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Marconi's Three
Transatlantic
Radio Stations In Cape Breton
by
HENRY M. BRADFORD
Please click on an image to enlarge it
Read before the Royal Nova
Scotia Historical Society 31 January, 1996
Excerpted with permission from the Royal Nova Scotia Historical Society Journal, Volume 1, 1998.
In the early years of the twentieth century Nova Scotia played an important role in the history of communications by becoming the North American terminus of the first transatlantic radio communications service. Not only did this service link the Old World and New World by the magic of radio, but it was the first link in the worldwide wireless network that we take for granted today. The driving force behind this accomplishment was a young Italian, Guglielmo Marconi. In the course of establishing the transatlantic service, Marconi built three large radio stations in Cape Breton: the first in Glace Bay, the second just south of Glace Bay, and the third in Louisbourg. The story of these stations is the subject of this article.
Marconi's
Three Transatlantic
Radio Stations In Cape Breton
by HENRY M. BRADFORD
Read
before the Royal Nova Scotia Historical Society 31 January, 1996
In
the early years of the twentieth century Nova Scotia played an important role in the
history of communications by becoming the North American terminus of the first
transatlantic radio communications service. Not only did this service link the Old World
and New World by the magic of radio, but it was the first link in the worldwide wireless
network that we take for granted today. The driving force behind this accomplishment was a
young Italian, Guglielmo Marconi. In the course of establishing the transatlantic service,
Marconi built three large radio stations in Cape Breton: the first in Glace Bay, the
second just south of Glace Bay, and the third in Louisbourg. The story of these stations
is the subject of this article.
Let us first
define what is meant by "radio" in the context of this article. Radio is
a system of wireless communications that utilizes radio waves. Radio waves are invisible
electrical waves that travel through space at the speed of light. This speed enables them
to traverse the distance between any two points on the globe in a fraction of a second.
Radio encompasses both point-to-point communications and broadcasting, but the former was
the principal application during the first twenty years or more that are the subject of
this article.
As radio evolved, so did its terminology. "Radio" and
"wireless" initially were prefixes; e.g., radio or wireless telegraphy or
telephony. When broadcasting became popular in the 1920s, both words came into general use
to describe the whole field of radio broadcasting and communications. The term
"radio" became more popular in Canada and the United States, and
"wireless" became more popular in Great Britain. In this article, these words
will be treated as synonymous, and usually will refer to radio or wireless telegraphy.
The first practical system of electrical communications
was the telegraph, which came into widespread use in the 1840s. In this system, messages
were transmitted along wires from the sending station to the receiving station, usually as
a sequence of short and long electrical impulses ("dots" and "dashes")
that 
comprised the Morse Code. Soon after its invention,
submarine telegraph cables were laid across the bottoms
of bodies of water, and the first commercially successful transatlantic cable was laid in
1866. By the end of the century, when radio was ready to span the Atlantic, there were a
dozen or more transatlantic cables. The telephone, which transmits electrical voice
signals over wires, was invented in 1876. However, at the end of the century, long
distance telephony was still In Its infancy, and transatlantic telephone cables were more
than fifty years in the future.
Wireless communications were attempted as early as the
1860s by Mahlon Loomis in the United States, but a clear understanding of the basic
principles of radio only emerged after the theoretical work of the Scottish physicist
James Clerk Maxwell in the 1860s and the experimental work of the German physicist
Heinrich Hertz in the 1880s. Guglielmo Marconi read about Hertz's work in 1894 when he was
just twenty years old. He realized that radio waves, then called Hertzian waves, might be utilized for wireless communications, an
inspiration that set the course of his life's work. His first step was to set up a
laboratory in the attic of the family villa near Bologna, Italy, and repeat some of
Hertz's experiments. His next objective was to increase the distance over which radio
waves could be transmitted and received far beyond the confines of a laboratory. Before
the end of 1895 he transmitted wireless signals a distance of over a mile, an event that
many consider to be the birth of radio. Consequently 1995 was celebrated around the world
as the centennial of radio. These celebrations included a visit 
by the Italian naval ship "Zeffiro" to Atlantic
ports, including Halifax, Sydney, and St. John's, carrying an exhibit of early Marconi
radio apparatus and photographs.
