<P> A number of wireless electrical signaling schemes based on the (sometimes erroneous) idea that electric currents could be conducted long range through water, ground, and air were investigated for telegraphy before practical radio systems became available . </P> <P> The original telegraph used two wires between two stations to form a complete electrical circuit or "loop ." In 1837, however, Carl August von Steinheil of Munich, Germany, found that by connecting one leg of the apparatus at each station to metal plates buried in the ground, he could eliminate one wire and use a single wire for telegraphic communication . This led to speculation that it might be possible to eliminate both wires and therefore transmit telegraph signals through the ground without any wires connecting the stations . Other attempts were made to send the electric current through bodies of water, in order to span rivers, for example . Prominent experimenters along these lines included Samuel F.B. Morse in the United States and James Bowman Lindsay in Great Britain, who in August 1854, was able to demonstrate transmission across a mill dam at a distance of 500 yards (457 metres). </P> <P> US inventors William Henry Ward (1871) and Mahlon Loomis (1872) developed an electrical conduction systems based on the erroneous belief that there was an electrified atmospheric stratum accessible at low altitude . They thought atmosphere current, connected with a return path using "Earth currents"' would allow for wireless telegraphy as well as supply power for the telegraph, doing away with artificial batteries . A more practical demonstration of wireless transmission via conduction came in Amos Dolbear's 1879 magneto electric telephone that used ground conduction to transmit over a distance of a quarter of a mile . </P> <P> In the 1890s inventor Nikola Tesla's worked on an air and ground conduction wireless electric power transmission system, similar to Loomis', which he planned to include wireless telegraphy . Tesla's experiments had led him to incorrectly conclude that he could use the entire globe of the Earth to conduct electrical energy and his 1901 large scale application of his ideas, a high - voltage wireless power station, now called Wardenclyffe Tower, lost funding and was abandoned after a few years . </P>

Who is credited with discovering how to transmit sound without the use of wires