•
102-
Nathan B. Stubblefield, the Man History
OverheardBy
Harvey
Geller ••••
In
Life's current Bicentennial issue, radio
checks in, at #86 on the hot "100 Events
That Shaped America," 19 buttons behind
Bell's telephone. Erroneously, Life lists
Guglielmo Marcon's dots and dashes as the
first wireless broadcast, a fable echoed
by the World Almanac and Encyclopedia
Britannica. It's a forgivable mumpsimus,
since the evidence offered on the
following pages has not, until now,
appeared in any national publication.
••••
The birth of broadcasting is a bizarre
soap opera saga, a lacrymal legend of
mystery, machination, ephemeral
enshrinement, decline, disillusionment and
disaster. It's denouncement dissolves six
miles north of Murray, Kentucky, in a
two-room shanty constructed of pine and
cornstalks, where radio's uncelebrated
architect is discovered 48 hours after his
death, his records scattered, his
equipment destroyed, his brain partly
eaten by rats. Even local radio fails to
mention his demise. He is Nathan Bernard
Stubblefield, the man history over-heard
and then overlooked.
"They
all laughed at Christopher Columbus
When he said the world
was round:
They all laughed when
Edison recorded sound . . .
Ha, Ha, Ha -- who's got the
last laugh now?"
--Ira Gershwin, 1937
When
an inordinately eccentric young farmer
suggested that he had invented a portable
wireless telephone that could broadcast
voice and music up over hight buildings
and down through stone walls, most of
Calloway County, Kentucky, chuckled. When
he revealed his "crazy box, and odd
assortment of batteries, rods, coils and
kegs, they howled.
•••85 years after, their
heirs are writing songs of love,
christening radio stations, consecrating
libraries and constructing memorial
monuments in his infinite honor. The
veneration is hardly widespread. 17,000
Murray, Kentucky, tobacco farmers may
agree that Nathan B Stubblefield was the
first man on earth to transmit and receive
the human voice without wires. But most of
our world is unacquainted with his
improbable name and even his proponents
are unaware of the precise date of his
private discovery. Evidence points to a
period between 1890 and 1892, at least
seven years before Marconi sent the first
wireless telegraph message across the
English Channel.
••• Stubblefield's
supporters maintain that telegraphy is far
different from telephony; that they are, I
fact, diverse discoveries. Wireless
telephone is hip-to-shore radio, the
walkie-talkie, the citizen band and
portable radio, the mobile phone, the
audio arm of television, rheostats,
rectifying tubes, filaments, dials,
microphones, AM and FM radio and every
broadcasting booth on earth--not Marconi's
Code signals.
•••Marconi's name is linked
with Stubblefield's by Trumbull White in a
book called The World's Progress,
published in 1902. "Of very recent success
are the experiments of Marconi with
wireless telegraphy, an astounding and
important advance over the ordinary system
of telegraphy through wires. Now comes the
announcement that an American inventor,
unheralded and modest, has carried out
successful experiments of telephoning and
is able to transmit speech for great
distances without wires . . the inventor
is Nathan B. Stubblefield." •••
"This Fellow Is Fooling me." •••"Hello, Rainey,"
according to Dr. Rainey T. Wells, founder
of Murray State College, was the world's
first radio message. Testifying before an
FCC commission in 1947, Rainey explained
that he had personally heard Stubblefield
demonstrate his wireless telephone as
early as 1892.
•••"He had a shack about
four feet square near his house from which
he took an ordinary telephone receiver,
but entirely without wires. Handing me
these, he asked me to walk some distance
away and listen. I had hardly reached my
post, which happened to be an apple
orchard, when I heard 'Hello, Rainey' come
booming out of the receiver. I jumped a
foot and said to myself, 'This fellow is
fooling me. He as wires somewhere.' So I
moved to the side some 20 feet but all the
while he kept talking to me. I talked back
and he answered me as plainly as you
please. I asked him to patent the thing
but he refused, saying he wanted to
continue his research and perfect it."
