Mahlon Loomis was descended from Joseph Loomis, who came from England to Massachusetts in 1638 and later settled in Windsor, Connecticut. His father was Professor Nathan Loomis, associated with Benjamin Peirce of Harvard in founding the American Ephemeris and Nautical Almanac; his mother was Waitie Jenks (Barber) Loomis. He was born on July 21, 1826 in Oppenheim, New York, United States. He moved to Virginia with the family in the forties, and in 1848 went to Cleveland, Ohio.
Loomis studied dentistry under Dr. Wright.
Loomis was a teacher at school for a time in Cleveland, Ohio. After a period as a traveling dentist he practised successively in Earlville, New York, Cambridgeport, Massachusetts, and Philadelphia. On May 2, 1854, he patented a mineral-plate (kaolin) process for making artificial teeth, for which he also received a patent in England.
About 1860, he turned his attention to electricity. One of his early experiments was the forcing of growth of plants by buried metal plates connected to batteries. At about the same time he became interested in the electrical charges which could be obtained from the upper air by means of kites carrying metal wires. At first, he planned to use this natural source of electricity to replace batteries, and actually did so on a telegraph line four hundred miles long. From this experiment, by one step after another, he was led to the discovery that a kite wire sent aloft in one region would affect the flow of electricity to ground in another kite wire some distance away.
In 1868 in the presence of members of Congress and eminent scientists, he carried on two-way "wireless" communication for a distance of eighteen miles between two mountain peaks in Virginia. From one peak, he sent up a kite and wire, connecting this to ground through a galvanometer. At once the galvanometer deflected, showing a steady passage of current to ground from the charged air stratum above. He then set up a similar outfit from a peak eighteen miles away. When ready to "send, " he touched this second kite wire to ground; by this action he tapped the "aerial battery" and reduced the voltage of the entire charged stratum of air above, thus lessening the voltage available at the distant air-wire, and hence causing the galvanometer needle there to move to a smaller deflection. This change in deflection was a true telegraphic signal; Loomis had succeeded for the first time in "sending signals to a distance without wires. "
He interested a group of Boston capitalists in his discovery, only to lose their support in the "Black Friday" panic of 1869. Two years later, the promise of Chicago bankers to aid him likewise came to naught, owing to the great Chicago fire. In 1870 a bill incorporating the Loomis Aerial Telegraph Company was introduced into Congress; it passed the House in May 1872 and the Senate in January 1873, and was signed by President Grant, but it failed to provide the appropriation of $50, 000 for which Loomis had hoped. Thereafter, he was unable to find anywhere the financial backing he needed for his experiments. He died in 1886 at Terre Alta, West Virginia, heartbroken by what he deemed his failure.
Of Loomis' inventiveness there is no question. His brain teemed with ideas. Some were not altogether practical, such as replacing batteries by atmospheric electricity; some were eminently practical. His notebooks, in the Manuscripts Division of the Library of Congress, are filled with cryptic references and suggestions; on the other hand, he actually carried out many of his experiments, and his records of these are clear and eloquent. It was not until twenty-seven years after his experiment of 1868, however, that Marconi used this same air-wire in true Hertzian-wave communication, the modern "radio. " Although Loomis produced sparks when he touched his kite wire to ground, and hence sent out electric waves, he had no means of detecting them. Had Branly brought out his coherer or Fessenden his electrolytic detector prior to Loomis' experiment, it would have been a simple matter to use one of these instruments instead of the galvanometer, and Loomis instead of Marconi might have been known as the father of radio.
Loomis was married, May 28, 1856, to Achsah Ashley.
