Mahlon Seeks the Government’s Help

Senator Charles Sumner, encouraged by a previous government grant to Samuel F.B. Morse, introduced a bill into the Senate on January 13, 1869. The " Loomis Aerial Telegraph Bill" asked for an act of incorporation for the Loomis Aerial Telegraph Company, and for the appropriation of $50, 000 to help perfect Loomis’s discovery and make it practical.

Loomis had proposed a system where wireless telegraph messages could be sent across the Atlantic at 1/16 the cost of what it was using a Trans-Atlantic cable.

In an address to Congress, Loomis explained his system worked by: " Causing electrical vibrations or waves to pass around the world, as upon the surface of some quiet lake one wave circlet follows another from the point of the disturbance to the remotest shores, so that from any other mountain top upon the globe another conductor, which shall pierce this plane and receive the impressed vibration, may be connected to an indicator which will mark the length and duration of the vibration; and indicate by any agreed system of notation, convertible into human language, the message of the operator at the point of the first disturbance."

The bill, although gaining the support of a few Congressmen, was thought to be a fraud by many others. It was shuttled from committee to committee with much delay.

On May 20 thru 21, 1872, a lengthy discussion took place in the House. The issue of appropriations had been removed from the bill, and issue of incorporation was all that remained of the Loomis bill.

The newspapers became extremely active on the Loomis issue, unfortunately the majority of them were not favorable to the concept of wireless communication. Their reports ranged from polite skepticism to outright ridicule and allegations of the Loomis method being a fraud!

A copy of the Loomis Bill was also submitted to the committee for patents. On July 30, 1872, Patent number 129, 971 was issued to Mahlon Loomis.

On January 6, 1873, the Loomis Bill was brought to a vote in the Senate and passed by a vote of 29 to 12, with 33 Senators absent. The record shows that neither of Virginia's Senators voted for the bill, despite the fact that Loomis was a resident there. Five days later the bill was signed into law by President Grant, thus incorporating the Loomis Aerial Telegraph Company. What had been achieved by this? Actually, not very much! Although Loomis now had a legal corporation, it was not allowed to operate outside Washington D.C. with out the prior consent of the state the corporation wished to operate within.