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In 1866, Washington, D.C. dentist and pioneer in radio telegraphy, Dr. Mahlon Loomis, (b. NY, July 21, 1826, d. Oct. 13 1886) developed a method of transmitting and receiving messages using the Earth's atmosphere as a conductor. Loomis sent up kites 18 miles apart from two West Virginia mountaintops. The kites were covered with a copper screen and were connected to the ground with copper wires.

The wire from each kite string was connected to one side of a galvanometer; the other side was held by Loomis, who was ready to make a connection to a coil buried in the Earth. The receiving station connection, between the meter and the coil buried in the Earth, was always closed, and whenever the circuit was closed at the transmitting end, the galvanometer at the receiving station actually dipped. Congress then awarded Loomis a $50,000 research grant.

Source: http://www.astro.virginia.edu/~eww6n/bios/Loomis.html

Report of Mahlon Loomis' work in the April 17, 1879 issue of The American Socialist

The American Socialist was published in Oneida, New York by the Socialist Commune (The Oneida Community) located there, founded by John Humphrey Noyes.

Courtesy of Donna Haines at oldbooksandpaper.com

Electrical Telegraphing Without Wires

Scientific American Feb 15, 1879 p.104

Professor [Mahlon] Loomis continues his experiments in the mountains of West Virginia to demonstrate his theory that at certain elevations there is a natural electric current, by taking advantage of which telegraphic messages may be sent without the use of wire. It is said that he as telegraphed as far as eleven miles by means of kites flown with copper wires.

When the kites reached the same altitude, or got into the same current, communication by means of an instrument similar to the Morse instrument was easy, but ceased as soon as one of the kites was lowered. He has built towers on two hills about twenty miles apart and from the tops of them has run up steel rods into the region of electric current.

Source: From the collection of Judy Swett

In 1866, American dentist Mahlon Loomis (1826-1886) uses radio waves to send telegraph messages between two mountains in West Virginia - a distance of 22.5km - using aerials held in the air by kites. He is granted the world's first wireless patent, for an 'Improvement in Telegraphy' on 20th July 1872.

Source: http://www.cequel.co.uk/acclarke/shc.html

Born in New York, and a dentist by profession Mahlon Loomis became interested in electricity and conducted several experiments on the effects of electricity on plant growth. His work on wireless communication - although not actually radio communication - could well have been more important had it not been for the economy of the day. He never had the financial backing to continue his work.

Among his other experiments were attempts to replace batteries with electricity taken from the atmosphere - he planned to fly kites attached to long wires to gather this electricity.

Source: http://www.northernnet.com/bchris/pioneer.htm

Did a West Virginian Invent Radio?

Real Radio Inventor Always Ignored - Raleigh Register, Beckley, W. Va., Sept. 7, 1976

TERRA ALTA, W. Va. (UPI) - When the radio is turned on, Mahlon Loomis isn't the household name that pops to mind. It's the Italian, Guglielmo Marconi. But there is ample evidence that Loomis, of Oppenheim, N. Y., who settled in this tiny town of 1,400, invented the wireless telegraph in 1872, two years before Marconi - the man credited with the invention - was born.

[Mahlon] Loomis, a dentist, transmitted signals in October 1866 between two Virginia mountaintops, using kites as antennae. The messages traveled 18 miles. In 1870, Loomis successfully transmitted telegraphic signals between two ships which were two miles apart on the Chesapeake Bay. The U. S. Navy sponsored those experiments. In January 1873, Congress chartered the Loomis Aerial Telegraph Co. One congressman, pleading Loomis' case in the House, said, ...

"He entertains a dream, and it may be only a dream, a wild dream that when his proposition comes to be fully applied, it may light and warm your houses...."

"Of course this setup was very elementary"...."From what we found out, he would notify his assistant and then transmit the message. The signal was probably very faint but it was there. He did do it"...."His family is tired of trying to get anything done," Whitehair said. "We've contacted (Rep.) Harley Staggers (D-W. Va.) but we haven't heard anything. We also wrote letters to the Bicentennial Commission, but we couldn't get anything done there, either."

Yet, even if he isn't sanctioned as the main who invented radio, the failure won't be anything new to the ex-New Yorker. For even when he died, he couldn't get people to do what he wanted them to. When he died, Loomis made one simple wish - that a rose bush be planted on his grave. That request was ignored.

The following is part of a message posted to a broadcasting history forum by broadcast historian Bill Jaker.

Whether Loomis really radiated or merely inducted may be beside the point. He did try signalling without wires, and he had a vision of a worldwide system of communications. With financial and technical support his work could have stimulated refinements by others that might have made the wireless a going concern a decade or two before Marconi, Fessenden, deForest, et al.

But Mahlon Loomis became an embittered man. His wife left him and he moved to West Virginia, where his brother owned some property. Settling in the village of Terra Alta, in the mountains near the Maryland and Pennsylvania lines, he continued some experimentation. According to the local people in Terra Alta, Loomis set up a link between the railroad station and the village pharmacy and the signal that the train was arriving may have been the first practical use of wireless.

At one point Loomis reportedly installed his apparatus on a high hill in Terra Alta and went sulking to another hilltop a few miles away, insisting that he would speak to no one unless they called him on his wireless. A few years ago, a couple of engineers at the Comsat station in Etam, W Va -- who had replicated the Loomis experiments -- hacked their way to the site of the hilltop retreat and discovered what could have been the remains of an antenna. An elderly resident of the area recounted for them a story his father had told about an eccentric dentist from Terra Alta.

Mahlon Loomis is buried in the town cemetery in Terra Alta, and a historical marker along W Va Route 7 notes his gravesite and tells of his work. Along with a listing in the Guinness Book of World Records, it's the most public recognition he's received.

Mahlon Loomis is considered by some the true inventor of radio. He was a dentist from New York state who settled in Terra Alta. The following is from QST Magazine:...

"The first person who succeeded in transmitting through air was apparently Dr. Mahlon Loomis, a dentist. At the close of the Civil War in 1865, he flew two kites, carrying wires, from mountain tops 14-miles (23-kms.) apart.

The wire from one kite was attached to ground through a telegraph key; the other kite-wire was grounded through a galvanometer that could measure very small currents. When he operated the key, detectable changes of current occurred in the other kite wire. He was granted a patent on his system in 1872, but no known attempt was made to make use of the phenomenon commercially. Interestingly, the experiment was duplicated 44 years later in London where, during a hailstorm, experimenters successfully communicated over a distance of 3-miles (5-km)."

Dr. Mahlon Loomis, a dentist, is well-documented to have transmitted telegraphic messages a distance of 18 miles between the tops of Cohocton Mountain and Beorse Deer Mountain, Virginia throughout 1865 and 1866. His "transmitter" and "receiver" were a key at one site and a galvanometer at the other, each connected to a metallic wire and a wire-screened kite.

As such, there was no "RF" or radio-frequency signals as we know them today. Loomis merely interrupted currents in the antenna resulting from flying an antenna into a cloud. His development was set back by the financial "Black Friday of September 25, 1869. He was, however, granted U.S. patent number 129,971 on July 30, 1872 for an "Improvement in Telegraphing," and Loomis did transmit intelligence between two points using electromagnetic effects.

Source: http://www.fedele.com/website/tech/bcst-faq.htm

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