Marconi Wireless Station Site (South Wellfleet, Massachusetts) Marconi Wireless Station Site (South Wellfleet, Massachusetts) The Marconi Wireless Station Site in South Wellfleet, Massachusetts is the site of the first transatlantic wireless communication between the United States and Europe, on January 18, 1903. At this location, now in the Cape Cod National Seashore (though no admission is charged if not visiting Marconi Beach), inventor Guglielmo Marconi erected a large antenna array on four wooden towers, and established a transmitting station powered by kerosene engines that produced the 25,000 volts of electricity needed to send signals to a similar station in Poldhu, Cornwall, United Kingdom. The first transmission received
History of radio upon the idea of grounding his transmitter and receiver. With these improvements the system was capable of transmitting signals up to and over hills. Marconi's experimental apparatus proved to be the first engineering-complete, commercially successful radio transmission system. Marconi's apparatus is also credited with saving the 700 people who survived the tragic "Titanic" disaster. In 1896, Marconi was awarded British patent 12039, "Improvements in transmitting electrical impulses and signals and in apparatus there-for", the first patent ever issued for a Hertzian wave (radio wave) base wireless telegraphic system. In 1897, he established a radio station on the Isle of Wight,