The Legend:
On the lawn of the court house in Murray, Kentucky, there is a stone memorial which commemorates the day in 1892 that Nathan Stubblefield performed an unusual demonstration.
Stubblefield, a farmer and telephone repairman living in Calloway County, Kentucky, claimed he could send messages through the air without wires, a claim which attracted a huge crowd of spectators. At points about two hundred feet apart on the lawn, Stubblefield and his son had set up two boxes that were not connected in any visible way. Each box was about two feet square and contained a telephone, through which stubblefield and his son talked as if they were standing next to each other, their voices being perfectly audible to the crowds gathered around each box. It's said that his demonstration was greeted by hoots and snickers, causing the inventor to angrily gather up his equipment and leave.
However, word of the demonstration reached the St. Louis Post Dispatch, who wrote to Stubblefield to request another demonstration. Weeks later, the newspaper received a simple postcard: "Have accepted your invitation. Come to my place any time. Nathan Stubblefield." The Post Dispatch reporter arrived at the farm on January 10, 1902, and was handed a telephone attached to two steel rods about four feet long each, and was instructed to go anywhere in the neighborhood, stick the rods in the ground, and put the receiver to his ear. In an article written later, the reporter described how he traveled about a mile from the inventor's farm, stabbed the rods into the ground, and... "I could hear every syllable the Stubblefield boy spoke into the transmitter as clearly as if he were just across the room!" According to the same article, Stubblefield claimed his apparatus worked by useing the electrical field which permeates all matter.
The newspaper article won Stubblefield an invitation to demonstrate his invention in Philadelphia; this demonstration, in May 1902, is said to have done well. From there the inventor went to washington, D.C., where it's said he amazed scientists with his discovery. At this demonstration one of his boxes was placed on a steamship, the Bartholdi, on the Potomac River, while a number of other boxes were positioned along the shore at sites of the users' choosing. Again, communication between the boxes -- including the one on the ship -- was fantastically clear. The Washington Evening Star's headline for May 21, 1902, read: "First Practical Test of Wireless Telegraphy Heard for Half Mile. Invention of Kentucky Farmer. Wireless telephony demonstrated beyond question."
Strangely, Stubblefield never marketed his invention. After his stunning success in Washington, he packed up and went home, afraid, some said, of havinfg his ideas stolen. He's also said to have taken out patents of his equipment, but that these patents don't make sense to those who've studied them.
Stubblefield dropped out of the public eye. In the Spring of 1929 he was found dead in his home, his equipment was gone, and his records scattered.
Questions
It's an interesting story, but not one I've found anywhere else. It wasn't in the New York Times, I haven't found mention of it yet in Kentucky history books, and Stubblefield isn't in any biographical dictionaries. Of course, this doesn't mean much... he might simply have been a flash in the pan, important for a short time but not worthy of historic rememberance.
Or the story might be B.S..
In any case, I'm trying to find the relative newspaper stories mentioned in the account next, as well as contacting a town historian in Murray, Kentucky, to check on both the validity of the overall story and the existance of the memorial that's supposed to be there.
This investigation is only starting.
Sources:
