Marconi in Bolinas, CA

Today it's just called the Marconi Station World Heritage Site.  The above image shows the Marconi transmitter during construction in Bolinas, CA. He had begun experimenting with radio in 1894. In 1909 he had won the Nobel prize in physics. By 1912, he had acquired either built or acquired 70 land-based radio stations.  One of these was KPH, the first radio station serving San Francisco, CA. More here.

In that image you can see the lines from bulldozers in the dirt radiating outward over the ground system that connects to a metal plate in a nearby stream bed. Zinc plates were buried under each corner of the building. Lines behind the structure are fill dirt over more ground wires that run over the bluff to a massive plate in the ocean. To the the east they extended under the transmitting antenna.  Like other Marconi designs the transmitter had nine 300 foot masts radiating a signal from a 230kW rotary spark gap transmitter. At Bolinas was the transmitting station. The receiving station KPH was about twenty miles further north in the town of Marshall, at Point Reyes. More here.

A radio service bulletin of 1916 listed his rates as follows:

• 25 cents per word.
• Lettergrams $1 for the first 12 words, each additional word 8 cents. 
• Weekend letters $1 for the first 24 words, each additional word 6 cents.
• The station only communicates with Koko Head T.H.

But in 1916 KPH wasn't yet in Bolinas. That construction was not complete. When Marconi bought KPH from DeForest, it was still operating from a hotel in San Francisco. It began operations at the Palace Hotel, but was forced out by the 1906 earthquake. It moved to Green Street, then Hillcrest in Daily City...  series of temporary homes. But in Bolinas and Point Reyes it had found a new permanent home from which it woudl broadcast for another 80 years.

During WWI Marconi lost KPH. The US government seized control over all radio communications. In 1919 the US Navy seized the Bolinas site. Despite his fame, Marconi was an Italian fascist, and an apologist for Mussolini. He joined Mussolini's Fascist party in 1923, and later joined their grand council. Mussolini was actually Marconi's best man at his second wedding. No exception could be made, not even for the man popularly believed to have invented radio.


Radio Corporation of America (RCA) was formed which bought the holdings of the American Marconi Company. RCA then sold the majority of undeveloped land around the site, retaining only 62.7 acres surrounding the station buildings. The national park service currently manages the property. In 2014 the Point Reyes, Marshall, and Bolinas area celebrated the centennial of the Marconi station with KWMR and the Cornish Amateur Radio Club. IT was quite an event. More here.

KPH: The Wireless Giant of the Pacific

Every year on August 12th KPH returns to the air for one night...

According to the Maritime Radio Historical Society, the station would have been 100 this year. It began in 1905 as Morse station "PH." (Remember back then call letters were voluntary. You could make up anything you wanted.) The call letters referred to the Palace Hotel in San Francisco, where the station was located. Later, regulators later added the K to the call sign. KPH was once known as the "Wireless Giant of the Pacific."

For almost a century, marine wireless operators heard steady dots and dashes of the KPH signal in their earphones. At KPH some of the best Morse operators in the country listened for calls from ships. Most messages were routine. But occasionally an S-O-S would come in and KPH operators would jump to respond. The station went silent in 1997; two years before the formal end of commercial Morse Code use in the United States.

The annual event is July 12 this year; it is held at Point Reyes Station in California. Organizers have invited the public to watch professional Morse operators, including several original KPH operators, work the station. The station moved its transmitters and receivers to West Marin in the 1920s. The Maritime Radio Historical Society keeps it alive, with cooperation of the Point Reyes National Seashore. The Point Reyes National Seashore currently owns the land and buildings and all the artifacts of KPH.