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
Marconi Wireless Telegraph Company of America of United Wireless' tangible assets, which in turn on March 29, 1912 were sold by the parent company to American Marconi. It would later be alleged that this had unfairly benefited some British investors, in what came to be known as the Marconi scandal. The acquisition would prove to be a tremendous boost to American Marconi's fortunes, and the company boasted that "There is now nothing in the way of Marconi becoming the only system of commercial importance in the world." Recently passed laws required U.S. passenger ships to carry radio equipment, and American Marconi's near monopoly allowed it to