01.
Feature
/ Reprint from
ST. LOUIS POST
DISPATCH - January 12, 1902 Sunday
Morning. Editor
Notes by TVI Magazizne. (Contextulized
denotes in blue) •
•
Continued
from above - NATHAN
STUBBLEFIELD, a Kentucky truck farmer,
claims to have discovered telephoning
without wires. At a public exhibition in
Murray, Calloway County, Ky., on Jan. 1,
he convinced a thousand people of the
truth of his
claim.
•
•
The principle on which he works he
will not reveal, and guards his secret
jealously.
•
•
In telephoning without wires,
Stubblefield uses the ordinary telephone
transmitter and receiver, connected with
the earth by insulated wires. The
apparatus by means of which vibrations of
the electric current is produced is
concealed in a box about four feet high,
two and one-half feet wide, and one and
one-half feet deep. No one but Mr.
Stubblefield and his 14-year-old son,
Burnard [sic], knows the contents
of this box.
•
•
At the public test of wireless
telephony held in Murray, Ky., Mr.
Stubblefield placed his transmitter in the
courthouse square, and ran two wires from
it into the ground. He established five
"listening" stations in various parts of
the town, the furthest six blocks distant
from the transmitter. Then Mr.
Stubblefield's son took his place at the
transmitter and talked in a tone of voice
such as is ordinarily used in telephoning.
He talked, whispered, whistled and played
a harmonica. Simultaneously everyone at
the receivers heard him with remarkable
distinctness. And at that moment Mr.
Stubblefield became a prophet with honor
in his own
country. 02
/ •
•
MURRAY, Ky., Jan
10 / By a
Staff Correspondent of the Sunday
Post-Dispatch.
•
•
HOWEVER undeveloped his system may
be, Nathan Stubblefield, the
farmer-inventor of Kentucky, has assuredly
discovered the principle of telephoning
without wires, using only the earth's
electrical charge for the transmission of
the voice from one distant point to
another.
•
•
Today he gave the Sunday
Post-Dispatch a practical demonstration of
his ability to do this and discussed his
discovery as frankly as his own interest
and self-protection would
permit.
•
•
I drove to Mr. Stubblefield's farm,
about two miles from Murray, and was
received with the usual hospitality of
Kentucky. Previously Mr. Stubblefield had
never permitted a newspaper correspondent
to approach his house nearer than the road
that runs before it, so jealously has he
guarded the workshop in which his
experiments were made. He has worked for
ten years to discover an apparatus by
which he could overcome the use of wires
in telephoning, during which time he has
become a technical electrician of a high
order. He has kept in touch with all the
leading electricians, and is familiar with
every important discovery in the field of
electricity. Naturally he has been a close
observer of the work of
Marconi.
•
•
"Before speaking of my discovery,"
said Mr. Stubblefield, "I desire to show
you my apparatus and give you convincing
proof of its ability to perform what I
claim for it, the transmission of the
voice without
wires."
•
•
He led the way to a tiny workshop
built onto the porch on the front of his
house. It was just wide enough to hold the
transmitter, which stood before the
window, and a chair. One end of the room
was given up to shelves laden with
technical books on
electricity.
•
•
The transmitting apparatus is
concealed in the box before described. Two
wires of the thickness of a lead pencil
coil from its corners and disappear
through the wall of the room, and enter
the ground outside. On top of the box is
an ordinary telephone transmitter and a
telephone switch. This is the machine
through which the voice of the sender is
passtd [sic] into the ground to be
transmitted by the earth's electrical
waves to the ear of the person who has an
instrument capable of receiving and
reproducing it.
•
•
The son of Mr. Stubblefield was
left at the house to send the
messages.
•
•
We went into the cornfield back of
the house. Five hundred yards away we came
to the experimental station the inventor
has used for several months in working out
his wireless telephony theory. It is a dry
goods box fastened to the top of a stump.
A roof to shed the rain has been placed on
top of it; one side is hinged for a door,
and wires connected with the ground on
both sides run into it and are attached to
a pair of telephone receivers. The box was
built as a shelter from the weather, and
as a protection to the receivers. I took a
seat in the box and Mr. Stubblefield
shouted a "hello" to the house. This was
the signal to his son to begin sending
messages.
