who is credited with discovering how to transmit sound without the use of wires
Wireless telegraphy 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.[7][8] 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.[9][10] 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.[11]
Long-distance calling "On October 9, 1876, Alexander Graham Bell and Thomas A. Watson talked by telephone to each other over a two-mile (3 km) wire stretched between Cambridge and Boston. It was the first wire conversation ever held. Yesterday afternoon the same two men talked by telephone to each other over a 3,400-mile (5,500 km) wire between New York and San Francisco. Dr. Bell, the veteran inventor of the telephone, was in New York, and Mr. Watson, his former associate, was on the other side of the continent. They heard each other much more distinctly than they did in their first talk thirty-eight years ago."