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Fessenden Update

PostPosted: Sun Jun 18, 2006 12:52 pm
by Machrihanish
FYI: sent to the Machrihanish Online webmaster: (also forwarded to Duncan)

Dear webmaster:

Congratulations on your superb website and on your numerous postings on Reginald Fessenden and the upcoming centennial of his Christmas Eve 1906 broadcast. I would appreciate your sharing this e-mail with Mr. McArthur and our other "brothers in Fessenden" across the pond.

As you know, WATD-FM and the Town of Marshfield, Massachusetts, USA. are sponsoring a three-day celebration to be held Friday afternoon through Sunday afternoon 4-6 August on the grounds of the Daniel Webster House in Marshfield. (Brant Rock is a coastal village in the Town of Marshfield; Daniel Webster was a U.S. Secretary of State in the 19th Century.) Ed Perry, president of WATD, is spearheading the event. Details are available on our website at radiosfirstvoice.org. (The station has 50,000 watts of power, with a broadcast radius of approximately 50 miles extending north beyond Boston and south to Cape Cod. Our studios and transmitter are located only a few miles from the Fessenden site at Brant Rock.)

I am in charge of producing the deluxe souvenir program for the event, which we hope will become a collector's item, as is the program WATD produced for its 1991 Fessenden celebration. The program will include a large selection of rare photographs of Fessenden and his crew, the wireless station at Brant Rock, and other related scenes. I'm also in the midst of writing a series of stories that will be in the program, including a Fessenden biography, a timeline of milestones in wireless research preceding the 1906 broadcast, and a detailed description of the wireless installations in Marshfield and Macrihanish. Lastly, I'm well along on the writing of an original, 15-minute radio drama re-creating the Christmas Eve broadcast. The play will be performed at the Saturday-night dinner by members of the Massasoit Radio Players and broadcast live on WATD.

I plan to include at least one full page in the program on the history of Macrihanish, the East Tower installation, and your ongoing program of Fessenden-related observances. I'd like to invite you all to submit any material you like for possible inclusion in the souvenir program. It would be brilliant if you could send us a photo of the East Tower base with some of your Fessenden enthusiasts grouped around it, similar to the photo that ran with the local newspaper story you've posted.

I would also like to request permission to include two of the old postcard views on your site: the shot of East Tower, and the shot of the old village post office. Since I will be including a postcard view of Brant Rock and the Marshfield shoreline near the West Tower site, I would appreciate it if you could include a photo of the Macrihanish shore to counterbalance it. If you give me permission, perhaps I can download one of your beautiful "sunset views" from the website.

The program will not be going to press before late July, but I would be grateful if you could give me your reply at your earliest convenience regarding permission to download the three above-mentioned photos from your website, since I would like to finish the bulk of the program pages as far in advance as possible.

I salute you all, and I look forward to communicating with you in our shared endeavour. As the grandson of a full-blooded Scotswoman, and as a frequent visitor to the UK, I'm very proud to be a part of it.

With my very best wishes,
Scott Wheeler
Boston, USA.