Bob Lochte

Roberto Landell de Moura was born January 21, 1861 in Porto Alegre, Brazil. Educated in Jesuit schools, Landell showed an early aptitude for science and technology and enrolled in a polytechnic institute in 1879. His brother convinced him to come to Rome, study for the priesthood, and simultaneously pursue his scientific interests at the Gregorian University where the faculty, laboratories, and academic environment were superior to any in Brazil. Landell completed his studies and returned to Brazil as an ordained priest in 1886. Early in his career, the church shuffled the new priest from town to town seven times until he ultimately became a vicar in São Paulo.
 
 

The young Padre Landell remained an eager researcher and kept up with current scientific literature. He had two goals. He wanted to increase the base of technical and scientific knowledge in Brazil and to prove that learning about the physical universe was completely compatible with the doctrines of the Catholic Church.
 
 

During his studies in Europe, Landell encountered the work of many inventors who were perfecting wireless communication devices. Foremost among these was Alexander Graham Bell's Photophone, a wireless telephone that used sound to modulate a beam of reflected sunlight aimed at a photoelectric cell that changed the light into an electric telephone signal. Bell demonstrated the Photophone widely in 1881 and set up a lab in France to develop an improved model of it. American Amos Dolbear, a professor at Tufts College, brought a different type of wireless telephone to Europe in 1882. Meanwhile, Thomas Edison and Lucius Phelps in the U.S. and Willoughby Smith in England devised wireless telegraph systems to communicate with moving trains. Padre Landell also read about Heinrich Hertz's experiments with radio waves and Edouard Branly's coherer that became the first practical receiver for these waves.
 
 

Believing that he had the expertise to build an innovative wireless telephone system, Padre Landell began work on a model in his laboratory sometime in 1893 and tested it at São Paulo in early 1894. Landell's invention was a combination of three different wireless telephone systems. The first, which he called the Esophone, was an acoustic telephone with megaphones at each end and a pair of telescopes to facilitate precise alignment. The second system was a version of Bell's Photophone, again using telescopes to align the reflector and receiver. The third system, called the Radiographone, was a crude radio wave transmitter and receiver. Depending on atmospheric conditions, Landell could switch modes to optimize transmission, and use the Radiographone to ring a bell, signaling a call, in any of the modes. He claimed that the system would work as a telegraph with a few simple modifications and could achieve transmission distances up to 15 miles.
 

Eager to show his superiors what he had accomplished, Padre Landell arranged a demonstration for the Bishop of São Paulo. To Landell's amazement, the wireless telephone terrified the man. The Bishop called it the "voice of the devil," accused Landell of practicing witchcraft, and ordered him to cease the radio experiments immediately.Sometime in 1895, fanatics broke into Landell's laboratory, destroyed his equipment, and burned the building to the ground.
 
 

It took Landell five years to regroup, but he eventually built a new model and staged a public demonstration where he transmitted and received a signal five miles. One of the invited guests was C.P. Lupton, British Consul at São Paulo. Lupton urged Landell to take his invention to England where radiotelegraphy was already in use and the culture more open to wireless innovations. Landell applied for and received Brazilian patent 3279 on his system in 1901 but failed to get a grant from the government to develop his invention commercially.
 
 

Padre Landell decided to go to the United States and seek a patent. He had good contacts there through the church and perceived that the U.S. patent process was simpler than England's. He found a patron willing to pay for his travel and housing.In October 1901, Landell filed his first U.S. patent application. He spent 3 years proving the originality of his ideas to the patent examiners. During this period, he discharged his first patent attorney and hired a second, subdivided his application into two then three separate ones, contracted pneumonia and spent several months recuperating in Cuba, and never demonstrated a working model for the patent examiner. Nevertheless, in late 1904, Landell received three U.S. Patents. By then the Marconi Company had expanded across the Atlantic and was on its way to monopolizing the young wireless industry.
 
 

In 1894, Landell's invention may have been unique, but 10 years later it was a quaint anachronism that never found a market. His patron had neither means nor inclination to support his efforts further. Landell returned to Brazil where he continued scientific work until his death in 1928. In 1981, Brazilian radio amateurs declared Padre Landell their patron. A few years later, the Catholic Bishop of Santa Maria instituted the annual Landell de Moura Prize for using communication technology for the betterment of mankind.
 
 

Sources:

Landell de Moura. By Hamilton Almeida. Tchê Comuniçãoes. Porto Alegre, Brazil, 1984

The Incredible Father Landell de Moura, or the sad History of a Brazilian Inventor-By Ernani Fornari. Editoria Globo, Porto Alegre, Brazil, 1960.
 
 

Internet:

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