By Dave Jensen, W7DGJ

National pride has a great deal to do with who is credited with inventions. In Russia, for example, Radio Day is still celebrated every May 7th as it is the anniversary of Alexander Popov's demonstration of a radio receiver. I've always been a bit surprised that American pride doesn't stand behind the early radio pioneer, Mahlon Loomis, as he (and Popov) dove into the field well in advance of Marconi. While Marconi deserves credit for the further development, patenting, and commercialization of radio, Loomis certainly should have more attention than he has been given. This fellow laid important groundwork for Marconi and was even two decades ahead of the Russian.

What do we know about this dentist from Lynchburg, Virginia? Globally, amateur radio operators should feel a certain pride in his exploits because Loomis demonstrated how amateur experimentation provides value to our lives. The Amateur Radio Service is filled with this spirit. He wasn't a scientist, professor, or engineer . . . just a regular guy with an inquisitive nature.

In his journal on February 20, 1864 (ten years before the birth of Marconi) Loomis wrote “I have been for years trying to study out a process by which telegraphic communications could be made across the ocean without any wires, and also from point-to-point on the earth, dispensing with wires entirely.” 

Unfortunately, at the time he wrote this, the States were embroiled in civil war; Lynchburg was a vital rail hub for the Confederacy. The Battle of Lynchburg had torn apart his community just a few months after his journal entry, so it certainly wasn't a good time to be wandering the mountains doing scientific experiments. 

That's why Mahlon Loomis put his plans on hold until the smoke cleared. He didn't pick them up again until October of 1866, after the Civil War had ended.

Who Was Mahlon Loomis?

Mahlon was one of eight children in a free-thinking, religious family where Mom and Dad taught their children that with God's gifts they could grow up to be anyone they wanted to be. Mahlon moved to Ohio for a time and studied dentistry, returning to Virginia to practice and earning a good living. In those years as a dentist he constantly flexed his inquisitive mind not only on his field, but on the developing science of electricity.

Along the way, Mahlon became knowledgeable about patents and the commercial side of his discoveries. He invented a pure porcelain set of dentures, for example, which was far ahead of its time but where his dentist colleagues fought him -- his patents were considered "unethical" in dentistry. Mahlon recognized that inventions could pay their way as long as he could maintain control of his intellectual property -- this was his entrepreneurial drive taking root.

Initially, he wanted to improve agriculture. He theorized that electricity might provide a stimulus to plants and force their rapid growth. While the idea wasn't entirely new, he dispensed with batteries and focused on getting his electricity from the static charges in the atmosphere. He flew kites up with fine, copper wire and a metal grid on one side. In what sounds like Ben Franklin at work, Loomis found his electricity but unfortunately it failed to make his plants grow. 

Instead of disappointment, Loomis looked at his results to find another angle for what he had witnessed -- a trait of all the best inventors. Through this experiment, he had discovered that kites in one location could send a flow of electricity to ground and that this could be detected across many miles in another kite attached to an early ammeter. He found that he could take the kite's wire and touch it to ground, creating a wave that would be detected at great distances. He immediately envisioned using this "wire-to-ground" method to send pulses, or code, from one location to another. Voila! Later, this concept formed the basis of what he called the Loomis Aerial Telegraph Company.

Unfortunately, when attempting to fund the idea further, Loomis was often portrayed as a crank. He needed proof . . .  proof witnessed by significant people in order to move the idea into reality. You can imagine how difficult a job that would be, as the world had only recently been transformed by wired telegraphy, and here was this Dentist proposing that "air" could be the carrier for telegraphic signals. He was ripe to be ridiculed.

Two Hilltops in Virginia

It was a chilly day in October, 1866 near Lynchburg (Virginia) when two parties set out for hilltops located to the East of the Blue Ridge Mountains. Loomis set up his equipment on Bear Den Mountain (photo above) and the second team set up almost 18 miles away on an adjacent hilltop. Both teams included reporters, scientists and even two politicians, Senator Samuel Pomeroy of Kansas and Representative John Bingham of Ohio. While there is no record of the scientific attendees, both politicians went on to support Loomis later with personal recollections of what they saw. 

