Mahlon Loomis
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Mahon Loomis (1826 – 1886) was an early wireless experimenter born in Oppenheim, New York
Loomis, a Washington, DC dentist, claimed to have transmitted signals in October 1866 between two Blue Ridge Mountain-tops 14 miles apart in Virginia, using kites as antennas, but with no independent witnesses present.
Loomis received [U.S. Patent 129971] for a wireless telegraph in 1872. This patent makes a vague claim about using atmospheric electricity to eliminate the overhead wire used by the existing telegraph systems, but it contains no schematic diagram of how to build it, and no theory of how it might function. It is substantially similar to [U.S. Patent 126356] received three months earlier by William Henry Ward.
In January 1873, US Congress declined to charter 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...."
External links
- [Library of Congress] exhibit with Loomis notebooks
- [United States Early Radio History] by Thomas H. White suggesting Loomis' work may have been fraudulent, citing lack of evidence
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