Marconi National Historic Sites of Canada Marconi National Historic Sites of Canada The Marconi National Historic Site and the Marconi Wireless Station National Historic Site are two National Historic Sites of Canada located on Cape Breton Island, Nova Scotia, Canada. Both sites commemorate the efforts of Guglielmo Marconi to transmit transatlantic radio signals between North America and Europe in the first decade of the 20th century. The two sites are located within approximately of one another, and are connected by the Marconi Trail. Signal Hill in St. John's, Newfoundland and Labrador is another National Historic Site related to Marconi's work in Canada. Signal Hill was designated,
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)