The Invention of the Radio
As it is with any event in history, invention of a process is seldom the responsibility of only one singular person. Radio, as we know it, has been attributed to Mahlon Loomis, however his success was a collaboration effort of many brilliant minds. Still, he did play a key role.
The Early Days
Mahlon Loomis was born July 21, 1826, in Oppenheim New York, into the family of Professor Nathan Loomis and Waitie Loomis. He was the fourth of nine children. Not a lot of details are available about Mahlon Loomis’ early life. This is unfortunate because it is often interesting to see how a young inventive mind grows. We do, however, know that he was surrounded by educated minds, as his father was a founder of the AMERICAN EPHEMERIS and NATIONAL ALMANAC. In addition to this, his older brother George, was an inventor and holder of several patents himself.
In 1836, Mahlon’s family moved to Springvale, Virginia. In September of 1848, Mahlon went to Cleveland, Ohio to partake in the study of dentistry. In 1850, he returned to Springvale to continue his dental work. For several years Mahlon spent time as a traveling dentist. During this time he went to Earlville, New York, Cambridgeport Massachusetts and Philadelphia. During this practice in Massachusetts he received a patent for a mineral plate (Kaolin ) process for the making of artificial teeth. In November of 1856, Loomis and his bride of only a few months, Achsah Ashley, settled in Washington D.C. to set up a dentistry practice.
The Start Of The Electrical Days
About 1860, Mahlon Loomis became interested in electricity, and his first application of this was an experiment in the forced increase of growth in plants. This was achieved by buried metal plates connected to an electrical current furnished by batteries.
In this same time period Mahlon became interested in using the electrical charges obtainable from the upper atmosphere by means of kites carrying metal wires. At first he planned to use this natural source of electricity to replace batteries on a telegraph circuit. It is noted in many references that this was something that was actually achieved on a telegraph line that was at leas 644 km long.
Later on, from experiments in this area, Mahlon discovered that a kite sent aloft would affect the flow of current in another kite that was some distance away from the first kite. This set him on a path of developing it as a system of wireless telegraphy for practical long distance communications.
Schematic of Loomis Wireless Telegraph (Kite Prototype)
Eureka!
The year is 1868, and Mahlon Loomis demonstrates to a group of Congressmen and eminent scientists a wireless "communication" system. He established two stations on separate mountains 28 to 32 km apart. At each station was made up of a galvonometer, a kite, a grid of fine copper wire gauze, and 600' of copper wire to fly the kite with. The people conducting the experiment with Loomis had their watches set, and at predetermined intervals they grounded the wire which ran through the galvanometer to the transmitting kite, causing the other instrument on the opposite mountain to register.
Loomis noted that the galvanometer of the “receiving” kite deviated at each time the “transmitting” kite was put at the mass. The experiment was repeated several times, causing the needles on the galvanometers to deflect every time the circuit was completed. The commercial possibilities of this discovery were immediately apparent. However Loomis understood quickly that it was necessary to develop a “detector” more sensitive than the galvanometer if he wanted to make transmissions on long distance without increase the surface of his grid and the size of the kite.
Sometimes, there were problems with the communications system. It seemed that if one of the kites was at the wrong height, the system would not work. This led Loomis to believe that there were different areas in the atmosphere, and depending which area you were in, would control if the communication would work or not. He also speculated that it might have something to do with the ionizing cosmic/atmospheric particle that Michael Faraday had discovered with his cloud chamber.
Mahlon Seeks the Government’s Help
Senator Charles Sumner, encouraged by a previous government grant to Samuel F.B. Morse, introduced a bill into the Senate on January 13, 1869. The "Loomis Aerial Telegraph Bill" asked for an act of incorporation for the Loomis Aerial Telegraph Company, and for the appropriation of $50,000 to help perfect Loomis’s discovery and make it practical.
Loomis had proposed a system where wireless telegraph messages could be sent across the Atlantic at 1/16 the cost of what it was using a Trans-Atlantic cable. In an address to Congress, Loomis explained his system worked by: "Causing electrical vibrations or waves to pass around the world, as upon the surface of some quiet lake one wave circlet follows another from the point of the disturbance to the remotest shores, so that from any other mountain top upon the globe another conductor, which shall pierce this plane and receive the impressed vibration, may be connected to an indicator which will mark the length and duration of the vibration; and indicate by any agreed system of notation, convertible into human language, the message of the operator at the point of the first disturbance."
