Cabot Tower, St. John’s, NL
Posted by: 
hykesj
N 47° 34.221 W 052° 40.861
22T E 373567 N 5269916
This tower was built atop Signal Hill in St. John’s to commemorate the 400th anniversary of John Cabot’s 1497 voyage and also to commemorate Queen Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee year of reign.
Waymark Code: WMWRT3
Location: Newfoundland and Labrador, Canada
Date Posted: 10/08/2017
Views: 11
The stamp, issued in 1928, shows Cabot Tower on Signal Hill at the mouth of St. John’s harbor. But if you read the fine print, it actually commemorates the first successful transmission of a transatlantic wireless signal by Guglielmo Marconi in 1901. But the fact is, Marconi didn’t use Cabot Tower (which was brand new in 1900) for his experiments. Rather, he set up shop nearby in a former military barracks that had been converted to a hospital.
Signal Hill was not Marconi’s first choice for his long distance experiments. Originally, his intent was to utilize his wireless station on Cape Cod in the United States to receive a signal sent from another station in Poldhu, England. But a series of weather-related mishaps on both sides of the Atlantic caused him to seek a more easterly spot, so he wound up in St. John’s in December of 1901. Hoping to achieve his goal before the end of the year, Marconi worked quickly and on December 12, 1901, was able to detect the Morse code equivalent of the letter “S” transmitted from the station in England.
Marconi’s achievement was theoretically impossible according to the best scientific understanding of the time. Since electromagnetic waves travel in a straight line, a radio transmission from England should have been lost in space by the time it reached Newfoundland. What Marconi had actually stumbled upon was the ionosphere, an electrically charged layer high in the earth’s atmosphere which is capable of refracting radio waves back towards the earth’s surface. Though theorized as an explanation of Marconi’s observations, the presence of this ionosphere was not confirmed until 1924.
In spite of the fact that Cabot Tower played no role in Marconi’s transatlantic wireless feat (there’s a plaque nearby marking the actual spot), it was eventually converted into a Marconi wireless station in 1933. This new station quickly became the hub of all wireless communication in all of Newfoundland and remained as such until it ceased operations in 1960. Today, Cabot Tower is the main attraction of the Signal Hill Historic Site. Besides a gift shop, it contains little else but Marconi-related memorabilia.
Stamp Issuing Country: Newfoundland
Date of Issue: 3-Jan-1928
Denomination: 9 cents
Color: myrtle green
Stamp Type: Single Stamp
Relevant Web Site: Not listed
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