•
•
I placed the receiver to my ears
and listened. Presently there came with
extraordinary distinctness several
spasmodic buzzings, then a voice which
said:
•
•
"Hello! Can you hear me? Now I will
count ten.
One--two--three--four--five--six--seven--eight--nine--ten.
Did you hear that? Now I will
whisper."
•
•
I heard as clearly as if the
speaker were only across a 12-foot room
the ten numerals
whispered.
•
•
"Now I will whistle," said the
voice.
•
•
For a minute or more the tuneless
whistle of a boy was conveyed to the
listener's ears.
•
•
"I am going to play the mouth-organ
now," said the
voice.
•
•
Immediately came the strains of a
harmonica played without melody, but the
notes were clear and
unmistakable.
•
•
"I will now repeat the program,"
said the voice, and it
did.
•
•
Meanwhile Mr. Stubblefield paced
back and forth some distance from the
station, calling occasionally. "Is he
talking to you?" to which I nodded
reply.
•
•
An examination of the station
showed that the wires leading from the
receivers terminated at steel rods, each
of which was tapped with a hollow
nickel-plated ball of iron, below which
was an inverted metal cup. The wire enters
the ball at the top and is attached to the
rod. The rod is thrust into the ground
two-thirds of its length. Another test was
made after the rods had been drawn from
the ground and thrust into it again at a
spot chosen haphazard by the
correspondent. Again the "hello" signal
was made by Stubblefield, and after a few
minutes wait came the mysterious "Hello!
Can you hear me?" and a repetition of the
program of counted numerals, whispers,
whistling and harmonica
playing.
•
•
"Now," said Mr. Stubblefield, who
carried under his arm duplicates of the
balltipped steel rods, "I wish you would
lead the way. Go where you will, sink the
rods into the ground and listen for a
telephone
message."
•
•
Away we went down a wagon track,
through the wide cornfield. A gate was
opened into a lane between the hedge that
bordered the field and a dense oak woods.
We pursued the lane for about 500 yards
and struck into the woods. I led the way.
Into the heart of the woods we walked for
nearly a mile.
•
•
In a ravine I
stopped.
•
•
"How far are we from the house
now?" I asked.
•
•
"About a mile," Stubblefield
answered. "Place the rods where you will
and listen for a telephone
message."
•
•
I took the four rods from
Stubblefield. Each pair of rods was joined
by an ordinary insulated wire about 30
feet long, in the center of which was a
small round telephone
receiver.
•
•
Two by two the rods were sunk in
the ground, about half their length, the
wires between them hanging loosely, and
with plenty of play. I placed a receiver
at each ear and waited. In a few moments
came the signaling "buss," and the voice
of Stubblefield's son saying, "Hello! Can
you hear me? Now I will count ten, etc."
He went through the program heard at the
station in the cornfield. The voice was
quite as clear and distinct as it was 500
yards from the transmitting
station.
•
•
Stubblefield leaned against a tree,
saying nothing, his arms folded, but with
a look of triumph on his face. The deep
silence of the woods made the mysterious
voice with its message from a mile or more
away, received by no visible mean, seem
earie. Perhaps a look on my face prompted
Stubblefield to
say:
•
•
"It makes me feel queer myself when
I hear when I hear that voice come out of
the ground, as often as I have heard it in
our
experiments."
•
•
The rods were moved here and there
but always the message came. At intervals
for an hour or more the boy at the house
repreated over and over again the message
into the transmitter in obedience to his
father's request and the demands of the
test.
•
•
On the way back to the house
through the wood and field Stubblefield
told of his discovery. He bears the stamp
of genius. He is a recluse. He has the
thoughtful, absent air. He is eccentric.
His neighbors shun, while they respect
him. None ever intrudes upon his privacy
-- they know well that such intrusion
means a rebuff long to be remembered. The
little town of Murray is full of stories
of his eccentricities, which, possibly,
are the growth of not understanding a man
whose ideals were far beyond those of the
neighborhood. Where once they laughed at
him and called him a crank, now they look
up to him with awe. He has done
something.
