Mahlon Loomis was born in Oppenheim, New York, on July 20, 1826.
Although some online sources list different birth dates, his headstone in Terra Alta Cemetery, Terra Alta, West Virginia, clearly states July 20, 1826, making it the most reliable date.
Mahlon Loomis’s father, Professor Nathan Loomis (1794 – 1876), was a teacher and writer who inspired Mahlon’s interest in science through his background in astronomy and mathematics and his contributions to the American Ephemeris and Nautical Almanac.
Samuel F.B. Morse conceived the electric telegraph in 1832 and built a working model by 1835 using a basic signaling code he developed.
By 1838, he collaborated with Alfred Vail to finalize the practical Morse Code we know today.
In 1840, Morse was granted U.S. Patent 1,647, titled “Improvement in the Mode of Communicating Information by Signals by the Application of Electro-Magnetism,” for his telegraph.
In the mid-1800s, the telegraph system was connecting cities and towns along wires strung on telegraph poles.
The wires were powered by wet-cell batteries, primarily Daniell cells, which used glass jars containing a zinc electrode immersed in zinc sulfate solution and a copper electrode in copper sulfate solution.
The batteries were typically housed in telegraph offices or individual stations spaced along the telegraph pole line.
On May 2, 1854, now Dr. Mahlon Loomis (a dentist since 1849) obtained U.S. patent 10,847 titled “Artificial Teeth” for developing a new denture manufacturing process entirely out of porcelain.
In 1860, Loomis also experimented with electricity, using metal plates and a battery to generate electrical currents in the soil of his garden to enhance plant growth.
Around this same time, he began experimenting with kites flown with attached copper wires to capture electrical charges from the upper atmosphere, as he planned to use this natural source of electricity.
Loomis observed that one kite could affect the atmospheric electrical activity of a distant kite, hinting at an aerial interconnectedness that inspired him to explore harnessing this phenomenon for wireless communication.
On Oct. 24, 1861, Western Union completed the first transcontinental wired electric telegraph, connecting the eastern and western United States.
Familiar with the telegraph’s capabilities and its reliance on wires, Loomis turned his attention to using atmospheric electrical charges for a wireless telegraph network.
He ultimately sought to replace the long stretches of wires strung on poles between telegraph stations and their batteries with a wireless system that used what he believed to be a natural source of electricity in the upper atmosphere as the pathway for transmitting signals.
While his initial experiments often involved copper-meshed kites with attached copper wires, Loomis later experimented with balloons covered in a metallic gilt to enhance conductivity.
These balloons, connected to copper wires, were intended to reach greater altitudes, accessing what he believed was a more stable, conductive layer of the atmosphere for what Loomis called an “aerial telegraph” system.
On Feb. 20, 1864, Loomis penned in his journal, “I have been for years trying to study out a process by which telegraphic communications may be made across the ocean without any wires, and also from point to point on the earth, dispensing with wires.”
In October 1866, Loomis conducted a wireless telegraphy demonstration in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia.
Politicians, including Sen. Samuel Pomeroy of Kansas and Congressman John A. Bingham of Ohio, along with unnamed scientists, witnessed the demonstration.
In one of his drawings, Loomis wrote that this experiment took place 14 miles apart between two mountaintops, Bear’s Den and Catoctin Mountain.
He noted, “The signals perfect during this cloudy, moist day. Elevation about fifteen hundred feet, which was likely the estimated height needed to establish a line-of-sight connection between the two kites to access the atmospheric layer he believed supported electrical signal transmission.
The kites are covered in a light copper mesh.
Each kite was connected to 600-foot-long copper wires that ran down the mountain.
One kite acted as a transmitting aerial and the other as a receiving antenna.
The transmitting antenna kite sent signals through the air to the aerial receiving antenna kite, which was connected to a galvanometer that could detect electric currents.
As Loomis produced a make-and-break signal by physically interrupting the circuit on the transmitting kite, a visible deflection of the needle on the receiving kite’s galvanometer confirmed that the interruption had influenced the flow of electricity between the two kites.
Witnesses to the experiment noted the galvanometer’s needle deflection which was an expected outcome when an electrical circuit was completed or interrupted.
Loomis felt that he had successfully influenced the atmospheric electrical connection between the kites, a phenomenon he interpreted as transmitting signals wirelessly.
“Sent signals by aerial telegraph between these two stations by elevating a kite on each mountain,” Loomis wrote on the drawing he made of this experiment.
Loomis’s 1866 experimental setup used a transmitting kite connected to the ground by a copper wire for sending signals through the upper atmosphere to a similarly grounded receiving kite, completing an electrical circuit pathway, as indicated by the galvanometer registering the signals.
He envisioned this type of wireless transmission could replace traditional telegraph wires.
Loomis’s attention to using the upper atmosphere as the primary conducting medium for wireless telegraphy was a pioneering step in the development of wireless technology.
Don’t miss next week’s conclusion of Dr. Mahlon Loomis’s ascent toward a wireless aerial telegraph system.