•••Dr. William Mason,
Stubblefield's family physician, described
a day during that same year when
Stubblefield "handed me a device in what
appeared to be a keg with a handle on it.
I started walking down the lane . . . from
it I could distinctly hear his voice and a
harmonica which he was broadcasting to me
several years before Marconi made his
announcement about wireless
telegraphy."
••••••
Stubblefield was born in Murray, Kentucky,
1860 the son of Attorney and Mrs. William
Jefferson Stubblefield (Capt. Billy). In
his teens he was reportedly an omnivorous
student and researched everything
available on the new science of
electricity. When Alexander Bel phoned Tom
Watson on March 10, 1876, to say "Come
here, Watson; I want you," Stubblefield
was already experimenting with vibrating
communication devices. In 1888 (Patent
#378,183) he invented a vibrating
telephone. The Murray News Weekly carried
this item: "Charlie Hamlin has his
telephone I fine working order from his
store to his home. It is the Nathan
Stubblefield patent and is the best I have
ever talked through."
•••Stubblefield
manufactured and patented batteries which
he later described as "the bedrock of all
my scientific research in raidio" (his
spelling).
•••••• "I
have been working on this, the wireless
telephone, for 10 or 12 years," he told a
St. Louis Post-Dispatch correspondent in
January, 1902. "This solution is not the
result of an inspiration or the work of a
minute. It is the climax of years. The
system can be developed until messages by
voice can be sent and heard all over the
country, even to Europe. The world is it
limits."
"Diamonds
as Large a Your Thumb."
•••With the new industrial
and scientific epoch at hand and the first
Roosevelt in the White House, Stubblefield
built his broadcasting station, a tiny
workshop on the front porch of his modest
farmhouse. It was barely wide enough to
hold the transmitter and one char. The
transmitting mechanism was concealed in a
box four feet hight,tow and a half feet
wide, one and a half feet deep. "In that
box," said Stubblefield, "lies the secret
of my success." Five hundred yards away
was the experimental receiving station, a
dry-good box fastened to the foot of a
tree stump.
•••The St. Louis
Post-Dispatch reporter noted that
Stubblefield's 14-year-old son, Bernard,
was left on the porch wile h and the
inventor walked to the stump. The writer
picked up a receiver and heard spasmodic
buzzings and then: "Hello. Can you hear
me? Now I will count ten.
One-to-three-four-=five-six-seven-eight-nine-ten.
Did you hear that? Now I will whisper."
Later Bernard whistled and played the
mouth organ.
•••"I heard as clearly as
if the speaker were only across a 12-foot
room" wrote the newsman.
•••When the article
appeared on January 10, 1902, Stubblefield
was besieged by capitalists, financiers,
stock-jugglers, hucksters and hawkers. Dr.
Mason recalled seeing a $40,000 check for
a part interest in the invention, as
titans of industry "wearing diamonds as
large as your thumb" scuttled up industry
dirt roads to Stubblefield's flinty
farm.
•••"You and I will yet add
luster to the Stubblefield name," wrote
Nathan to his cousin, Vernon.
•••He refused all
propositions, including one for half a
million dollars. "It is north twice that,"
he insisted, entrusting only his son,
Bernard, with the secret of his mysterious
keg. On occasion he repelled
over-inquisitive visitors with a
shotgun.
•••Invited by leading
scientist, he traveled with his trunk of
mystery to Washington, D.C., where he
demonstrated the practicability of his
contrivance from the steamship Bartholdy
on the Potomac to crowds along the river
bank. On Decoration Day, 1902, he
broadcast words and music form the Belmont
Mansion and Fairmont Park in Philadelphia
to hundreds of statesmen, investors and
newsmen. He obtained patents in England,
the U.S. and Canada.
•••• In the Canadian
patent is a drawing of a "horseless
carriage" with a broadcasting set,
presaging the auto radio by 30 years. But
perhaps even more remarkable are notations
that by reversing a switch one could
change a broadcasting station into a
receiving apparatus.
•••• Articles appeared
in major newspapers throughout the world
acclaiming him as the distinguished
inventor of the wireless telephone and a
celebrated scientific genius. At lease one
extravagant reporter suggested that
Stubblefield ad crated "the world's
greatest invention."
