PIONEER WIRELESS STATION

Manawatu Standard, Volume LX, Issue 168, 15 June 1940, Page 2

PIONEER WIRELESS STATION

MEMORIAL IN' ISLE OF WIGHT. A memorial stone in grey Cornish granite .has been erected at Alum Bay in the Isle of Wight to mark the position occupied by tne first permanent wireless station. The Needles Wireless Telegraph Station holds an honourable place in the history of wireless communication because it was there in 1897, after a few experiments on Salisbury Plain and other places, that Guglielmo Marconi and the engineers of Marconi’s Wireless Telegraph Company carried out experiments which' led to the great achievement of spanning the Atlantic by wireless from Poldhu in 1901. It is claimed that the Needles station was the first from ■which a paid Marconigram was transmitted, on June 3, 1898. Lord Kelvin insisted on paying for the message as an indication of his belief in the possibilities of wireless communication at a time when there was much scepticism. Four bronze plaques are attached to the memorial: , one pays tribute to “Marconi and his British collaborators, who carried out from December 6, 1897, to May 26, 1900, a series of experiments which constituted some of the more important phases of their early pioneer work in the development of wireless communication of all kinds.”. Another records the production of the Transatlantic Times in 1899. the first newspaper to be produced at sea, which received information by wireless telegraphy from the Needles station and printed it in the United States liner St. Paul.