Lizard Wireless Telegraph Station

In 1900, Guglielmo Marconi stayed in the Housel Bay Hotel in his search for a suitable site for marine communications using wireless technology, and given the already established telegraph links to semaphore signalling station here and lack of anything tall to interfere with radio transmission, he leased a plot of land on The Lizard, at Pen Olver, close to the lighthouse. Here he built the Lizard Wireless Telegraph Station which was primarily intended for ship-to-shore communication as ships were being fitted with new Marconi radio sets.

He also used the station for some tests. At the time, most scientists thought that radio waves would not propagate beyond the horizon. Marconi proved this not to be the case: on 23 January 1901, Marconi received a wireless signal here that was sent from the Isle of Wight, 186 miles away, thus proving that radio signals could be bent around the surface of the Earth and paving the way for modern telecommunications. After this, Marconi went on to build a larger transmitter at Poldhu which he used to send the first transatlantic signal.

In its capacity as a marine signalling station, the wireless hut was also the first to receive an SOS signal, in 1910, from a ship called the Minnehaha which had run aground further along the Cornish coast. Based on period photographs, the station has been restored by the National Trust to almost exactly how it was in 1901.