Visitors to Hatteras Village may notice a sign on the north end of the village and may even notice there is a Fessenden Center.
The sign and the Fessenden Center are a tribute to Reginald Fessenden, a remarkable inventor and someone who arguably had more to do with the radio than his far better known contemporary Marconi.
By 1900 Morse code was the most technologically advanced method of communication. It was fast and as telegraph wires spread across the globe, the world for the first time became truly interconnected.
The problem was those wires—they were expensive and the US Weather Bureau needed a cheaper way to send weather information from remote areas that did not have a telegraph wire…Hatteras Village, as an example.
Fessenden was considered an up and coming scientific mind and in 1900 the Weather Bureau awarded him a $3000 contract to develop a wireless system. The contract amount would be approximately $100,000 today.
Fessenden, in 1900 had sent a wireless voice message over a one mile distance—something that had not been done previously.
Encouraged he looked for someplace that was remote and had a weather station, and Manteo and Hatteras Village was ideal. He moved his family to Manteo and over the next year and a half threw himself into his work.
In March of 1902—success. He transmitted a 127 word message between Buxton and Manteo over the air, a distance of almost 50 miles.
Nothing like that had ever been done before.
What followed is a bit murky. Fessenden claimed the Weather Service usurped his patent; the weather service claimed his work was theirs. In 1902 Fessenden resigned from the Weather Service, and as far as anyone knows, never returned to the Outer Banks.
Stories and history abound from Corolla to Hatteras Village on the Outer Banks. Be sure to plan you Brindley Beach Vacations to learn more of life on a sandbar.