- Poldhu
Poldhu is a small area in south
Cornwall ,England , UK, situated on the Lizard Peninsula it comprises Poldhu Point and Poldhu Cove. It lies on the coast west ofGoonhilly Downs , with Mullion 2 km to the south andPorthleven 7 km to the north. Poldhu means "black pool" in Cornish.Marconi's Poldhu Wireless Station
The site is famous as the location of Poldhu Wireless Station,
Guglielmo Marconi 's transmitter for the first transatlanticradio message onDecember 12 ,1901 to Marconi's temporary receiving station on Signal Hill, St. John's, Newfoundland.The station's fifty acre (200,000 m²) plot was bought in 1900 and [http://www.marconicalling.com/museum/html/events/events-i=26-s=0.html construction work] ran from October 1900 to January 1901, to a design by
John Ambrose Fleming . The [http://www.marconicalling.com/museum/html/objects/photographs/objects-i=1006.288-t=1-n=0.html original twenty mast circular aerial] was [http://www.marconicalling.com/museum/html/objects/photographs/objects-i=1006.319-t=1-n=0.html destroyed in a storm] onSeptember 17 , 1901. For Marconi's experiments a temporary installation of two 200 foot (61 m) masts was used. The [http://homepages.tesco.net/~martin.batesuk/marconi/1901_poldhu.htm transmitter] operated with a power of roughly 13 kW and a wavelength usually estimated at 170 meters. The original mast layout was not rebuilt, it was replaced with a [http://radiolabo.free.fr/radio/marconi_poldhu_stationm.jpgfour mast design] , 215 feet (66 m) high and forming a 200 foot (61 m) square.Marconi later used the site for his
shortwave experiments, with transmissions byCharles Samuel Franklin to Marconi on the yacht [http://www.vwoa.org/images/Elettrasml.jpgElettra] in theCape Verde Islands in 1923 and inBeirut in 1924. The groundbreaking results of these experiments took the world by surprise and quickly resulted in his development of the Beam Wireless Service for the British General Post Office. The service opened from the [http://www.cornwall.gov.uk/index.cfm?articleid=13463 Bodmin Beam Station] to Canada on 25 October, 1926, from the [http://tetneybeamstation.blogspot.com Tetney Beam Station] to Australia on 8 April 1927, from the [http://www.marconicalling.com/museum/html/objects/photographs/large_image/large_image-type_d__t00224.html Bodmin Beam Station] to South Africa on 5 July 1927, to India on 6 September 1927 and shortly afterwards to Argentina, Brazil and the United States.The station continued to operate until 1933. The site was cleared in 1935 and six acres (24,000 m²) were gifted to the National Trust in 1937 with the rest of the site added in 1960. The site has a stone monument pillar and a number of concrete foundations and earth structures also remain. In 2001 the "Marconi Centre", a new museum/meeting building, was opened close to the site by the efforts of the
Poldhu Amateur Radio Club , the National Trust andMarconi plc .The more substantial building near the site, originally the Poldhu Hotel, built from 1899 to house the Marconi workers is currently a care home.
Marconi also built a second, much smaller, experimental wireless station nearby at Housel Bay - The Lizard Wireless Station.
The earliest [http://www.nps.gov/archive/caco/places/marconistation.html Marconi Radio Station] in the United States is situated on
Cape Cod Massachusetts .coord|50|2|N|5|16|W|type:city_region:GB_source:openstreetmap(29282307)|display=title
Wikimedia Foundation. 2010.