MUSEUM VISIT DETAILS

MARCONI-RCA WIRELESS MUSEUM

PRESERVING MARITIME RADIO HISTORY:  In 1914, radio pioneer Guglielmo Marconi’s company built a wireless receiving station here paired with a transmitting station in Marion, Massachusetts intended to provide commercial point-to-point radio service between the United States and Norway.  Following World War One and with the intervention of the US government, Marconi’s American assets were acquired by the newly formed Radio Corporation of America.  RCA’s Chatham station began operation in 1920, then transitioned to maritime ship-to-shore service in April 1921.  Chatham Radio, with call sign WCC, would soon become the busiest US coast station and remain so for much of the century.  The station campus today comprises 10 original buildings on 11.3 acres and has been preserved by the Town of Chatham as the Marconi-RCA National Register Historic District.  The site’s former Operating Building is now the museum.

WHAT YOU WILL SEE:  Through informative panels and interactive displays, museum visitors explore Marconi’s Cape Cod legacy of 20th century ship-to-shore communication.  Visitors experience firsthand how a radio operator touching a Morse code key in Chatham could communicate via wireless telegraph with counterparts aboard ships sailing the seven seas, and learn about the talented and skilled people who conceived, built and operated the station.  RCA’s Chatham Radio/WCC reliably linked merchant mariners, high society, royalty, dignitaries, celebrities and humble immigrants to their businesses and loved ones.  Artifacts from Chatham Radio/WCC’s history include the actual working shipboard radio from the renowned hospital ship SS Hope.  

Two special exhibits continue through October, 2026:  

• Through the Golden Age of Trans-Atlantic Ocean Liners, visitors glimpse what it was like to sail aboard any of six memorable mid-century passenger ships such as the SS United States, famous people whom they might have met, and historical events they might have witnessed. 

• From 1942 through World War II victory in 1945, Chatham Radio was the U.S. Navy’s crucial top secret Station C, covertly intercepting encrypted wireless messages from enemy ships all across the Atlantic.  Station C forwarded its intercepts to Washington, D.C. for decoding, and alerted the Navy’s extensive radio direction-finding network to locate and track enemy U-boats.  Marking the 80th Anniversary of winning the Battle of the Atlantic, Can You Keep A Really Big Secret? explores this tense period in the nation’s history and the changes it brought to everyday life when Chatham became a wartime “Navy town.”  

During your visit, take a few minutes to browse the unique items in our Museum Shop.

WHILE YOU ARE HERE:  Open to the public year-round during daylight hours, the Antenna Field Trail is the museum’s outdoor gallery, a winding hillside path with interpretive signs describing the station’s antennas and history.  Some of the antennas are scaled replicas of the originals, actively used today by the museum’s amateur radio operators to communicate around the world.

MORE:  For information on the museum's Speaker Series interpretive talks, events, and Summer STEM classes for youth, please browse the remainder of our website.