American television broadcaster. </DI