The Philip B. Petersen Collection Broadcast May 23, 1990

     The inventor of wireless telegraphy, now called radio, was Guglielmo Marconi.  After his great success in Europe, he came to America and used his wireless at the Twin Lights lighthouse that overlooks the Atlantic Ocean in Highlands, New Jersey.
     His daughter, Gioia Marconi Braga, relates about her father's very first wireless achievements in America.  For brevity, her comments are in part:  "My father was invited to come to America by James Bennett, the publisher of the New York Herald newspaper, to publicize the 1899 America's Cup Races and to demonstrate the wireless telegraph.  The contenders in the race were the British yacht Shamrock ... and the American yacht Columbia II ... He arrived in September, 1899.  At the Twin Lights on the bluff of Highlands, Marconi's assistant William Bradfield got the receiving mast in position ... and installed the sending instruments on the Ponce and ... steamer Grande Duchesse chartered to follow the races ... Before the America's Cup Races could begin however, Commodore George Dewey returned victorious from the Battle of Manila Bay in the Spanish American War and a great naval review was planned by President Theodore Roosevelt to celebrate the victory.  The yacht races were temporarily postponed and on September 30, 1899, the first wireless messages were sent to report on the progress of Commodore Dewey on the flagship Olympia and the United States Navy's Great White Fleet of cruisers and battleships as they steamed up the Hudson River.  These transmissions were the first demonstrations of practical wireless telegraphy in our history.
       "On the 16th of October, the races and transmitting began in earnest.... By the end of the second day, the American yacht Columbia beat the British yacht Shamrock roundly.  In a period of five hours, more than 5000 words consigned to the air were received by telegraph at the Herald office in New York where they were reprinted in the paper and posted on bulletins in the windows."  Bennett was moved to editorialize, 'The possibilities contained in the development of the telegraphy without wires are so important that any step tending to bring this system before the public and show what it is capable of accomplishing in a commercial way must be of interest not only to those interested in science but also to anyone who wants to send a telegram.'  Within a few years, wireless telegraph was required on all sea-going ships and was responsible for saving many lives at sea including 705 survivors of the Titanic."
       All that remains of Marconi's Twin Lights wireless are some large stone anchors that supported the antenna.  However, two radio amateurs - Jeff Azoy, W2XZ, and Pete Becker, N2PB -, made a replica of Marconi's first wireless station in America that is on display at the Twin Lights public museum in Highlands, New Jersey.

May 23, 1990

In 1999 the QCWA celebrated the 100th Anniversary of Marconi's first visit to America.

** Broadcasts recordings preserved and presented here by Mr. Robert Buss and Mr. Bernie Ricciardi, Phil's friends and fellow Marconi Chapter 138 QCWA members **

Page updated January 12, 2004  page created June 11, 2001