The Record-Setting Marconian Radio Station in Coltano, Italy

In September, 1902, Marconi was back from a long trip on the Italian Royal Navy's cruiser “Carlo Alberto”, where he successfully carried out many radio experiments in the northern seas, and soon, he expressed his intention to build a powerful intercontinental station in Italy. The station, which would be the first in Marconi's home country (and one of the first in the world, too), was intended to provide radiotelegraphic connections with Americas and Africa using frequencies below 100 kHz, which, at the time, were believed to be the sole option for long-distance radio communications. After some surveys across Italy, the selected site for this new station was Coltano, a marshy rural area between Pisa and Leghorn, near the Tyrrhenian Sea. The station was then inaugurated by Marconi itself in 1911 with transmissions to Clifden (Ireland) and Glace Bay (Canada), followed by a pioneeristic link reaching Massawa (Eritrea), across more than 2000 km of Sahara's dry soil, which, until then, was considered an unsurmountable obstacle for the propagation of low-frequency ground waves. This was just one of many astonishing records set by this once worldwide renowned, but now almost completely forgotten, radio station, born from Marconi's genius.