Celebrated as San Francisco’s “Boy Inventor” in the San Francisco Call, Francis J. McCarty initially financed his inventions with various jobs including clerking at a dry goods house.
By 1903 he reported success in developing a radiotelephone capable of transmitting over a distance of four miles. In 1904 The McCarty Wireless Telephone Co. was formed, and it was announced that McCarty had transferred his inventions to the company in exchange for $1,500 cash and 120,250 shares of stock.
Having devised one of the earliest working wireless radio-telephone systems while still a teenager, he demonstrated it successfully in 1906 for reporters at San Francisco’s Cliff House.
Later, following the cataclysmic San Franciso earthquake and fire, he relocated to Oakland, and was killed just two weeks shy of his 18th birthday when the horse cart he was driving overturned.
McCarty’s brother Henry continued his work, and in 1907 two U.S. patents originally applied for by Francis were granted, which described “high frequency spark” transmitters capable of making audio transmissions.