Well, not really. Fessenden had a wide-ranging vision and tried his hand in many different areas. Around 1914 he got into agriculture.
In one patent he wrote a treatise on improving agriculture, showing the tech optimism of the time. Mass production will solve all problems. He developed a sort of super-greenhouse system where everything could be controlled and sunlight could be focused and directed where needed.
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Agriculture as now carried on is not on a scientific basis, nor have the principles of engineering been applied to this vast industry. The farmer at the present time is the slave of weather conditions which are really capable of complete control. He carries on a constant warfare against weeds and plant diseases, both of which may be easily eliminated. He must adapt himself to the climate in which his land is located, whereas he might easily control his climate. The character of his crops and the time of their production can also be directly controlled, and finally the present great waste of solar energy can be largely avoided. All this by the simple expedients of concentrating the acreage, housing the plants, sterilizing the soil, controlling the production and character of plants by changing light and temperature conditions, etc., as herein set forth.
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Such systems never caught on. Producing vast quantities of wheat and corn inside vast buildings would necessarily be more expensive than letting Nature do its part of the job. Mechanized planting and harvesting, already common then, have improved over the years, and new crop varieties handled plant diseases and climate adaptation better. The seed scientists at ag schools like K-State saved more lives than all the dictators and Carbon Crazies killed.
Today the same tech optimism has mutated into tech dystopia, with the insane Carbon Cultists proposing total synthesis of all foods.
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A later Fessenden patent showed a simpler system to irrigate plants with static electricity. This was an active area of research around 1900, with promising results. I discussed it, including a bit of real science of my own, several years ago.
Fessenden apparently did his own experiments and found good results, culminating in this patent.
Here we see a farm with a Zenith Wincharger providing its electricity. Next to the Wincharger’s shed is a mysterious machine bathing trees in a static field.
Inside the shed we see Fessenden’s setup, similar to his wireless transmitter. The DC from the Wincharger goes into a series loop with a buzzer and an induction coil. The buzzer breaks up the DC into pulses to drive the coil. There’s also a timer to pulse the irrigator at fast intervals. Fessenden found that a 5-second cycle of rising and falling electricity was most effective at boosting growth. This is an intriguing pattern, not obviously matching anything in Nature.
Close up we see the high-voltage secondary of the induction coil, passing through a commercial rectifier box so the irrigator only gets a negative charge. The rectifier feeds the wire on the right, leading through the wall to the irrigator.
The irrigator bathes each plant in a pulsed ionized field, giving it direct electrical energy to supplement the sunlight.
Graphics sidenote: Humans can’t really see static fields, but the world must look like this to bees and other insects who sense flower fields at a distance.
Polistra's Mill 