On this day, 1907: Marconi starts first commercial transatlantic wireless service
On Oct. 17, 1907, Guglielmo Marconi began the first commercial wireless service across the Atlantic, The Irish Times and CBC News reported. It linked Clifden, in Ireland, with his station near Glace Bay, Nova Scotia. He had sent test signals across the ocean in 1901, The Irish Times and CBC News reported.
On Oct. 17, 1907, Guglielmo Marconi began the first commercial transatlantic wireless service, sending messages between Clifden, County Galway, in Ireland and Cape Breton, Nova Scotia, according to The Irish Times and CBC News. "The age of wireless transatlantic communication had begun in earnest," The Irish Times wrote on the 90th anniversary in 1997.
On the Canadian side, the station stood just south of Glace Bay, at a site known as Marconi Towers, CBC News reported. A Cape Breton wireless history site on the Nova Scotia education network says a regular commercial service between Marconi Towers and Clifden "opened officially on October 17, 1907." A Nova Scotia heritage site says 10,000 words were exchanged between the two stations on the first day, and a New York Times report from Oct. 18, 1907, transcribed on that site, carried the headline "10,000 Words the First Day."
The service built on earlier experiments. In 1901, Marconi's signal of three dots, the Morse code letter S, was sent from Cornwall to Newfoundland, a feat that astounded the scientific world, The Irish Times reported. Marconi had made a successful test from Signal Hill in Newfoundland in 1901 but moved to Cape Breton because telegraph operators there feared competition, Henry Bradford of the Cape Breton Wireless Heritage Society said, according to CBC News.
Radio signals should not have carried 2,100 miles across the North Atlantic, because radio waves travel in nearly straight lines, The Irish Times wrote. The answer came from Oliver Heaviside, who deduced a layer of charged particles high in the atmosphere that reflects radio waves back to Earth, The Irish Times reported. Marconi, who died in 1937, became a very wealthy man, The Irish Times reported.
On the 100th anniversary in 2007, amateur radio fans near Glace Bay sent a Morse code greeting to a gathering in Clifden, and Irish President Mary McAleese replied, CBC News reported.
What we know: Marconi's commercial wireless service between Ireland and Nova Scotia opened on Oct. 17, 1907.
What we don't: These anniversary accounts do not say which message was sent first.
Where outlets agree The Irish Times and CBC News both date Marconi's first commercial transatlantic wireless service, between Ireland and Nova Scotia, to Oct. 17, 1907.
Where they differ The outlets cited here report the same key facts so far.