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Description area
Dates of existence
History
In 1903 Marconi founded Marconi's Wireless Telegraph Company of Canada, which was renamed in 1925 as the Canadian Marconi Company. Camperdown was one of several coastal stations constructed by the company to provide radio communications with ships. Located at the entrance to the Halifax Harbour, from 1905-1926 it served primarily to forward messages collected from ships by stations at Sable Island and Cape Sable, Nova Scotia, as well as those directly from ships within wireless range of the station itself. These messages were transmitted by landline telegraph circuit to the Halifax Telegraph Office for local delivery or retransmission to subsequent destinations.
The station's first wireless ship-to-shore test was made on 19 June 1905, between the cableship MacKay-Bennett and Camperdown. From May 1907 a daily automated time signal was sent from the St. John Observatory to Camperdown, whereby it was relayed instantaneously to all ships within radio distance, the first such service in the world. While this relationship remained operational until 1949, by the early 1930s the Meteorological Service was no longer responsibility for disseminating the correct time, and the task was assumed by the Dominion Observatory in Ottawa.
Camperdown Station is also believed to be the recipient of the first radio broadcast of music heard in Nova Scotia. When the luxury steamer Hirondelle passed through Halifax, her owner, the Prince of Monaco, had a piano hooked up to a wireless transmitter and treated operators at Camperdown to four musical selections, including the Merry Widow Waltz, later signalling to enquire about the success of the experiment.