Chatham Marconi Maritime Center (CMMC)

Today we picture Cape Cod as a haven for Fishing, Shell fishing, Vacationing, and as a world center for the arts. But in the late 19th and early 20th century, Cape Cod was also a center for Communication Technology with some of the leading edge scientific work showing its fruits here. Guglielmo Marconi received the Nobel Prize in 1909 and his name became a household word. His fame obtained financing for a new project to aggressively compete with the undersea cable companies offering of higher speeds and dramatically lower costs. He began to construct a series of stations that would link America with both Europe and Japan. In 1914 he constructed the now famous campus on Ryder’s Cove in Chatham as Circuit 3 to communicate with Naerboe and Stavanger Norway. Chatham was the controlling location where a highly sensitive receiving station was to exist and remotely operate the 300,000 watt CW spark transmitter 30 miles away in Marion. The Chatham Station was built in 1914. The Marconi Campus site and the Craftsman Bungalow style buildings, located in Chatham, Cape Cod, were designed and built by the J. G. White Engineering Company for the American Marconi Corporation and placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1994. Today you can visit the Chatham Marconi Maritime Center (CMMC) in Chatham, MA to learn and experience an important part of communications history.

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