Faux Wireless Systems

Broadcast History: a useful and insightful guide to the understanding of early, so-called, "wireless" broadcast systems.

Electric Current Flow Through Water

The general arrangement of Morse’s experiment	The Isle of Wight system
W.H. Preece’s Bristol Channel system	The Fastnet Rock system (Source)

 

Electromagnetic "Induction"
(i.e.,electromagnetic fields that diminish more rapidly  with distance than electromagnetic "radiation fields")

W.H. Preece’s Isle of Arran system (Source)

1865:

In October, an American dentist Mahlon Loomis ( 1826-1886 ) from Washington, DC transmited wireless telegraph messages between two mountains in Virginia.  Loomis used two kites flown18 miles apart, each carrying a wire that reached to the ground. When he interrupted the flow of electricity from the atmosphere, through the wire, to an earth ground, a galvanometer on the other kite's wire measured a change in current.

1872:

On July 20th, Loomis was granted U.S. Letters of Patent Number 139,971 for a "New and Improved Mode of Telegraphing and of Generating Light, Heat and Motive Power" based on his experiments on wireless (probably induction) telegraphy.  Although he eventually incorporated the Loomis Aerial Telegraph, he never obtained financial backing to develop his idea.

1882:

Professor Amos E. Dolbear of Tufts University communicated over a distance of a quarter of a mile without wires and was issued a US patent for a wireless telegraph.

1892:

Nathan Stubblefield, a Kentucky melon farmer, gave a public display of his first wireless apparatus ("black boxes") with which he transmitted music and voice over several hundred yards without use of any wires.

1893:

Nikola Tesla demonstrated his "four-tuned circuits" wireless system before the National Electric Light Association in St. Louis. (reference)