•
•
Stubblefield is 40, slender and of
the well&endash;to&endash;do farmer type,
but far above it mentally. For a
livelihood he grows fruit -- and the best
in his section. His melons are said to be
dreams of deliciousness. He protects his
patch with electric wires, which announce
to him the presence of intruders. Like
other Kentuckians he knows how to use a
shotgun. His melon patch and his orchard
are, therefore, not often
molested.
•
•
He comes from a family
distinguished in his locality. His father
was a lawyer, much respected in that part
of Kentucky, and passing rich. His
brothers are merchants, "well off," as the
saying is, and leaders in the community.
But Nathan Stubblefield is a man aloof. He
cares only for his home, his family and --
electricity. He educates his children in
person and, after seeing that his family
is well provided for, spends the remainder
of his substance in electrical
experiments.
•
•
His son, Bernard B. Stubblefield,
14 years of age, has for four years been
his father's sole assistant. He is a
remarkable boy. His father has been his
only educator, and the lad is now an
expert electrician and reads abtruse works
on electricity and technical electrical
journals with the same zest that other
boys read stories of travel and
adventures. His father says of the boy
that he would be able to carry out and
finish his system of wireless telegraphy
should the father die, so closely has he
been allied with every step in its
discovery and
development.
•
•
In order to protect his right of
first discovery in the absence of a patent
Stubblefield has described his invention
in a document which he has filed with the
clerk of Calloway County. This document is
backed by the testimony of J. C. McElrath,
A. D. Thompson, James M. Cole, James
Coleman, S. Higgins, Charles Jetton, O. T.
Hale and Vernon Blythe, who declare that
they have examined his apparatus and that
it performed all the inventor claims for
it; that they received telephone messages
from varying distances without the aid of
wires, and that they are positive the test
was conducted without deception of any
description. These men are accounted among
the best in Calloway County. One of them
is the postmaster of Murray, the others
are lawyers, doctors, merchants and public
officers.
03/
•
•
By NATHAN
STUBBLEFIELD.
•
•
I HAVE been working for this ten or
twelve years, he said. Long before I heard
of Marconi's efforts, or the efforts of
others, to solve the problem of the
transmission of messages through space
without wires, I began to think about it
and work for it. This solution is not the
result of an inspiration or the work of a
minute. It is the climax of the labor of
years of days and nights of thought, of
hundreds of hours of
experimenting.
•
•
Of course I worked along the lines
all the others are working. The earth, the
air, the water, all the universe, as we
know it, is permeated with the remarkable
fluid which we call electricity, the most
wonderful of God's gifts to the world, and
capable of the most inestimable benefits
when it is mastered by man. For years I
have been trying to make the bare earth do
the work of the wires. I know now that I
have conquered it. The electrical fluid
that permeates the earth carries the human
voice, transmitted to it by any apparatus
with much more clarity and lucidity than
it does over wires. 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.
•
•
How I have obtained this result is,
of course, my secret. My apparatus has not
yet been patented. In that small box that
you have seen lies the secret of my
success. It is not yet perfect, by any
means. I can now telephone a mile without
wires. When the larger apparatus, on which
I am now working, is finished I will
demonstrate that messages can be sent much
further -- how far I cannot say. The
system can be developed until messages by
voice can be sent and heard all over the
country, to Europe, all over the world.
There is nothing to stop it. The world is
its limits. This may seem like boasting.
It is not. It is a
fact.
•
•
Beneath the surface of the earth,
as above it, there is electricity. No one
knows how deep it extends or how high it
goes. As one throws a pebble into a pond
and agitates it into circles that grow and
extend to every edge. The apparatus that I
have invented agitates the electric fluid
in the earth. The voice projected into my
transmitter agitates or vibrates the
electricity in the earth, which extends
beyond in every direction, and these
vibrations reproduce the sounds in
receivers tuned to convey them to the
listening ear. What this apparatus
consists of, or how it does its work, I
will not tell.
•
•
That it does all that I claim for
it now, ample tests have proved. In a
short time, when my improved and more
powerful apparatus is finished, I will
make another test, and expect to be able
to telephone several miles. Then I will go
to Washington and patent my invention,
which will also be protected in all
countries having patent laws. I will then,
also, seek capital with which to further
develop my
discovery.
