Historians' takes on what he actually did range from his claim being unproven to theories that he may have inadvertently sent electromagnetic wave (radio) signals between the two hilltops, despite his impractical ideas about atmospheric electrical charges.

But the profession encountered very great difficulties with it in these directions, principal among them being the almost impossibility of properly governing the shrinkage of the material in firing; and Mr. Loomis's process, although experimented with to some extent, never attained too much importance.

there is one way already demonstrated by experiments by which we can reach, and avail sources of its benefit and value, and that is to seek the highest mountain tops, and thus penetrate this immense and unexplored field, whose virgin soil awaits the plowshare for a fruitful seedtime and harvest".

But, once the infrastructure for drawing electrical currents from the upper atmosphere was in place, it would mean that: "mill and factory will then run with a more subtle power, although the waterwheel stands dry and idle.

Our dwellings will glow with wholesome heat on wintry days and be illuminated with clear, unwavering light in the night time from the steady and exhaustless flow of this vital element, and the miner of coal shall leave his toil in the shaft for a nobler handicraft among his fellows up in the sunlight and the world.

As early as 1839 the German mathematician and physicist Carl Friedrich Gauss had correctly speculated that its luminescence was originating in an electrically conducting region of the upper atmosphere, which later became known as ionosphere.

Loomis was familiar with the solar storm of 1859, which in addition to a major aurora display produced widespread surging electrical currents which disrupted telegraph lines.

Loomis believed that, in the absence of disrupting influences like thunderstorms, the atmosphere normally arranged itself into discrete concentric layers, which could be individually accessed in order to provide distant wireless communication.

Loomis is best known for an entry for October 1866 that he recorded in one of his notebooks, which reads: "From two mountain peaks of the Blue Ridge in Virginia, which are only about two thousand feet above tide-water, two kites were let up—one from each summit—eighteen or twenty miles apart.

Hence it is that high regions must be sought where disturbing influences cannot invade, where statical energy is stored in a vast unbroken element, enabling a line to be worked without interruption or possible failure.

"[12] A November 1872 report in the Washington Chronicle stated that, using kites and galvanometers, "Loomis' aërial system has just been tried on lines of different lengths, with variable, but perfectly satisfactory results.

[15] George Loomis's account also related an underwater test performed by his brother: "Pursuing the theories the correctness of which had already been so satisfactorily verified, he conceived the idea of telegraphing between vessels at sea without wire connections.

On the same principle he was led to believe that the warm current of the Gulf Stream, if similarly connected with the adjacent colder water, would afford a means of telegraphing a great distance—perhaps as far as a decided difference in temperature is maintained.

On January 13, 1869, Senator Charles Sumner of Massachusetts submitted a petition prepared by Loomis that requested that the U.S. Congress appropriate $50,000 for financing for developing his ideas "during the next year".

[19] Loomis's request for a government appropriation had a precedent in an 1843 congressional grant of $30,000 to Samuel Morse, for the construction of an experimental wire telegraph line from Washington to Baltimore, Maryland.

In addition, the House Committee on Commerce, reviewing his proposal, noted that there was a similar telegraph system, developed by Charles Wheatstone, that was already in commercial operation in England, which had been "put into practical use for two or three hundred miles in Great Britain".

This one-page patent makes a vague claim about using atmospheric electricity to eliminate the overhead wire used by the existing telegraph systems, but it contains no schematic diagram of how to build it, and no theory of how it might function.

[27] However, in late 1877 it was reported that Loomis was now conducting successful experiments in West Virginia, and also had the financing needed to test a bold plan to connect the western United States with Switzerland.

According to this report, carried in numerous papers: "Information has reached here recently that Professor Loomis, who has been in the mountainous regions of West Virginia for some months conducting a series of experiments with his proposed aerial telegraphy, has demonstrated finally that telegraphing without wires is practical."

Furthermore, "Professor Loomis has a scheme now on foot for a series of experiments from a point on one of the highest peaks on the Alps, in Switzerland, to a similarly situated place in the Rocky Mountains, on this side of the world.

This review stated that Loomis was continuing tests in West Virginia "conducted from high hills and mountains though he has telegraphed as far as eleven miles by having kites raised at each end of the distance, flying them with a fine copper wire instead of string.

During this era the common practice for verifying that a system was working as advertised was to post observers at each end of a communication link, sending their own messages and making public reports.

According to Appleby, the elevated wires would have created electrical sparks (despite the fact that Loomis had contrasted the crashing of lightning with his own system, which he stated would work "innocuously and without jar"),[49] which in turn produced radiotelegraphic transmissions.

(A spark transmitter would have been incapable of making audio transmissions, but Appleby did not address Loomis's 1879 assertion that he was using his aerial system to regularly talk to an assistant twenty miles away).

Appleby concluded that the kites' copper strings would have acted as radio transmitting and receiving antennas, and the fact that they were reported to be identical lengths would have added a limited amount of tuning.

[50] Reviewing the reported 1866 test, Appleby noted that although Loomis stated that one site was Bear's Den mountain, the other location was only said to be eighteen miles distant, somewhere along the Catoctin Ridge.

This review accepted Loomis's claims of making long-distance wireless telegraphy transmissions, although the author had outstanding questions about the technical details, stating "How exactly this happened is not clear.

In 2005, Thomas H. Lee summarized his research efforts: "Allegedly, experiments conducted by Loomis in his home state of West Virginia were successful, but there is no accepted primary evidence to support this claim, and calculations based on modern knowledge cast tremendous doubt in any case."

This device consisted of "a strip of metal bent at each end in opposite directions to form spring hooks, having the inner surfaces roughened or serrated and the curved portions corrugated.

[57][58] George Loomis reported that near the end of his life, Mahlon recounted that "an impulse has driven me that I could not resist" and "I know that I am by some, even many, regarded as a crank—by some perhaps as a fool—for allowing myself to the sacrifice of material advantages to abandon a lucrative profession and pursue this ignus fatuus, but I know that I am right, and if the present generation lives long enough their opinions will be changed—and their wonder will be that they did not perceive it before.