Here is a sense of how much of an international effort the development of the radio was. James Clerk Maxwell, a Scottish physicist, predicted radio waves; Heinrich Rudolph Hertz, a German electrical engineer first discovered them; Guglielmo Marconi, an Italian inventor proved with his devices it was possible to send wireless radio signals – just short dots and dashes by telegraph. It took a Canadian, Reginald Fessenden, to make the first broadcast by radio.

On this day, December 24, in 1906, Reginald Fassenden, Quebec-born but New York city-residing, made the first successful broadcast by radio from Brant Rock in Massachusetts.

The short Christmas concert broadcast included a recording of George Frideric Handel’s “Ombra mai fu” (Largo), followed by a performance of “O Holy Night” on the violin played by Fessenden himself. He concluded the program with reading a passage from the Gospel of Luke: “Glory to God in the highest and on earth peace to men of good will.”