Decline
and Fall.
•••• There are three
conflicting theories on how this
farmer-inventor sowed the wind of
immortality and reaped the whirlwind of
oblivion. His cousin, Vernon, claimed the
invention was stolen
"Will I ever see
my trunk again?" Stubblefield scribbled on
the back of an old map after he returned
from Washington.
•••• "All his
valuables were in that trunk," said his
cousin.
•••• Perry Meloan,
newspaper editor of Edmonton, Kentucky, an
ear-witness to the first public
demonstration in Murray, declared that
Stubblefield was inveigled into a
partnership in the Wireless Telephone
Company of America, located at Broadway
11, New York. Learning that the firm was
not interested in perfecting his creation
but merely in selling stock
unscrupulously, Stubblefield returned
home. "Damn rascals," was his bitter
comment to friends, and he advised them to
withdraw their investment in his project.
Soon after, he renounced his wife, nine (5
surviving) children and all relatives and
built his hermitage gut in Almo, six miles
from his family farmhouse. That farmhouse
later mysteriously burned to the
ground.
•••• His son, Bernard,
joined the Westinghouse Electrical Corp.,
the firm that introduced the commercial
radio. Did Bernard utilize his father's
secrets to produce those early sets?
•••• Wireless lights
appeared in the trees and along the fences
guarding Stubblefield's crudely
constructed shanty and, according to
neighbors, voices, apparently coming from
the air, were heard by trespassers. "Get
your mule out of my cornfield,"
Stubblefield's wireless voice was hard to
say in the night.
•••• He curtly refused
the aid of friends. "He was never insane,"
they insisted, "only queer."
•••• Robert McDermott
found the body of Nathan Stubblefield on
March 30, 1928. "Death due to starvation,"
was Dr. Mason's conclusion. In a unmarked
grave in Bowman's cemetery, one and a half
miles form Murray, Stubblefield lies
alone.
•••• In 1930 a
memorial to "the first man to transmit and
receive the human voice without wires" was
dedicated at Murray State Teachers College
campus, less than 100 feet from the
charred ruins of the world's first
broadcasting station.
•••• In 1962 his
tragic life was dramatized in an epicedial
folk opera, The Stubblefield Story,
composed by Murray State professor Paul
Shahan and Mrs. Lillian Lowry and
performed in the campus auditorium.
•••• Murray's only
radio station, 1 1000-watt outlet,
broadcasts "middle of the road and some
rock music as well," according to owner
Fransuelle Cole. Book-ended between Bruce
Springsteen's "Borne to Rune" a a live
commercial for Kroger's grocery, on hears.
"You are tune to WNBS, 1340 on your radio
dial in Murray, Kentucky: the birthplace
of radio."
••••
The stations call-letters, not
accidentally, are Stubblefield's
initials. • Click
for Full Story Published in Warner Bros.
Circular
///
•Troy
Cory was among the first international
entertainers and the first American
entertainer to perform in the People's
Republic of China, beginning in
1988. In
itself a notable culture-historical feat,
in view of China's closed door policies of
the late 70s and well into the 80s. The
PRC's administrative climate in comparison
is much less restrictive now and China's
open door policy enables many entertainers
to introduce themselves to the populace
Chinese audiences• •
• • Back in the 80s, as a
goodwill ambassador representing the
U.S.A., Troy Cory and his back-up dancers
and singers, "The Brooke Sisters," were
the first entertainers from the United
States to appear in a full staged program
in the People's Republic of China during
the Shanghai TV Festival, and televised on
China's National Television (CCTV), viewed
by over 300 million people.•
•
• •
It was there Cory met Jiang Zemin, then
mayor of Shanghai, and who later became
the 5th President of the People's Republic
of China.• •
• • • The '88 Shanghai
Concert was the beginnings of Troy's
concert tours in China for the next two
decades. The concerts, just to name a few,
included the following cities: Shanghai,
Beijing, Anshan, Harbin, Fuzhou and and
Tsingtao (Qingdao) •
Click
More For TC in China
•
More
106-
Net Neutrality rules formally published;
first legal challenge
filed WASHINGTON
-- Tough new net neutrality regulations
were published in the Federal Register on
April 13, 2015, that started a 60-day
clock on its effective date of June 12 and
triggering the first formal legal
challenge to the controversial online
traffic rules.
