For an article about the ongoing Search for Extra Terrestrial Intelligence (SETI) program, Venture Beat related the story about the very first modern SETI experiment, carried out in 1924 by astronomer David Peck Todd, Amherst College Class of 1875, and who taught astronomy and served as director of the observatory here from 1881 to 1917.
Todd set about on the endeavor with inventor Charles Jenkins, who had invented a “radio photo message machine … an early version of a television transmitter and receiver, a device that could transmit photos over radio waves,” Venture Beat wrote.
The pair set out to aim the device at Mars, and listen.
“Their search was conducted at too low of a frequency to see through the ionosphere, which they didn’t know at the time. But it speaks to this partnership which continued to develop throughout the 50s and 60s, and continues to this day, between electrical engineering and astronomy in searching for technology beyond the earth,” the article summed up.