Ernst Fredrik Werner Alexanderson
- The world's first radio programme
- 344 patents
- The station at Grimeton, Sweden
- The first television play
- Knight of the Order of the Northern Star
The story of Ernst Alexanderson's life's work can be seen as reflecting the progress made by electricity over more than half a century. By 1902 when he commenced, at the age of 24, his employment with the General Electric Co. in Schenectady, electric power, apart from its applications in lighting, had to a large extent replaced previous sources of power in mining and metal engineering, at sawmills and at pulpmills. A few years before the turn of the century, Marconi had succeeded with the wireless transmission of Morse signals over steadily increasing distances. Wireless telegraphy had been born, and it constituted yet another example of the advance for electricity. As early as 1904 the young immigrant was assigned the task - regarded as impossible by all the experts - of designing for radio pioneer Reginald A. Fessenden a high-frequency generator of 100 kHz, and with the requirement of an output measured in kW. He accepted the challenge, and on Christmas Eve 1906 Fessenden was able to broadcast the world's first radio programme with song and music via Alexanderson's creation, a high-frequency alternator for undamped oscillations.
Picture: The two Alexanderson alternators at Grimeton, Sweden
This alternator was further developed, assuming its final form at the end of the First World War. President Woodrow Wilson's "Fourteen Points" and an exhortation to the Kaiser to abdicate were broadcast by means of the Alexanderson alternator in 1918 in the "Marconi station" in New Brunswick. Marconi who visited Schenectady in 1915 found Alexanderson's alternator to be superior to his own equipment in the big, newly constructed station.
As a result, the Marconi equipment was torn out, and the alternator installed. Via the New Brunswick station, which had finally acquired a 200 kW alternator, and was placed during the war under the command of the US Navy, President Wilson was able to maintain wireless telephone contact with the USA throughout his voyage to the Peace Conference in Versailles, and back.