In speaking on the bill, Senator Conger repeated, he said, the explanation that Dr. Loomis made to him, that—
This Illustration of Dr. Mahlon Loomis’s Wireless Telegraph Set Was Made from His Original Drawings of His Invention Which Are on File in the United States Patent Office at Washington.
“The system consists of causing electrical vibrations, or waves (from the kite wire aerial) to pass around the world, as upon the surface of some quiet lake into which a stone is cast one wave circlet follows another from the point of disturbance to the remotest shores; so that from any other mountain top upon the globe another conductor which shall receive the impressed vibrations may be connected to an inductor which will mark the duration of such vibration, and indicate by an agreed system of notation, convertible into human language, the message of the operator at the point of first disturbance.”—From Congressional Globe, Library of Congress.
Perhaps it may be a coincidence, or perhaps a blood strain of the pioneer, that the first radio school ever set up by a woman should have been founded by his granddaughter, Miss Mary Texanna Loomis, Washington, D. C.
Nipkow and Sutton
One of the most interesting examples of the attempts to see by radio was made the subject of a patent by Nipkow in 1884. The proposed transmitter consisted of a selenium cell and an objective lens, with a spirally perforated disc rotating between the cell and lens “to dissect the scene.”
The receiving device employed the polarizing light valve used by Major George O. Squire, and Professor A. C. Crehore, to measure the flight of gun shells at Fort Monroe, Virginia, in 1895.
The Nipkow scheme was preceded by Shelford Bidwell’s device for “the telegraphic transmission of pictures of natural objects,” described in Telegraphic Journal 1881, Vol. 9, page 83; and later almost exactly duplicated by M. Henri Sutton, and rather fully described in Lumiere Electrique, Vol. 38, page 538, 1890.