Marconi Transmitter Site, Massachusetts

One of the first three wireless transmitter stations on the East coast built by Marconi at the turn of the century, as he was developing the transatlantic system. Though the first transatlantic signal was sent to the English station from the Newfoundland site in 1902, this antenna was used for the first communication between heads of state: President Roosevelt and King Edward VII of England, in 1903, and was the first communication between the United States and Europe (as the other two transmitters were in Canada). After being used primarily for ship to shore communications for fifteen years or so, the Cape Cod station was torn down by 1920, because of improvements in the technology, the development of other stations, and the fact that the antenna site, with its four 210-foot-tall towers, was being undermined by erosion, despite being built 165 feet from the coast, less than 20 years prior. Today interpretive markers and a footing from one of the towers marks the site.