Radio waves are generated by alternating or pulsating currents of high frequency (many vibrations per second ) flowing in a radiating structure called a transmitting antenna. Hertz generated these currents with the aid of a high voltage electric spark, and Marconi followed his lead. To transmit radio waves over large distances, Marconi replaced the small antenna used by Hertz with a high aerial wire supported by a tall wooden pole.
At the receiver the process was reversed. A high aerial wire intercepted the radio waves
and converted them back into electrical signals. These, in turn, were rendered
audible or visible by a sensitive device (or class of devices) called a
"detector." If the signals were weak, they might be heard with a pair of
headphones or earphones, an adaptation of the telephone receiver, and if the signals were
strong, they could be recorded on paper tape. Messages were transmitted in Morse Code by
switching the transmitter on and off with a telegraph key. This was the Marconi system of
wireless telegraphy, and it remained the principal system of radio communications until
about the beginning of World War I in 1914.
The Italian government showed little interest in Marconi's
demonstrations of his early apparatus, so he and his Irish mother took it to England in
1896. There her prominent family was able to introduce Marconi to Influential people. He
received a warm reception and assistance from the British Post Office, and England became
the headquarters of his future radio empire. With the aid of his mother's family and
financial backers, Marconi formed the Wireless Telegraph and Signal Company in 1897 to
manufacture and sell or lease radio equipment. The marine industry was his principal
market because the British Post Office had a monopoly on overland communications, and
because, then as now, radio offered the only practical means of communication for ships at
sea. Radio installations provided ship-to-ship and ship-to-shore communications, and radio
operators were known as "Sparks" because of the mysterious and intimidating
spark transmitters they used.
By
the end of the century, Marconi's dreams extended beyond marine radio. He wanted to create
a worldwide radio communications network consisting of powerful land-based radio stations.
The first step would be to bridge the Atlantic ocean and connect the New World with the
Old World by wireless. Most scientists of the day thought that this was impossible because
radio waves, like light, should be limited to approximately line-of-sight distances.
However, Marconi had evidence that this limit had already been exceeded, so he
pragmatically continued to seek greater ranges by building bigger and more powerful
stations. What no one knew at the time was that the ionosphere, a layer high in the
atmosphere that reflects radio waves, would make Marconi's dream possible.
By 1901 Marconi and his company were ready for the
transatlantic radio experiment. The plan was to use his high powered stations at Poldhu,
in Cornwall, England, and at Cape Cod, Massachusetts, U.S.A., but unfortunately the
antennas at both stations were blown down by gales in the fall of 1901. A temporary
transmitting antenna was then constructed at Poldhu, and Marconi took portable receiving
equipment to St. john's, Newfoundland for the historic experiment. His apparatus was
installed in an unused hospital building on Signal Hill (Figure 1), and his receiving
aerial wire was held aloft by a kite. The Poldhu station was instructed to transmit the
three dots of the letter "S" in Morse Code repeatedly during 
specified hours, and in the early afternoon of 12 December
1901, the signal was heard several times fading in and out of the background interference.
Transatlantic radio had been proven possible!
Not everyone believed that the feat really had been achieved. Indeed, in spite of Marconi
's subsequent successes, some skeptics argue today that the wavelength was inappropriate,
that Marconi's assistant, Kemp, was deaf, etc.. Certainly the Anglo-American Telegraph
Company, which held a monopoly on telegraph communications in Newfoundland, believed it.
Fearing that radio might compete with their transatlantic cable, they threatened Marconi
with legal action if he continued his experiments. Marconi packed up and sailed to Cape
Breton, Nova Scotia, on December 24. A prior invitation from Alexander Graham Bell in
Baddeck assured him of a friendly reception.
The details of Marconi's arrival in Cape Breton depend on the story teller. According to
Michael MacKenzie, a disheartened Marconi was walking down Charlotte Street in Sydney when
he was welcomed by W.S. Fielding, a Halifax native, who was the federal minister of
Finance [note 1]. On the other hand, Mary K. MacLeod's well documented account describes a
welcoming party of prominent citizens, including Premier George Murray, and shows a
photograph of a sizable gathering on the dock at North Sydney with the Italian flag flying
[note 2]. In any case, Marconi received the red carpet treatment in Cape Breton, including
guided tours to find a suitable location for a permanent station, a federal grant of up to
$80,000 to build it, and free land. He chose Table Head, a promontory overlooking the
Atlantic Ocean in the bustling coal mining town of Glace Bay, as the site for the North
American station of his proposed trans-Atlantic radio service. In return for the federal
grant, his agreement with the federal government included special rates for the government
and the press, and stipulations about Canadian content in the station that gave the
agreement a distinctly modern ring [note 3].
