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WCC was the busiest coast station in the public ship-to-shore radio service for most of the 20th century.
In 1914, inventor Guglielmo Marconi sought a more permanent solution to his weather-induced radio station woes on Cape Cod. This need was made manifest by the damage and destruction wrought by nature at his original 1903 South Wellfleet location. [1] The erosion and wind damage suffered by Marconi's first Cape Cod station continues to this day. Almost the entirety of the historic station is now long gone over the cliffs onto the beach and into the waters of the Atlantic below.
Marconi realized that a permanent presence would require a more inland and somewhat sheltered location. So it was that Marconi's Marconi Wireless Telegraph Company of America [2] built his new trans-oceanic receiver station in Chatham [3] and its companion high power trans-oceanic transmitter station forty miles to the west in Marion, Massachusetts through a contract with J.G. White Engineering Corp.
In 1920, the Marconi Wireless Telegraph Company of America sold the Chatham and Marion stations to the Radio Corporation of America. RCA removed all remaining Marconi equipment from the Chatham receiver station and converted it to a public coast station for communications with ships at sea. In 1921 Chatham was licensed under the callsign WCC for communications on 500 kHz, 750 kHz and 1 MHz. In 1922 RCA moved the WCC radio transmitters to the Marion transmitter station to eliminate co-site interference to the sensitive receivers at Chatham. In 1929 WCC Marion began operations on maritime HF frequencies (6, 8, 12, 16 and 22 MHz).
In 1948, the WCC marine radio transmitter equipment was moved from Marion Station to RCA's newly built oceanfront transmitter station on Forest Beach Road in South Chatham, Massachusetts. The U.S. Air Force continued to use the Alexanderson alternator at Marion Station for weather and other broadcasts to its air base in Thule, Greenland and other arctic locations through 1957 under the callsign AFA2.
In 1951, RCA sold Marion Station to the U.S. Government and the U.S General Services Administration sold it to a private investor in 1960. Most of the 143 acres that comprised the Marion Station was donated to the Sippican Lands Trust in 1986 and is publicly accessible. Radio Tower Property
In 1988, RCA Global Communications sold the WCC stations to Western Union International, a subsidiary of MCI Communications, as part of the breakup of RCA. In 1993 WCC became a remotely controlled station, using fiber optic cable to receive signals, transmit signals and issue such commands such as selecting and rotating directional antennas. Even the keying of Morse Code (CW) and Radioteletype (RTTY) was issued remotely at this early date in the public internet's infancy. WCC was operated from KPH Radio in Point Reyes, California until its closing.
In 1999, MCI/Worldcom sold the WCC receiver station in Chatham and the transmitter station on Forest Beach Road in South Chatham — nearly 100 acres in total — to the town of Chatham for a fraction of their value.
The Chatham receiver station is now the Chatham Marconi Maritime Center, and the home of amateur radio station WA1WCC, licensed to the WCC Amateur Radio Association. The South Chatham transmitter station is now preserved in its entirely as the Forest Beach Conservation Area by the town of Chatham.
The callsign WCC is now used by Globe Wireless by a Maryland station it operates to transmit automated e-mail-by-radio.
Chatham station was the subject of the Mooncusser Films documentary Chatham Radio: WCC the Untold Story, narrated by Walter Cronkite and directed by Christopher Seufert.
Guglielmo Giovanni Maria Marconi, 1st Marquis of Marconi was an Italian inventor and electrical engineer, known for his pioneering work on long-distance radio transmission, development of Marconi's law, and a radio telegraph system. He is credited as the inventor of radio, and he shared the 1909 Nobel Prize in Physics with Karl Ferdinand Braun "in recognition of their contributions to the development of wireless telegraphy".
The early history of radio is the history of technology that produces and uses radio instruments that use radio waves. Within the timeline of radio, many people contributed theory and inventions in what became radio. Radio development began as "wireless telegraphy". Later radio history increasingly involves matters of broadcasting.
The RCA Corporation was a major American electronics company, which was founded as the Radio Corporation of America in 1919. It was initially a patent trust owned by General Electric (GE), Westinghouse, AT&T Corporation and United Fruit Company. In 1932, RCA became an independent company after the partners were required to divest their ownership as part of the settlement of a government antitrust suit.
Cape Cod is a geographic cape extending into the Atlantic Ocean from the southeastern corner of mainland Massachusetts, in the northeastern United States. Its historic, maritime character and ample beaches attract heavy tourism during the summer months.
