Nexus - 0702 - New Times Magazine-pages

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50 kHz and the broadcast frequencies start- ing at 500 kHz. It is the portion of the In 1881, Loomis give a speech on his _ radio spectrum called low frequency (LF), invention to the famous Franklin Institute and is the portion that Nikola Tesla worked in Philadelphia—a fitting connection, link- with. Our Magheramena radio range was ing Loomis to his genius predecessor, Ben _ thus a low-frequency Tesla station—and I, Franklin. at 18 years of age, had been trained by the In essence, Congress had assured his — Army Air Force in Tesla science. failure. This left the field to Marconi, who Low frequencies were used for two good was funded with millions of pounds from reasons. The first is that instead of shoot- the British Post Office. ing up into the sky, like high frequencies, Loomis spent his final days experiment- they hug the surface of the Earth and thus ing with steel pipes on wooden towers. He lend themselves to Earth-hugging beams. practised dentistry only when necessary, in The second, of course, is that the Germans order to earn money to survive. utilised no low frequencies, so they never I can find very little information on the _ picked up our transmissions. personal character of Mahlon Loomis. He The famed twin-tailed Messerschmitt died at his brother's home in Terra Alta, 110E, with a range of 1,800 miles, could West Virginia, and is buried, unknown and _ easily have destroyed our station. With a unheralded, in the local cemetery. speed of 350 mph and service ceiling of Mahlon Loomis's steel pipes up the side 32,000 feet, the 110E could sneak across of wooden poles were not unlike my cop- _ Ireland. per wire up the side of the wooden poles of The BF-110E fighter-bomber was called the (low frequency) radio range navigation the Zerstérer (Destroyer). It was little station, on the border of the Irish Free _ talked about during the war, although it State, that I kept on the air during World was without a doubt the best fighter- War II. bomber ever built. The United States Our station functioned at 330 kilohertz— could easily have won the Vietnam War that portion of the radio spectrum between _ with it. It was also an invisible weapon. Since we were only eight miles from the ocean, where German subs roamed, a more likely demise of our installation—had it been detected—would have been from a German commando raid. Our one .45 and two Thompson submachine guns would probably not have served us very well. Little did Mahlon Loomis ever imagine that his elegant invention would, less than a century later, be saving thousands of lives of American and British airmen and mer- chant seamen. oo About the Author: Philip S. Callahan, PhD, is a rare combina- tion of scientist, natural philosopher and world traveller. He is the author of numer- ous scientific papers as well as 14 books, including Insect Behavior (1971), Tuning in to Nature (1975), Birds and How They Function (1979), Ancient Mysteries, Modern Visions (1984), Nature's Silent Music (1992), Exploring the Spectrum (1994), Paramagnetism (1996), and My Search for Traces of God (1997)—a very personal mem- oir that describes his own spiritual develop- ment, the influence of divine guidance on his discoveries, and the physics of miraculous events (see review in 5/06). NEXUS - 83 The Invention of Wireless Radio Communication FEBRUARY — MARCH 2000