•••• US Telecom, a
trade group whose members include AT&T
Inc. and Verizon Communications Inc.,
filed a lawsuit in the U.S. Court of
Appeals for the District of Columbia
Circuit to stop the rules, arguing the
rules are "arbitrary and capricious" and
violate federal law. •Click
More tviStory
106-s90-Net
Neutrality Rules Published in Federal
Register
///
•
101-
Marsha Hunt, legandary actress of
Hollywood's Golden Age honored with First
Annual "Marsha Hunt for Humanitiy
Award ••••
Hollywood,
CA (April 12, 2015) -- Kat Kramer's Films
That Change The World kicked off the
Opening Night of the Seventh Annual Cinema
Series on the
evening of Friday, April 10, 2015 with a
Screening and Panel Discussion about the
film Bhopal: A Prayer of Rain at Canon
U.S.A., Inc. in Hollywood, CA with the
film's stars Martin Sheen and Mischa
Barton; Director/Co-Writer, Ravi Kumar;
Executive Producers Terrance Sweeney and
Leszek Burzynski; Director of Photography
Charlie Wuppermann; Distribution
Executives, Seb Marciano and Daniel Brandt
from Revolver Entertainment; and the
event's Keynote Speaker, Tim
Edwards, Executive Trustee of
Bhopal Medical Appeal in
attendance.
••••
Marsha Hunt, the legendary
97-year-old actress and social activist of
Hollywood's Golden Age received a
sustained standing ovation from a capacity
crowd of 175 guests as she received the
First Annual "Hunt For Humanity Award" for
her social activism presented to her by
Ken Howard, President of SAG-AFTRA. Past
Kat Kramer's Films That Change The World
Series •
MORE
about the film
series,
please visit
www.katkramersfilmsthatchangetheworld.com •
Click
More tviStory 101-s90- Marsha Hunt,
legandary actress of Hollywood's Golden
Age
honored ///
•106-
The Electric Car- Emobility in
Germany "The
government is taking a snooze" Kurt
Sigl, president of Bundesverband
eMobilität pushes from the outside
in. Politics fail in promoting emobility
and the German manufacturers talk down the
electric car. View
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•106-
Is the Digital Millennium Copyright Act a
Safe Harbor?--
Court denies Grooveshark DMCA protection
for songs like "Johnny B. Goode" In April
2013, a New York state appellate court
made a curious decision in a matter being
litigated between Grooveshark parent
company Escape Media Group, Inc. and UMG
Recordings, Inc. The court ruled that due
to an peculiarity in copyright law, the
Digital Millennium Copyright Act does not
apply to songs that were licensed under
state law before February 15, 1972. As
such, for these recordings, Grooveshark is
not eligible for what is known as safe
harbor -- an immunity to liability if
users upload copyrighted works without the
website's knowledge. •
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Millennium Copyright Act a Safe
Harbor? /// •
106-
Did FCC's New Internet Rules Put the FCC
in Charge of the
Internet? •••• March 10,
2015- It's been two weeks since the
Federal Communications Commission voted
3-2 to overhaul the way broadband Internet
service is regulated,
changing it
from a Title I information service to a
Title II telecommunications service - by
expanding the definition of conventional
phone service to include Internet address
as well as phone numbers, according to the
order
••••And only now is
the 400-page order, not released prior to
the vote, that was drawn up by FCC
Chairman Tom Wheeler and supported by the
commission's two Democratic members,
available for public viewing. This was
perhaps the most significant and
far-reaching shift in Internet policy in
nearly two decades, and put in place
without full public access.
to confirm that the rules will mean
whatever the agency wants them to
mean. •Click
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106-s90-Did
FCC's New Internet Rules Put the FCC in
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