The bill, although gaining the support of a few Congressmen, was thought to be a fraud by many others. It was shuttled from committee to committee with much delay.
Enter Joseph Henry
The bill might have died a quiet death of committee, if it were not for the entry of a new, powerful player. Joseph Henry was born in Albany, New York to Scottish immigrants Ann Alexander Henry and William Henry. His parents were poor, and Henry's father died while he was still young. For the rest of his childhood, Henry lived with his grandmother in Galway, New York. He attended a school which would later be named the "Joseph Henry Elementary School" in his honor.
After school, he worked at a general store, and at the age of thirteen became an apprentice watchmaker and silversmith. Joseph's first love was theater and he came close to becoming a professional actor. His interest in science was sparked at the age of sixteen by a book of lectures on scientific topics titled Popular Lectures on Experimental Philosophy. In 1819 he entered The Albany Academy, where he was given free tuition. Even with free tuition he was so poor that he had to support himself with teaching and private tutoring positions. He intended to go into medicine, but in 1824 he was appointed an assistant engineer for the survey of the State road being constructed between the Hudson River and Lake Erie. From then on, he was inspired to a career in either civil or mechanical engineering.
Henry excelled at his studies (so much so, that he would often help his teachers teach science) and in 1826 was appointed Professor of Mathematics and Natural Philosophy at The Albany Academy by Principal T. Romeyn Beck. Some of his most important research was conducted in this new position. His curiosity about terrestrial magnetism led him to experiment with magnetism in general. He also showed that, when making an electromagnet using just two electrodes attached to a battery, it is best to wind several coils of wire in parallel, but when using a set-up with multiple batteries, there should be only one single long coil. The latter made the wired telegraph feasible.
His many outstanding contributions to science were rewarded with the position of the National Institution for the Promotion of Science and later the presidency of the organization was the Smithsonian Institution. As a famous scientist and now director of the Institution, Henry received visits from other scientists and inventors who sought his advice. Among them was a Loomis hoping Henry could back him in Congress.
After hearing Loomis case, and attending a demonstration of his device, Henry remembered an earlier encounter he himself had with such a phenomenon. In 1842 Henry had discovered that he could magnetize needles in a basement with an electric spark from two floors above, mostly correctly ascribing it to electromagnetic wave propagation (in an electric ether). In another experiment, he magnetized a needle by utilizing a lightning flash 13 kilometer away.
Thus Henry was more than intrigued to see, that the “induction at a distant” effect as he had called it in the 1840s was apparently powerful enough to allow for the realization of wireless telegraphy. Getting Henry’s backing was a great relief to Loomis and had two positive effects. First, no politician was willing to ridicule Loomis as a charlatan, once Joseph Henry, held a extraordinary lecture on the topic and its importance in front of Congress. Only Days later a bill was signed into law by President Grant, incorporating the Loomis Aerial Telegraph Company and was appropiated a sizable starting capital by the US government.
The second positive effect was that Henry, after immersing himself into the issue, encouraged Loomis to familiarize himself with the work of James Clerk Maxwell. The later had already hypnotized the concept of electromagnetic radiation waves in his “On physical lines of force” (1862) under the name of displacement currents. This new found knowledge led him to experiment less air strata and focus more on aerial (1) designs. For a prototypes station he erected steel masts on top of wooden towers that replaced the kites of the earlier experiments and showed that maintaining fairly reliable communications for periods of months was possible. Unlike popularly thought, Loomis didn’t get rich instantly. It took the entire decade to get figure out how to get his invention competitive and profitable. Especially looking the search for a good detection/amplification device caused Loomis some headache, as well as generating stronger signals. Once he managed to do so however, he had struck (non-teeth) gold.
Notes and Sources
(1) Antenna, a word coined in OTL by Marconi.
First experimental transmission of wireless telegraph signals
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http://www.carnetdevol.org/Wireless/loomis.html)
Albert H. Gluckman: Joseph Henry's 1842 and 1843 Out-of-Doors Electrical Transmission Signal Experiments.
Princeton University
http://www.madehow.com/inventorbios/75/Joseph-Henry.html
Edward A. Sharpe:
Mahlon Loomis - First Wireless Telegrapher.
Archivist SMEC 1989
Wikipedia: Joseph Henry