July 20 Radio History

Loomis in 1865

In 1872...Mahlon Loomis was awarded a patent for wireless technology heralding the beginning of radio. Loomis was the first wireless telegrapher.

Loomis was also a dentist, the inventor of artificial teeth (patent #10,847 May 2, 1854), and the earliest inventor of wireless communication (patent #129,971).

He claimed to have transmitted signals in October 1866 between two Blue Ridge Mountain-tops 14 miles apart in Virginia, using kites as antennas, but without having identified the names of independent witnesses.

He was born July 26, 1826 in Oppenheim, New York, and died October 13, 1886 in Terra Alta, West Virginia.

In 1890...character actress Verna Felton was born in Salinas Calif.

With her distinctive voice she was much in demand in bigtime radio’s heyday, playing The Mom in The Cinnamon Bear, Junior the Mean Widdle Kid’s grandmother on Red Skelton‘s radio series, Hattie Hirsch on Point Sublime, and Dennis Day‘s mother on The Jack Benny Program.

She was a regular cast member in CBS-TV’s December Bride, and the spinoff Pete & Gladys, in a role she introduced on radio.

She died of a stroke December 14, 1966,

In 1935…NBC Radio debuted "G-men," renamed "Gangbusters" in January 1936 when it moved to CBS. The series ran for 21 years.


In 1937…Inventor Guglielmo Marconi, often credited as being the inventor of radio, died after a series of heart attacks at age 63. As a tribute, all radio stations throughout the world observed two minutes of silence on the next day.

When Marconi made his famous first transatlantic radio transmission in 1901, rival inventor Nikola Tesla claimed that it was done with 17 Tesla patents. Thus began years of patent battles over radio with Tesla's patents being upheld in 1903, followed by a reverse decision in favor of Marconi in 1904. In June 1943, the United States Supreme Court restored patent rights to Tesla, saying their decision had no bearing on Marconi's claim as the first to achieve radio transmission, just that because Marconi's claim to certain patents was questionable, he could not claim infringement on those same patents.





In 1940...Billboard magazine published its first singles record chart. The first Number One song was "I'll Never Smile Again," by Tommy Dorsey and Frank Sinatra.


In 2015…Songwriter (Always On My Mind, The Letter, Neon Rainbow, Somebody Like Me)/Nashville Songriters Hall of Famer Wayne Carson died of congestive heart failure at 72.