The New York Herald's Marconi Wireless Station, 1901

The Marconi Station in ’Sconset was a communication marvel that followed closely on the heels of the telephone— first installed in the Nantucket office of the Southern Massachusetts Telephone Company in 1887, although use of home telephones was decades away. Wireless telegraphy was the method employed to contact the mainland, and it became transatlantic in 1901 when Guglielmo Marconi arranged to transmit the first radio signal from an ocean liner at sea to the New York Herald’s Marconi Station on Bunker Hill. The station proved its worth in the transmission of marine distress calls, most notably that of the Titanic, on April 14, 1912, and the summer crowd from New York was able to follow the Giants baseball games through unofficial daily bulletins.

Read more about the wireless stations in "Siasconset Wireless Stations," by Captain John Lacouture, from the Historic Nantucket

View of the first Marconi wireless telegraph station and tower in Siasconset.
F4210

A digital exhibition by the Nantucket Historical Association