December 21, 1902

Guglielmo Marconi

Marconi announces complete Glace Bay–Poldhu wireless messages

The station was in Nova Scotia, not Newfoundland — and the short messages, begun on 15 December, did not arrive complete until the 21st.

21 December 1902: Glace Bay, not Newfoundland

On 21 December 1902 official messages went out from the Table Head station at Glace Bay, on Cape Breton Island in Nova Scotia, addressed to Britain's Edward VII and Italy's Victor Emmanuel III. Lord Minto, Canada's governor general, supplied the message to Edward VII.

Marconi announced publicly that he had established wireless communication between Cape Breton and Cornwall, and that the inaugural messages had been successfully transmitted.

A correspondent wiring his own newspaper

George Parkin, The Times' correspondent, had been observing the work at Glace Bay and supplied the press greeting sent toward Poldhu, Cornwall. The Times confirmed receiving it.

Parkin's first west-to-east message had left Glace Bay on 15 December. The 21st completed a process in which repeated attempts had been needed before the short messages arrived complete.

Complete messages, unreliable link

That is what the date marks. Marconi's reported reception of Poldhu's three-dot signal at St. John's, Newfoundland, in December 1901 remains disputed; this was whole messages crossing west to east.

By 22 December newspapers were reporting his formal announcement and the Times confirmation. The link was still too erratic to constitute a dependable continuous public service.

Sources

Researched 23 Aug 2026 6 sources 2 audit passes

How this was checked

Researched from the web into a fact sheet, rewritten from that sheet, then audited against it by a different model. How the pipeline works →

What the sources leave uncertain

Sources distinguish several milestones: the first west-to-east message left Glace Bay on December 15; some chronologies use December 16 or 17 for reception or exchange; on December 21 the official royal messages were sent and the messages were reported complete.
Thus December 21 is solid for the official-message and public-confirmation event, but it should not be labeled simply as the first west-to-east transmission.