Who invented the wireless phone? Nathan Stubblefield, in 1908

A parent award to Nathan B. Stubblefield in May 12, 1908, details a "wireless telephone" able to transmit calls using radio. The large, if not entirely unwieldy transmitter does not looks too bad given the day. A further requirement for a series of wires suspended throughout the area, however, perhaps explains why it never caught on. From the Daily Telegraph...

One hundred years on, Stubblefield is finally being recognised as the inventor of the mobile phone. Just 30 years after the first proper long-distance phone network was set up, the Kentucky melon farmer was awarded the patent for his "wireless telephone".

Mobile Phone enjoys centerery [Telegraph.co.uk]

[#1 posted by Skwid , July 9, 2008 8:06 AM]

*pssst*

s/parent/patent

[#2 posted by Anonymous , July 9, 2008 8:48 AM]

I went to college at Murray State, which was founded by the guy on the other phone, "Rainy" t Wells. It's nice to see Stubblefield get some recognition, I just wish more people around Murray, Ky would learn who he is and what he did.

-- Michael Belcher

[#3 posted by Anonymous , July 9, 2008 9:32 AM]

Sorry to correct you but you are mistaken.

Stubblefield only invented the first RADIO PHONE.

Alexander Graham Bell invented the FIRST WIRELESS PHONE in 1881 but you don't know about it because it used Solar light and not radio.

Here is the source.

Among one of his first innovations after the telephone was the "photophone," a device that enabled sound to be transmitted on a beam of light. Bell and his assistant, Charles Sumner Tainter, developed the photophone using a sensitive selenium crystal and a mirror that would vibrate in response to a sound. In 1881, they successfully sent a photophone message over 200 yards from one building to another. Bell regarded the photophone as "the greatest invention I have ever made; greater than the telephone." Alexander Graham Bell's invention reveals the principle upon which today's laser and fiber optic communication systems are founded, though it would take the development of several modern technologies to realize it fully.

http://inventors.about.com/library/inventors/bltelephone2.htm

[#4 posted by michaelportent , July 9, 2008 10:53 AM]

Both those ideas sure caught on like wildfire in their time, eh? Proof that people are really scared of good technology. Or, just proof that people are dumb.

[#5 posted by mistercharlie , July 9, 2008 12:02 PM]

The best part of this is that he was a "Melon Farmer", a euphemism used in Repo Man for "Motherfucker. Go Telegraph!