He repeated his earlier experiements with kites attached to wires and connected to ground through galvanometers. The experiment went flawlessly; the two teams reversed their process at a predetermined time and sent pulses back in the other direction. By touching the kite wires to ground, radio waves were generated as pulses that were detected many miles away. It was indeed the first time that radio waves were generated and sent across a distance to be "heard" by others remotely.

Dr. Robert Marriott, a radio pioneer himself and the first president of the Institute of Radio Engineers, supported Mahlon's work. He stated in 1925 in the journal Radio Broadcast that It was "solid work, and I've repeated the same experiments and come to the same conclusions."

Why is it that -- today -- we give so little credence to the Loomis experiments and the proof he presented to the world? Even his Wikipedia page is heavily edited by someone who is clearly in the "Loomis was a crank" category.

Many Years of Frustration for Mahlon

In the late 1860's the wired telegraph business suffered from the need for constant repair of wires in the field, as the elements (and Indian wars) were wreaking havoc on communication. While he certainly hoped that the next advancements of his idea could result in a cheap and reliable method of wireless communication, Loomis would need great capital to pull it off. And, unfortunately it wasn't a good time for such investments. After trying to interest private investors without success, Loomis approached Congress as he had supporters there who had seen the potential firsthand.

Senator Sumner put forth a bill that would give Loomis a $50K investment in his project, but it sat stalled in committee. Many newspapers still branded the idea as lunacy. I can imagine how disappointed the normally upbeat and positive Mahlon Loomis would have felt as Congress came to a close and no action had been taken on his bill. 

Unfortunately, the company he had set up (Loomis Aerial Telegraph Company) did not reap a single investment with both private investors and government. In July, 1870, the other politician who witnessed his demonstration, Congressman Bingham, introduced another bill to incorporate the Loomis proposal with the right to capitalize and sell stock. But that bill didn't get far, either, and Loomis's most promising angel investors fell off as well, a result of poor economic times.

Despite the lack of success in financing, in 1870 he was asked if his invention could work from ship-to-ship; he successfully communicated between two ships at a distance of two miles apart. Unfortunately, there's very little written about this series of experiments.

The rest of Mahlon Loomis's story is a series of setbacks and disappointments for his continued push to build a system of communication around the new and improved method of telegraphy. Investors in Chicago organized a large investment in the Loomis Aerial Telegraph Company but it fell apart in October 1871 when the infamous Chicago Fire ravaged the city.  In 1872, Bingham's bill was finally passed in Congress and signed by the President but no funds ever came in . . . that year ended with a terrible financial recession on the horizon in the USA. Thousands of companies and individuals suffered losses over the course of 1873 making it one of the worst years ever in the US economy. 

For Mahlon Loomis, a bright spot in all of this came in the same year that his bill finally passed in Congress, as he was awarded the USA's first radio patent (129,971 -- "Improvement in Telegraphy.") Still, nothing resulted from the patent and Loomis passed away in 1886 without any progress having been made on moving his invention into a practical business model. Before he died, Loomis wrote, "I know that I am regarded as a crank by some - by others perhaps as a fool - for allowing myself, to the sacrifice of material advantages, to abandon a lucrative profession and pursue this. But I know that I am right. If the present generation lives long enough, their opinions will be changed - and their wonder will be that they did not perceive it earlier. I shall never see it perfected - but it will be, and others will have the honor of the discovery."

One newspaper editor wrote, and I would have agreed: "We hope that American pride will not suffer this invention to pass out of our hands, with the credit and honor to be reaped by others."

Of course, that's exactly what happened.

73 for now,

Dave, W7DGJ

PS - Here are some questions for readers who would consider jumping into our Forum conversation, located at the link below.

- Do you believe that National Pride is an important element in the way that inventors are recognized? 

- Is the term "American Pride" offensive to you (whether or not you are an American)? The title of this article was changed due to this notion.

- If you are reading this from another part of the world, is Mahlon Loomis a name you recognize? Has there been an early radio pioneer in your country who should similarly be recognized on the world stage?

Have a comment or question? See what others are saying now in our Forum discussion!