The Cape Cod National Seashore (CCNS), created on August 7, 1961 by President John F. Kennedy, encompasses 43,607 acres on Cape Cod, in Massachusetts. It includes ponds, woods and beachfront of the Atlantic coastal pine barrens ecoregion. The CCNS includes nearly 40 miles (64 km) of seashore along the Atlantic-facing eastern shore of Cape Cod, in the towns of Provincetown, Truro, Wellfleet, Eastham, Orleans and Chatham. It is administered by the National Park Service.
Wellfleet is a town in Barnstable County, Massachusetts, United States, and is located halfway between the "tip" and "elbow" of Cape Cod. The town had a population of 2,750 at the 2010 census, which swells nearly sixfold during the summer. A total of 70% of the town's land area is under protection, and nearly half of it is part of the Cape Cod National Seashore. Wellfleet is famous for its oysters, which are celebrated in the annual October Wellfleet OysterFest.
In radio communication, skywave or skip refers to the propagation of radio waves reflected or refracted back toward Earth from the ionosphere, an electrically charged layer of the upper atmosphere. Since it is not limited by the curvature of the Earth, skywave propagation can be used to communicate beyond the horizon, at intercontinental distances. It is mostly used in the shortwave frequency bands.
A coastradio station is an on-shore maritime radio station which may monitor radio distress frequencies and relays ship-to-ship and ship-to-land communications.
The Marconi National Historic Site and the Marconi Wireless Station National Historic Site are two National Historic Sites located on Cape Breton Island, Nova Scotia. 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 8 kilometres (5.0 mi) of one another, and are connected by the Marconi Trail.
The Cape Cod Rail Trail (CCRT) is a 25.5-mile (41.0 km) paved rail trail located on Cape Cod in Massachusetts. The trail route passes through the towns of Yarmouth, Dennis, Harwich, Brewster, Orleans, Eastham, and Wellfleet. It connects to the 6-plus mile (10 km) Old Colony Rail Trail leading to Chatham, the 2 mile Yarmouth multi-use trail, and 8 miles (13 km) of trails within Nickerson State Park. Short side trips on roads lead to national seashore beaches including Coast Guard Beach at the end of the Nauset Bike Trail in Cape Cod National Seashore. The trail is part of the Claire Saltonstall Bikeway.
Marconi Beach is part of the Cape Cod National Seashore in Wellfleet, Massachusetts. The beach is named for Italian inventor Guglielmo Marconi. In 1903, the first transatlantic wireless communication originating in the United States was successfully transmitted from nearby Marconi Station; a message from U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt to King Edward VII of the United Kingdom. The beach was also used by the former Camp Wellfleet for artillery and rocket testing.
KPH is a public coast radio station on the West Coast of the United States. For most of the 20th century, it provided ship to shore communications including telegrams and marine telex service. The station discontinued commercial operation in 1998, but is operated occasionally as a historic service – its signal can be tuned in throughout a large portion of the western hemisphere.
The Marconi–RCA Wireless Receiving Station is a historic district at the junction of Old Comers Rd. and Orleans Rd. in Chatham, Massachusetts. It and its companion transmitter station at Marion were used for WCC, the busiest ship to shore radio station for most of the 20th century, replacing the original WCC site in South Wellfleet. The district includes eight red brick buildings constructed by Marconi in 1914 to house the station's operations; it was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1994, and is now home to the Chatham Marconi Maritime Center museum.
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, inventor Guglielmo Marconi erected a large antenna array on four 210-foot (64 m) 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 in North America by Marconi was at Signal Hill, St. John's, Newfoundland and Labrador in 1901; Glace Bay, Nova Scotia was the site of the first such two-way transmission, in 1902.
New Brunswick Marconi Station was located at JFK Boulevard and Easton Avenue just one mile from the New Brunswick border in Somerset, New Jersey.
The Chatham Marconi Maritime Center is a museum dedicated to the history of WCC, a short-wave radio station that operated for many years in Chatham, Massachusetts. The museum itself is located on the grounds of the Marconi-RCA Wireless Receiving Station.
Marconi Wireless Station Site may refer to one of many Marconi Stations, including:
The Marconi Wireless Telegraph Company of America was incorporated in 1899. It was established as a subsidiary of the British Marconi Company and held the U.S. and Cuban rights to Guglielmo Marconi's radio patents. American Marconi initially primarily operated high-powered land and transatlantic shipboard stations. In 1912, it acquired the extensive assets of the bankrupt United Wireless Telegraph Company, becoming the dominant radio communications provider in the United States.
The Marconi-RCA Bolinas Transmitting Station, on Mesa Rd. in Bolinas, California, in Marin County, California, was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2018.
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