Kentucky Farmer Invents Wireless Telephone!: But Was It Radio? - Facts and Folklore about Nathan Stubblefield

Author Bob Lochte, a professor at Murray State University, has tackled head-on the messy tangle of truth and fiction that surrounds Stubblefield, and attempted to sort out just what's what. The first part of Kentucky Farmer is a relatively brief factual account of Stubblefield's life and achievements. Ambitious beyond his rural farming background and self-educated about things electrical, Stubblefield made his debut in the fledgling telecommunications realm by supplying telephone services - of a sort - to his neighbors in Murray in the 1880s.

But the cause of all the controversy that exists to this day has to do with Stubblefield's invention of what amounted to a wireless telephone system that operated via earth conduction using rods inserted into the ground, a device he publicly demonstrated in Washington, Philadelphia, and (unsuccessfully) New York City in 1902. Stubblefield received much media coverage over the system at a time when a number of other early wireless pioneers willingly engaged in shady stock promotions. Stubblefield, to his great credit, recoiled from the dubious dealings of a promoter with whom he had become involved. Abandoning his efforts to commercially market his earth conduction system of wireless telephony, and after failing to interest the world in an induction coil wireless system, he ended his life a secretive and desperately poor hermit living just outside of Murray.

Excerpted from a review by Gil McElroy, QST