16 Facts About Amos Dolbear

Amos Emerson Dolbear was an American physicist and inventor.

Amos Dolbear was a professor at University of Kentucky in Lexington from 1868 until 1874.

Amos Dolbear is known for his 1882 invention of a system for transmitting telegraph signals without wires.

Amos Dolbear was born in Norwich, Connecticut, on November 10,1837.

Amos Dolbear was a graduate of Ohio Wesleyan University, in Delaware, Ohio.

Amos Dolbear invented the first telephone receiver with a permanent magnet in 1865,11 years before Alexander Graham Bell patented his model.

Later, Amos Dolbear couldn't prove his claim, so Bell kept the patent.

In 1882, Amos Dolbear was able to communicate over a distance of a quarter of a mile without wires in the Earth.

Amos Dolbear's device relied on conduction in the ground, which was different from later radio transmissions that used electromagnetic radiation.

Amos Dolbear's set-up used phones grounded by metal rods poked into the earth.

In 1905, the New York Circuit Court further noted that the Amos Dolbear patent was "inoperative, and that, even if operative, it operates by virtue of radically different electrical laws and phenomena" than the radio signaling used by Marconi.

In 1868 Amos Dolbear invented the electrostatic telephone.

Amos Dolbear invented the opeidoscope and a system of incandescent lighting.

Amos Dolbear authored several books, articles, and pamphlets, and was recognized for his contributions to science at both the Paris Exposition in 1881 and the Crystal Palace Exposition in 1882.

In 1897, Amos Dolbear published an article "The Cricket as a Thermometer" that noted the correlation between the ambient temperature and the rate at which crickets chirp.

Amos Dolbear died at his home in Medford on February 23,1910.