The
Marconi Wireless Telegraph Company of America (American Marconi), incorporated in
New Jersey in 1899, had by 1908 deployed five land stations and 40 marine stations. It would operate wireless stations until, with the entry of the United States into World War I, the
US Navy assumed wartime control of wireless. It would continue manufacturing activities until the American Marconi factory in Aldene, NJ was acquired by
General Electric in 1919 and its wireless operations and facilities were acquired by the
Radio Corporation of America in 1920.
New Jersey Marconi's transatlantic radiotelegraph stations were deployed in pairs; a station near
New Brunswick, New Jersey would transmit while another at
Belmar would receive the weak signals from across the Atlantic. American Marconi had also established a factory in 1907 in
Aldene, New Jersey.
New Brunswick Marconi Station () was located at
County Route 501 and Easton Avenue just a few minutes from the New Brunswick border in
Somerset, New Jersey. Today it is the site of Marconi Park. It was an early radio transmitter facility built in 1913 and operated by the
American Marconi. After the partial failure of transatlantic telegraph cables, the facility was confiscated by the
US Navy in January, 1918 to provide vital transatlantic communications during World War I. The New Brunswick Naval Radio Station was the principal wartime communication link between the United States and Europe, using the callsign NFF. President Woodrow Wilson's Fourteen Points speech was transmitted by NFF in 1918. Ownership of the station, along with Marconi's other US stations, were transferred from the Navy to RCA in 1920. The antenna masts were demolished in 1952 to make room for what is now a small mall containing a Kmart, but the buildings on the other side of JFK Boulevard were spared. All but one of the brick buildings were demolished around 2004 to make way for a storage locker facility. The bricks and tiles were saved for use in any future restoration of the spared building, and the second facility in
Belmar, New Jersey. The Belmar Marconi receiving station was located at what are now
Camp Evans buildings in
Wall Township, New Jersey. The original buildings were built by the
Marconi Wireless Telegraph Company of America under a contract to the J.G. White Engineering Corp. between 1912 and 1914 as part of
Guglielmo Marconi's "wireless girdle" around the Earth. It was then known as the Belmar Station (). The Belmar Station served as
Marconi's receiving station, "duplexed" with his
New Brunswick () high power transmitting station. An operator in Belmar keyed the New Brunswick transmitter, to the northwest, through a landline connection.
Edwin Armstrong and
David Sarnoff tested and perfected the
regenerative circuit at the Belmar site, on the night of 31 January/1 February 1914.
Albert Hoyt Taylor, who later made important contributions toward the development of radar, was Communication Superintendent at the station during World War I. The station was closed in 1924, after receiver functions were transferred to RCA's new Radio Central receiver site on Long Island, NY.
New York As early as 1 March 1904, messages for
steamship passengers at sea were accepted at
Western Union landline
telegraph offices, where they would be transmitted overland to
Sagaponack or
Babylon, New York and delivered to Marconi Wireless Telegraph for transmission to steamships of the
Cunard Line,
American Line,
French Line,
North German Lloyd Line,
Atlantic Transport Line,
Hamburg-American Line or
Red Star Line. In 1912, a Marconi station atop the Wanamaker's Department Store building in New York City was to receive a list of passengers aboard the , delivering the news to
Hearst newspapers before the ship's arrival. An operator at this station,
David Sarnoff, would go on to lead the
Radio Corporation of America.
Cape Cod, Massachusetts A Marconi station built in 1902 at South Wellfleet,
Cape Cod, Massachusetts (initial callsign
CC,
MCC 1908 to 1911, finally
WCC from 1911,) transmitted its first telegraphic message via
spark gap transmitter in 1903 from what is now known as the National Park Service "Marconi Area," about a mile north of the entrance to
Marconi Beach.
Marine radio traffic carried before the station closed in 1917 included news and telegrams for passengers of the , distress calls from the in 1912 and a message between the American president and the British king in 1903. The South Wellfleet antennas and equipment were dismantled by the U.S. Navy in 1919, replaced by Marconi's new receiver station built in 1914 in
Chatham, Massachusetts and its paired transmitter station also built in 1914 in
Marion, Massachusetts. The South Wellfleet site is now part of the
Cape Cod National Seashore, the Chatham receiver site is now operated as a museum by the Chatham Marconi Maritime Center, and most of the 143 acres of the Marion Station were donated to the Sippican Lands Trust, where hundreds of artifacts remain publicly accessible. The Marion Station transmitter building is operated as a private business and the hotel and three bungalows are privately owned. The original tower still stands to this day, and is used for the antennas for local police/fire telecommunications.
Point Reyes, California WCC is just one of two former Marconi stations on US national parkland; a California coastal radio station (callsign
KPH), formerly operated by Marconi and later RCA, is located at
Point Reyes National Seashore. In 1913, an American Marconi Company transmitting station was established at
Bolinas. The receiving station
KPH was about twenty miles further north, in the town of Marshall, at
Point Reyes. In 1914, the stations at Bolinas and Marshall would allow messages received from
New Brunswick, New Jersey to be retransmitted to Hawaii. KPH has been preserved by volunteer members of the Maritime Radio Historical Society and is operated at weekends and on special occasions such as
International Marconi Day and the anniversary of the "end of commercial Morse code in America." The station volunteers also use the alternative callsign KSM and
amateur radio club callsign K6KPH.
Bolinas, California Built in 1919 by Marconi, it was taken over in 1920 by the
Radio Corporation of America (RCA).
Hawaii Marconi's radiotelegraph was to serve both as a means of establishing communications between the various
Hawaiian Islands and as a means to receive messages from the Americas (notably California and
Panama) for retransmission to Japan and Asia. In the early days of wireless communications, Marconi used the Hawaiian Islands as a test run. His future plans included creating an international wireless network. Hawaii was the small scale, with the largest distance of approximately 78 miles. Marconi was able to improve his system when in Hawaii, and received very good reviews from the governor of Hawaii. From
Manila, Philippines, messages eventually could be resent to a British station in
Singapore which would then reach
Bangalore, India. From there, a signal sent to a station in Africa could eventually be retransmitted to
Egypt or
Cyprus, and the Egyptian station would reach
London. In 1915, the
New York Times announced "The opening of the Japanese Marconi wireless plant at Funabashi near
Yokohama with messages on Tuesday to the Marconi station at
Kahuku, Hawaii, extended the Marconi service nearly two-thirds the way around the
globe. If the
war had not interfered with the creation of the
British Imperial chain, it might have been possible by this time to relay a message by
wireless all the way around the world." A Marconi station at
Kahuku on the North Shore of
Oahu, Hawaii was later operated by RCA; the site was re-purposed as an air base during World War II and is now abandoned. The property on which the old Marconi station sits, is referred to as Makai Ranch. The buildings currently sit vacant, as the owner is awaiting eminent domain transfer or permits before restoration can begin. ==See also==