Signal Hill and the first transatlantic signal

On 12 December 1901 Guglielmo Marconi, flying a kite antenna 150 metres up in a gale on this headland over St John’s, said he heard three faint clicks through the static: the letter S in Morse, sent 3,400 kilometres from Cornwall. Physicists had said radio could not bend around the curve of the Earth. Marconi kept no recording and there was no independent witness, so purists have argued about that morning ever since, but transatlantic wireless followed within a few years regardless. The hill also carries Cabot Tower and the fortifications that guarded the narrows. PUBLIC national historic site.