The original scan for this article is located at the Digital Library of Georgia's Atlanta Historic Newspapers Archive.
 
The Sunny South, March 8, 1902, page 6:

Kentucky  Inventor  Solves  Problem  of  Wireless  Telephony
 
Nathan Stubblefield
(Written for The Sunny South.)
THROUGH wood, brick, mortar and solid stone; through blocks of business houses, over long distance, through city streets, uninterrupted by the noise of traffic, Nathan Stubblefield, an inventor of Murray, Ky., has transmitted the sound of human voice without wires. He has devised a system of wireless telephony. The story of how he spent his New Year's day in astounding the citizens of the little western Kentucky town will be world history before many weeks. From a station in the law office of a friend over a transmitter of his own invention he gave his friends a New Year's greeting by wireless telephony, and at seven stations, located in different business houses and offices in the town, the message was simultaneously delivered. Music, songs, whispered conversations could be heard with perfect ease. Hundreds of people visited the different receivers during the period of the public demonstration and were astonished at the result. As insidious and penetrating as the wonderful X-ray, stopping for no material object, "the electric envelope of the earth" bore the Stubblefield messages. This mysterious, intangible envelope is what Stubblefield claims to have made a messenger boy for the millions that inhabit the globe.
Inventor
Talks of
Wonder-
ful de-
vice

    Nathan Stubblefield, the inventor, is, according to his own description, a "practical farmer, fruit grower and electrician." He owns valuable farming property in the vicinity of Murray and it is here that his experiments have been carried on. He is 42 years of age and is plain and unassuming in his manner. He is the inventor of several electrical contrivances which have been patented in this country and Europe. His only assistant in the work on invention has been his 14-year-old son, Bernard B. Stubblefield. The father has for years been an enthusiast on the subject of electricity and the boy has made playthings of electrical devices since babyhood. His father claims that he should have the credit for numerous valuable suggestions given in the course of working up the details of the invention.
    The nature of the apparatus used by the inventor is not known. He positively declines at this time to give out either technical descriptions or diagrams of the vital part of his apparatus. All that is exposed to view while his apparatus is in working order is the ordinary commercial telephone transmitter and receiver. Within a brightly polished box, which is not opened in public, the inventor conceals his secret which he says he will not disclose until it is perfected to the smallest detail. Up to this time he has devoted his entire attention to the construction of a transmitter. He will now occupy himself with the completion of an improved receiver which has been partially constructed. It will, when perfected, bring up the sounds to any desired pitch.
    In speaking of his invention, Mr. Stubblefield said:
    "I know that I have solved the problem of wireless telephony, and I will now devote myself to perfecting my apparatus. I want it to be perfect when given to the public, and it is my desire that it shall not appear with defects for the scientific journals to pick to pieces, my device it will be possible to communicate with hundreds of homes at the same time. A single message can be sent from a central station to all parts of the United States. I am confident that it will operate over long distances and even at great distances the transmitter will be no bulky instrument but quite small and convenient to handle. I think that my devices would be invaluable in the matter of sending out the United States weather bureau predictions, in directing the movements of a fleet at sea and in numerous ways which appeal to one at first thought. I am in hopes of getting a government appropriation to aid me in carrying on my work, or at least the promise of its adoption when perfected. The possibilities of the invention seem to be practically unlimited, and it will be no more than a matter of time when conversation over long distances between the great cities at the country will be carried on daily without wires. I intend to continue at work on my device and think that I will get other startling results in a short time."
    Stubblefield does not intimate at what time he will give out the diagrams of his apparatus. His workshop is in his home, which is located on a farm several miles from Murray and all of his preliminary experiments have been carried on with great secrecy on account of the comparative isolation of the place. He is quite as proud of the part which his boy has played in working on his apparatus as he is of the success of his public exhibition. He speaks entertainingly on the question of his invention and its possibilities.
    Professor M. L. Pence, who has the chair of physics at the Kentucky State college, and whose theory as to why the earth is a magnet created a sensation in the scientific world some months ago, was seen in regard to the Stubblefield experiments, which seem to have a bearing on his theory. He said:
    "I certainly regard wireless telephony as possible just as much so as wireless telegraphy. In ordinary telephony no sound passes over the wire. Nothing but electric energy is transmitted. Now, instead of using a wire, the ether may be used, and the energy may be transmitted in the form of ether waves. The ether is the great vehicle for the transmission of energy. This medium fills all space, interplanetary and intermolecular. I further believe that this same ether is electricity and that all the electrical phenomena are due to the same disturbance of the ether. The ether is easily thrown into vibration, resulting in ether waves. There is an immense variety of these waves ranging from those whose lengths are only a few millionths of an inch to those whose lengths are hundreds of miles. Some of these waves affect the eye and are called light waves; some transmit heat energy. They are all electro-magnetic waves and all travel with immense velocity.
    "The manner in which these waves transmit energy may be illustrated in this way: suppose the pebbles on the shore of a pond of water are set in motion. This motion will disturb the water, cause waves to run across the pond, and, striking the pebbles on the farther shore, will put them in motion, the effect thus being like the cause. In a similar way the intermolecular vibration of the sun is transmitted to the earth through the agency of other waves and causes intermolecular vibration here. Now, we have this same principle in wireless telegraphy. At the transmitting station an electric current is made to oscillate under very high voltage or pressure, across a spark gap and with enormous frequency of vibration. The ether is violently disturbed at this gap and waves go out in every direction. These waves striking an electric circuit at a distant station, will set up oscillations in it similar to the oscillations which produced the waves. A telephone receiver will respond to these secondary vibrations, and so far we have wireless telephony. The principal thing at present, I think, is to devise a transmitter which can be operated by the voice. I do not know fully just what Stubblefield has accomplished, but the probabilities are that someone will develop a system of wireless telephony that can be used for practical purposes."
    Electricians here in discussing the problem go further into the matter than Stubblefield has for publication and say that as in wireless telegraphy, the receiving and sending instruments will probably have to be tuned electrically to one another and that by this means a wireless telephone communication might be had without fear of other people tapping the wireless line. Stubblefield thinks, that a transmitter for long distance will not have to be of large size, and in that event European and American houses, with properly tuned instruments, could hold daily conversations over wireless instruments no more cumbersome to the office than the first long distance telephone boxes.