The "first" was a signal for broadcast, but not the first radio signal from
Europe. On 12 December 1901, Guglielmo Marconi succeeded in broadcasting
the first radio signal, the letter 'S', from a station at Poldhu in
Cornwall to St. John's on the island of Newfoundland, Canada.

Mike Terry wrote:



Jay Davis: Listening to history speak
(March 24): This column first appeared in the March 16, 2005 edition
of the VillageSoup Citizen.

"Eighty years ago this week Belfast (in Waldo County) was at the
heart
of an international technological breakthrough. An RCA long-wave station
located near the present Belfast Armory received the first live radio
signal beamed across the Atlantic and passed it on to a New York radio
station that then broadcast the first live sound from Europe.

The Belfast Museum has developed a full file on the historic event
that includes a tape of the actual transmission, newspaper articles from
the time, and physical remains of the cutting-edge technology, including
copper wire, concrete blocks that anchored the guy wires for the 10 miles
of posts and wires that made up a Beverage antenna and photographs from
the Smithsonian Museum in Washington, D.C.

Belfast Historical Society President Megan Pinette assembled the
memorabilia with the help of volunteer Bruce Clark, a HAM radio operator
and electronic technician who will conduct an archaeological dig at the
site this summer. The story Pinette and Clark tell should warm the hearts
of all who know Belfast isn't just a disconnected outpost on the edge of
the tundra.

During the early years of the 20th century, companies like RCA,
AT&T,
International Telephone and Telegraph and GE conducted far-reaching
experiments in broadcast technology. Belfast was the home to several
installations that received Morse code messages from ships at sea and
Europe because of its elevated location near the Atlantic. A BBC contest
to find the best reception site in the U.S. for transatlantic messages was
won by HAM operator Earl White of Searsport Avenue in 1923 or '24.

The RCA offices were in a wooden building near the present airport
where signals were received from a 10-mile Beverage antenna that stretched
from Belfast to Moody Mountain in Searsmont along a rigidly straight
route. The station used long-wave technology, which was soon superseded by
short-wave, ending its usefulness in 1929.

But for a few brief years, Belfast was on the cutting edge of
broadcasting. In 1921, Gen. David Sarnoff, head of RCA and one of
America's best-known entrepreneurs, visited with his wife to check out the
local operation, staying at the downtown Windsor Hotel. In 1926 RCA
constructed a modern brick building to house a permanent installation in
Belfast. It remains today as the main office of the Belfast Armory. Plans
were made for additional Beverage antennas that would run perpendicular to
the Moody Mountain line.

On March 14, 1925, the big day arrived. A broadcast that originated
from the Savoy Hotel ballroom in London was sent over land wires to a
high-power station at the English coast, in Chelmsford. From there the
signals were transferred to a 20,000-watt transmitter and beamed across
the Atlantic to Belfast, where they were received by a super-heterodyne
receiver attached to the 10-mile antenna. Re-amplified, the signals were
fed into a short-wave transmitter and sent to the RCA station at Van
Cortlandt Park in New York, then to the land-wire system of station WJX,
which broadcast them live.

That description comes from a publication called World Wide
Wireless,
which should know whereof it speaks. It said the message reached the ears
of American radio listeners in one-fiftieth of a second, a bit faster than
it was heard by the audience in London.

The transmission interrupted existing programming on the popular
station, and the introductory message noted the Belfast connection. It was
through such experiments that international broadcasting was born. Alas,
the city's involvement was short-lived. The RCA staff was sent to Long
Island in 1929, along with some of the equipment, and the buildings were
abandoned until the Armory took over in 1941.

The Belfast Museum is becoming an increasingly intriguing place
under
the energetic leadership of Pinette and a hardy band of volunteers. George
Squibb showed me last week how records are being catalogued and preserved
in archival correctness; I'll have more to write about that in the near
future.

The RCA adventure might well have slipped beneath the local radar if
not for Pinette and Bruce Clark. The legacy of Capt. Albert Stevens, now
the namesake for the new Belfast elementary school, might have, too. The
Historical Society and the Museum deserve our great thanks. It's a place
where history speaks to us, literally.

http://waldo.villagesoup.com/opinion...m?StoryID=2839