Marconi Jubilate April 21, 2013

One hundred years ago, Guglielmo Marconi brought his wireless to the West Coast of the United States.  On horseback, he and his crew scoured the environs in search of Tomales Bay’s highest signal-to-noise ratio for the transmission and reception of radio signals.  Bolinas was chosen as the site for transmission and the hillside above Marshall as the place for reception; the two were linked by a traditional telegraph line.  Antennae were erected, as were an engineer’s house and even a hotel on the Marshall campus.   All of this to keep an ear on the Pacific Ocean for alarms of ships in distress or news from Hawaii or Asia.

Though a new reception station was built in Point Reyes National Seashore in the 1930s, the original Marconi complex lives on, rescued by funds from the Buck Trust and the San Francisco Foundation and now maintained by the California State Parks in conjunction with the Marconi Conference Center and the “true believers” of the Maritime Radio Historical Society.   In fact, the Marconi complex is the only remaining North American Marconi-era station on the Pacific Ocean, and kudos to those who are committed to preserving it.

Today was International Marconi Day, an annual event chosen as the Saturday nearest the great Bolognese inventor’s birth.  Wireless buffs from all over the world set up shop and communicate with each other by Morse code on this annual event.  Prompted by an email “heads-up” from KWMR, our outstanding West Marin community radio station, I was compelled to check it out.  One large room in the original engineer’s house was overtaken by two also large retired gentlemen, one manning the “commercial” radio and the other the “amateur”, both pumping out code and deciphering it.   All manner of receivers and transmitters were not just on display, but some in actual use, including a model from WWII and something with Marconi actually stamped on it, a Zenith receiver, and a ticker-tape type machine, to name just a few.  One volunteer gave me a quick introduction to a special clock perimetered with 4-minute arcs of red to facilitate “auto-alarm” signals and pied with three-minute “time-outs” at the quarter-of and quarter-after to allow periods of silence for better distress listening.  What a delight to witness these early forerunners of texts and tweets in action.

With a small donation, I left with a “True Believer” mug and hiked around the fragrant grounds of this historic site.  West Marin never ceases to amaze me.