•
•
As to the practicability of my
invention, all that I claim for it now is
that it is capable of sending simultaneous
messages from a central distributing
station over a very wide territory. For
instance, anyone having a receiving
instrument, which would consist merely of
a telephone receiver and a few feet of
wire, and a signaling gong, could, upon
being signaled by a transmiting
[sic] station in Washington, or
nearer, if advisable, be informed of
weather news. My apparatus is capable of
sending out a gong signal, as well as
voice messages. Eventually it will be used
for the general transmission of news of
every
description.
•
•
I have as yet devised no method
whereby it can be used with privacy.
Wherever there is a receiving station the
signal and the message may be heard
simultaneously. Eventually I, or someone,
will discover a method of tuning the
transmitting and receiving instruments so
that each will answer only to its
mate.
•
•
I claim for my apparatus that it
will work equally as well through the air
and water as it does through the earth.
That it will convey messages between the
land and sea, for instance from
lighthouses to ships, from vessels in any
part of the ocean to vessels or to their
owners on land if each carry my
transmitters and receivers; it can be used
on moving trains so that they may be
spoken between stations and thus prevent
accidents. There is no conceivable
position or station in which they may not
be used. The all enveloping electricity,
the medium of cariage [sic],
insures that.
•
•
Of course my system demands
development, which, in turn, demands time
and money. But I have accomplished the
fact. I can telephone without wires, a
mile or more now, and with more powerful
apparatus and further development,
everywhere. The curvature of the earth
means nothing to me -- it will not deter
messages sent by my
apparatus.
•
•
I have shown you what my machine
will do through the earth by grounding the
wires. I will say that it is not
absolutely necessary to ground the wires.
I can send messages with one wire in the
ground, the other in the air, or with no
wires at all. In fact my first and crude
experiments were made without ground
wires. I have sent messages by means of a
cumbersome and incomplete machine through
a brick wall and several other walls of
lath and plaster without wires of any
description. The present method of
grounding wires merely insures greater
power in
transmission.
•
•
Several years ago I invented an
earth cell which derived enough electrical
energy from the surrounding source to run
a small motor continuously for two months
and six days without being touched. There
was enough energy in the motor to run a
clock and other small piece of machinery
or ring a large gong. This earth cell can
be greatly magnified. Its discovery was
the beginning of my experiments with
wireless telephony. The earth cell was
merely buried in the ground and connected
by wires with the motor. The earth's
electrical currents supplied the
power.
•
•
The expense of my wireless
telephony apparatus will not be great --
not greater than that used for ordinary
telephoning, minus the present enormous
cost of wiring. As soon as I get the
proper financial backing, which I am now
looking for, I will proceed to develope my
system. I can now telephone a mile or more
without wires, and the expansion of my
system is without limit.
Nathan, Stubblefield Raises Vegetables
for Market in Order That He May Live, But
Has for Ten Years Devoted All of His Spare
Time to Electrical Experiments, Until Now
He Has Perfected a Wireless Telephone
System Over Which Messages Are Distinctly
heard at a
Mile.•••••
•••••
Television
International Magazine's Jump Bar
-- It Goes Directly To Linked Web
Pages ReturnˆTo
Top We Preserve
The Moment Yes90
tviNews S90109
-
St.
Louis Dispatch - February, 1902
Front Page.
Nathan
B. Stubblefield Farmer
Demonstrates Wireless
Telephone/
Feature
Story / •
109NewsNBS02StLouis.htm
/
Smart90, lookradio, nbs100,
tvimagazine, vratv, xingtv,
Ddiaries, Soulfind,
nbstubblefield, congming90,
chinaexpo, vralogo, Look Radio,
China Expo, Soul Find, s90tv,
wifi90, dv90, nbs 100, Josie
Cory, Publisher, Troy Cory,
ePublisher, Troy
Cory-Stubblefield
/
Kudoads,
Photo Image665, Movies troy cory
show duration:medium:free - 4
min
- Television With No
Borders
