MARC is affiliated
with the American
Radio Relay League
and maintains
Special Service Club
status.

 

“In 1895 a young, self-taught man named Guglielmo Marconi sent the first message in history through space. Marconi’s message, three dots of the letter 'S' in Morse Code, would begin a period of great experiment and growth in communication.”

— 100 Years of Radio, www.alpcom.it, 1995

 

 

Given that first officially documented contact and his achievements over the four decades that followed, Marconi is without question the father of amateur radio and wireless communication as we know it today. However, another man may have been the actual inventor of the medium.

Dr. Mahlon Loomis, a dentist of Oppenheim, NY and born a West Virginian, is said to have transmitted signals 18 miles between two Virginia mountaintops using kites as antennae. This was in 1866, eight years before Marconi was born. In 1870, the U.S. Navy sponsored experiments in which Loomis successfully transmitted telegraphic signals two miles between two ships in Chesapeake Bay. Again in 1886, eight months before his death, Loomis is reported to have installed two "radio stations" in Terra Alta, WV and transmitted signals across the two miles separating them.

Despite the efforts of family, friends and politicians over the decades, Loomis has yet to be officially recognized, but his unsung experiments in wireless telegraphy most certainly embody the spirit of amateur radio.

 

 

MARC's own Paul Bennett, N7OCS, is the enviable owner of this eyebrow
raising 9-element HF yagi atop his 70 foot Skyneedle tower in McMinnville.
(Photo courtesy Todd Carlson, WB7RPJ)