Before I moved from Long Island to Texas, I had the privilege of doing something very rare. While a member of the Suffolk County Radio Club, I had the honor of actually operating from an antique, time worn, 10 foot by 10 foot wooden “shack”.
This structure was originally built to be used as an operating point where operators under the training of Guglielmo Marconi would be the first station communicating with transatlantic ocean liners as they approached America. Although this is not the first point where the Marconi Wireless Telegraph Company started it’s important operations, it is the oldest surviving structure and the one remembered most.
Since it’s construction and use, it has been moved several times and has passed through the ownership of several people, including radio pioneer, Edwin H. Armstrong (FM Radio inventor), David Sarnoff, President of RCA and now the Rocky Point Union Free School District where the building now rests in front of their high school. It has been totally repaired and protected and each year the Suffolk County Radio Club holds a special events station operation during “Marconi Day”, an event held all over the world where dozens of stations honoring Marconi operate from various structures such as this.
I was one such operator and just being in this shack gave me shivers. I can only imagine what communications were exchanged back in the early 1900’s. To me, it is like a shrine from the days when morse code made it possible for ships to cross the Atlantic more safely.
