Wireless History Gallery

The Wireless History Gallery explores Guglielmo Marconi’s life and legacy, RCA’s dominant 20th Century Ship-to-Shore Chatham Radio WCC era – the “Largest US coastal station in the marine service”, and Chatham Navy Radio’s WWII years as a secret facility for intercepting Enigma-encrypted U-Boat messages.  An authentic Enigma cipher machine is displayed, and working electronic simulators allow visitors to try their hand at encryption.

See this year’s new exhibit: “Chatham Heard Round The World” celebrating the 70th anniversary of the powerful RCA radio transmitting station formerly located in South Chatham on the shores of Nantucket Sound.  The exhibit’s centerpiece is one of the station’s seventeen large RCA model SSB T-3 twenty kiloWatt transmitters.