Construction of the Glace Bay station proceeded at an
amazing rate, considering that it was a technological leap into the unknown. The antenna
was an inverted pyramid of wires supported by four wooden, latticework towers over two
hundred feet high, arranged on a square that was about two hundred feet on a side. The new
antenna design was also used at Cape Cod and Poldhu. This impressive antenna array gave
the station an external appearance that 
would make it recognizable as a radio station
today (Figure 2). Inside, it was a different
story. The spark transmitter and the magnetic or coherer detectors used for reception are
all relics of a bygone era.
Finally, on the night of December 15, 1902, Marconi
transmitted the first official radio message to Poldhu. (Since the Newfoundland experiment
he had learned that transatlantic transmissions worked better at night at the wavelengths
he was using). It was a short greeting to The Times
newspaper of London from its correspondent, Dr. Parkin, in Glace Bay.
On the following nights congratulatory messages were sent to and between heads of state in
North America and Europe. Messages from
the
United States were transmitted from Cape Cod, and
relayed
across the Atlantic from Glace Bay [note 4].
This was the beginning of transatlantic wireless communications. It was also the beginning of a rivalry between Marconi and the telegraph cable companies that the legal impasse in Newfoundland had only delayed. Cable operators had already begun to fret in a humorous vein less than two weeks after Marconi's Newfoundland experiment. The staff of the cable station at North Sydney sent the following message to the cable office in Liverpool, England [note 5].
Best Christmas greetings from North Sydney,
Hope you are sound in heart and kidney,
Next year will find us quite unable,
To send exchanges o'er the cable:
Marconi will our finish see,
The cable co's have ceased to be;
No further need of automatics,
Retards, resistances and statics.
I'll then across the ether sea [note 6],
Waft Christmas greetings unto thee.
From Liverpool came the reply:
Don't be alarmed, the cable co's
Will not be dead as you suppose.
Marconi may have been deceived,
In what he firmly has believed.
But be it so, or, be it not,
The cable routes won't be forgot;
His speed will never equal ours;
Where we take minutes, he'll want hours.
Besides, his poor weak undulations,
Must be confined to their own stations;
This is for him to overcome,
Before we're sent to our long home.
Don't be alarmed my worthy friend,
Full many a year precedes our end.
And the final reply from North Sydney:
Thanks, old man for the soothing balm,
Which makes me resolute and calm.
I do not feel the least alarm,
The signal "s" can do no harm;
It may mean "sell" to anxious sellers;
It may mean "sold" to other fellers.
Whether 'tis "sold" or simply "sell",
Marconi's "s" may go to --- well!
Although the stock market Jitters predicted by these cable poets
came to pass, their long term optimism was also justified. Trans-oceanic cables survived
and multiplied, and cable and wireless are complementary mainstays of the world
communications network today.
Unfortunately, the first congratulatory radio messages did
not mean that Marconi had reached his goal of a commercial service with paying customers
that would rival or exceed the transatlantic cable. The first short messages took hours to
send, and had to be repeated many times, because reception was extremely variable. These
unpredictable variations in signal strength were caused by natural fluctuations in the
ionosphere, but this was not understood at the time. Experiments with the apparatus 
at the stations to overcome these difficulties extended
over the next two years, during which time the press grew critical and investors became
restless. These experiments included doubling the power input to the station from
seventy-five to one hundred fifty kilowatts, increasing the size of the antenna by adding
outlying poles, and increasing the wavelength used (i.e., decreasing the transmitter
frequency) [note 7]. Although insufficient, these changes all produced improvements, and
indicated the directions in which Marconi should proceed.
In 1904
the company decided to gamble on building two larger and more powerful stations to replace
Poldhu and Table Head. Sites were chosen at Clifden on the west coast of Ireland, and at a location just South of
Glace Bay that is now called Marconi Towers. (This site is erroneously called Port Morien
in several historical sources). The Marconi Towers station was built in 1905 and the
Clifden station was completed in 1907. After further experimentation and improvements
during this period, success was finally achieved. A public service
began between the stations on October 15, 1907, with ten thousand words being exchanged on
the first day (See Figure 3 and cover).
R.N. Vyvyan, the engineer in charge of the Marconi Towers station, wrote:
