Crichton man pulls off hoax when radio news was hot

The New Orleans Times-Picayune devoted a section of its
Sunday edition to news about the development of radio. The
story "Mobilian dreams of patent; sells it for $300,000" appears
at the top of the first column on the left side of the page. 

Before the internet, email, and cheap long-distance calling, reporters had trouble confirming some facts and could be duped by bold hoaxers. One hoax out of Mobile on the eve of the Great Depression gained nationwide publicity before being debunked. 

In June 1929, the New Orleans Times-Picayune carried a story about an electrician in Mobile who had invented a device to eliminate radio static, a big problem in the days when AM radio dominated the airways. Mobile reporter Frances R. Durham wrote the story about W. A. Maxwell, a Crichton resident who claimed he sold his invention to the Atwater Kent Radio Corporation of Philadelphia for $300,000, plus a 25 percent royalty. That would be about $4.5 million in today’s dollars, plus royalties. So you can see why there was a lot of interest in the invention. 

Frances Durham

Durham provided elaborate detail of Maxwell’s invention and summarized the results: “Electrical disturbances, lightning and all manner of interference are said to be neutralized by the Maxwell static eliminator as effectively as a shock absorber takes up shocks.” 

Maxwell even claimed to have set up a demonstration set for public viewing, or hearing, at a local music house. 

Reflecting on his windfall, Maxwell shouted to the reporter as she was leaving, “I’ll have to pay income tax next year.”

It took nearly two weeks, but the hoax eventually fell apart, but not before being published by papers around the country. Starting in late June, newspapers from Boston to Columbus, Ohio, to Denver to Seattle began carrying denials from the Atwater Kent company that it had bought the static eliminator. Scientific organizations, broadcasting and radio authorities, and radio fans had deluged the company with questions about the supposed device. 

The company issued a statement that “There is no truth that we have purchased a static eliminator from W. A. Maxwell of Mobile. We have never seen either the apparatus or the man.” 

We don’t know what happened to Maxwell as the hoax apparently eliminated him from any more news stories. 

That Maxwell could have so easily fooled Durham is odd. She was a smart and experienced reporter. Durham graduated from St. Joseph’s College in Emmitsburg, Maryland. She broke in as a police reporter on the New Orleans States during World War I, when male reporters were in short supply. 

She had been the first reporter hired by publisher Ralph B. Chandler when he began the Mobile Press in 1929. With the merger of the Press and the Register in 1932, Durham became the first society editor of the Mobile Press Register. 

Durham was neither the first nor the last reporter to be taken in by a hoax. Until the internet took over as a fertile field for fake news, newspapers regularly printed hoaxes unknowingly.