Marconi National Historic Sites of Canada in part, to commemorate Marconi's first transmission tests in 1901. The Marconi National Historic Site of Canada, located at Table Head in Glace Bay, is the site of Guglielmo Marconi's first transatlantic wireless station, callsign VAS, and the first wireless message sent from North America to Europe on December 15, 1902. The site features the remnants of Marconi's transmission towers, a modern amateur radio station, plus a museum chronicling Marconi's achievements. Marconi chose this site for its elevated flat expanse and unobstructed view out over the Atlantic Ocean. Some of the concrete footings for the massive towers can still be
Invention of radio science historians have taken the position that this was the first transatlantic radio transmission. Critics have claimed that it is more likely that Marconi received stray atmospheric noise from atmospheric electricity in this experiment. The transmitting station in Poldhu, Cornwall used a spark-gap transmitter that could produce a signal in the medium frequency range and with high power levels. Marconi transmitted from England to Canada and the United States. In this period, a particular electromagnetic receiver, called the "Marconi magnetic detector" or "hysteresis magnetic detector", was developed further by Marconi and was successfully used in his early transatlantic work (1902)