A D V E N T U R E S in C Y B E R S O U N DNathan Stubblefield : 1858 - 1928
Somewhere in the shadows of the early history of radio looms the mysterious figure of Nathan B. Stubblefield. Nathan B. Stubblefield? Nora Blatch? Reginald A. Fessenden? Professor Amos Dolbear? Where do they get those names? Stubblefield was born in, grew up in, lived in, and died in Murray , Kentucky. The citizens of that miniscule town were affectionate towards their mad radio genius, and erected a monument to Stubblefield in 1930. They called him The Father of Radio. Stubblefield was poor, and a mystic. He was a mendicant and a martyr to his invention...convinced that everyone wanted to steal it from him. Jim Lucas said that his home was so wired "that if a stranger approached within a half a mile, it set off a battery of bells." And Stubblefield, stubby mystic that he was, said:
"I have solved the problem of telephoning without wires through the earth as Signor Marconi has of sending signals through space. But, I can also telephone without wires through space as well as through the earth, because my medium is everywhere.""My medium is everywhere"; said the self-taught inventor who would later tell people that he would turn whole hillsides light with "mysterious beams", Stubblefield, the mystic of the mystic transmission of waves through air and land and water, to the nether reaches of the stars. Everybody in Murray knew about Stubblefield's Black Box, which made the light and voices appear out of thin air. In 1892, (14 years before Fessenden's experiment from Brant Rock) he handed his friend Rainey T. Wells a box, and told him to walk away from the shack, Stubblefield always lived in a shack, Wells said later:
"I had hardly reached my post.. when I heard I heard HELLO RAINEY come booming out of the receiver. I jumped a foot and said to myself THIS FELLOW IS FOOLING ME. HE HAS WIRES SOMEPLACE. (Wells moved a few feet further on.) All the while he kept talking to me...but there were no wires, I tell you."Early radio magic, the magic of sending the voice through nothing. But they stole his invention. Of course: they always do. The Wireless Telephone Company of America, set up by "promoters" and "speculators"... smooth talkers (unlike the verbally rustic Stubblefield) who jacked up the price of the stock, then disappeared. Stubblefield wrote for the prospectus:
"I can telephone without wires a mile or more now, and when the more powerful apparatus on which I am working is finished, combined with further developments, the distance will be unlimited..." Stubblefield called the New York promoters a bunch of "damned rascals". He said they were "defrauding the public". What he meant was that they were defrauding his dream of unlimited voices, for unlimited distances, and with unlimited lights. They wanted to take his loops and coils and make money. Stubblefield was so devastated by these "animals from the city" that in 1913 he went back to his shack and for fifteen years was barely seen. Sometimes the neighbors saw him "from a distance" and some observers reported seeing mysterious lights and hearing weird sounds in the vicinity of Stubblefield's home. Two weeks before his death, Stubblefield visited with a neighbor, Mrs. L.E. Owens. He asked her to write his story. He said:
"I've lived fifty years before my time. The past is nothing. I have perfected now the greatest invention the world has ever known. I've taken light from the air and the earth as I did with sound.. I want you to know about making a whole hillside blossom with light..."In 1928, Nathan B. Stubblefield of Murray, Kentucky died at seventy of starvation...and too many visions.
Nathan B. Stubblefield is reputed to have made the first wireless voice transmissions in 1892 in Murray, Kentucky. His goal was to develop a method of "general transmission of news of every description." For some reason, the business arrangements were unsatisfactory, and Stubblefield went into seclusion, continuing to research until his death in 1928. One major problem: no way to transmit other than very short distances. Another, it not certain he even used "radio waves", instead relying on an induction field. The issue is hotly debated in Kentucky, and the Kentucky Association of Broadcasters does not recognize Stubblefield's claims.
This article tells the story of Nathan Stubblefield and his almost-invention, the cell phone. In 1902, the Kentucky melon farmer, who had spent all of his time and money on his inventions, developed the first (albeit primitive) cellular phone. Years earlier, Stubblefield had developed and implemented the mechanical phone in a few Kentucky towns. This invention, which was like the well-known tin-cans-and-string models that kids make, was outmoded when the Bell telephone company moved into Kentucky. Then, Stubblefield decided to try a wireless phone because he figured that it would be too difficult and expensive to string wires and poles all over rural Kentucky. To do this, Stubblefield used electromagnetic induction. The invention worked, but reception failed after about a half mile, so Stubblefield turned to natural conduction instead (meaning that instead of using wires, the systems used water or land). Sadly, Stubblefield was cheated by a company who stole his invention, and he became a hermit who died of starvation a few years later. I think that this story is interesting, not because of Stubblefield's near-contributions to technology, but rather because of the visions he had of the future. It's almost impossible for us to imagine what our world would be like without various types of telecommunications, yet less than a century ago, people like Nathan Stubblefield worked tirelessly to contribute new ideas and media to society.
On the lawn of the court house in Murray, Kentucky, there is a stone memorial which commemorates the day in 1892 that Nathan Stubblefield performed an unusual demonstration. Stubblefield, a farmer and telephone repairman living in Calloway County, Kentucky, claimed he could send messages through the air without wires, a claim which attracted a huge crowd of spectators. At points about two hundred feet apart on the lawn, Stubblefield and his son had set up two boxes that were not connected in any visible way. Each box was about two feet square and contained a telephone, through which stubblefield and his son talked as if they were standing next to each other, their voices being perfectly audible to the crowds gathered around each box. It's said that his demonstration was greeted by hoots and snickers, causing the inventor to angrily gather up his equipment and leave. However, word of the demonstration reached the St. Louis Post Dispatch, who wrote to Stubblefield to request another demonstration. Weeks later, the newspaper received a simple postcard: "Have accepted your invitation. Come to my place any time. Nathan Stubblefield." The Post Dispatch reporter arrived at the farm on January 10, 1902, and was handed a telephone attached to two steel rods about four feet long each, and was instructed to go anywhere in the neighborhood, stick the rods in the ground, and put the receiver to his ear. In an article written later, the reporter described how he traveled about a mile from the inventor's farm, stabbed the rods into the ground, and... "I could hear every syllable the Stubblefield boy spoke into the transmitter as clearly as if he were just across the room!" According to the same article, Stubblefield claimed his apparatus worked by using the electrical field which permeates all matter. The newspaper article won Stubblefield an invitation to demonstrate his invention in Philadelphia; this demonstration, in May 1902, is said to have done well. From there the inventor went to washington, D.C., where it's said he amazed scientists with his discovery. At this demonstration one of his boxes was placed on a steamship, the Bartholdi, on the Potomac River, while a number of other boxes were positioned along the shore at sites of the users' choosing. Again, communication between the boxes -- including the one on the ship -- was fantastically clear. The Washington Evening Star's headline for May 21, 1902, read: "First Practical Test of Wireless Telegraphy Heard for Half Mile. Invention of Kentucky Farmer. Wireless telephony demonstrated beyond question." Strangely, Stubblefield never marketed his invention. After his stunning success in Washington, he packed up and went home, afraid, some said, of havinfg his ideas stolen. He's also said to have taken out patents of his equipment, but that these patents don't make sense to those who've studied them. Stubblefield dropped out of the public eye. In the Spring of 1929 he was found dead in his home, his equipment was gone, and his records scattered.
Further Reading Lochte, Bob, Kentucky Farmer Invents Wireless Telephone! But was it Radio?
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