Mahlon Loomis

On February 20, 1864, Mahlon Loomis an American dentist and amateur inventor wrote 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." Two and a half years later, Loomis would do this very thing between two mountaintops in Loudoun County, Virginia. In October 1866, Mahlon Loomis successfully demonstrated what he called "wireless telegraphy." Loomis was able to make a meter connected to one kite cause another one to move, marking the first known instance of wireless aerial communication. He accomplished this eight years before Guglielmo Marconi was born.