Shortwave "Discone" Antenna, Former AT&T High Seas Radio Site, Ocean Gate, NJ, 2009.
All the pixels, somewhat obsolete, at https://www.flickr.com/photos/mattblaze/4141766569/
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this post was submitted on 09 Sep 2024
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Captured with a DSLR and a 24mm shifting lens.
During the 20th century, AT&T operated a shortwave "radiotelephone" service for vessels on the high seas. Ships could contact an operator, who could connect them with any landline telephone number they wished.
The North Atlantic station, callsign WOO, occupied expansive transmit and receive "antenna farms" in marshlands near the shore in central New Jersey.
Rendered obsolete by satellites, the service ceased operation on November 9, 1999.
There were three AT&T radiotelephone sites in the continental US, each with its own transmit and receive antenna farms: Ocean Gate, NJ (shown here, serving the North Atlantic), Miami (serving the Caribbean and the Gulf), and Point Reyes, CA (serving the Pacific).
All the sites have by now been razed, either for redevelopment or as nature preserves. The antennas are mostly gone now.
Ships on the high seas occasionally currently make some use of shortwave radio, but its importance has greatly diminished in the last few decades. The Coast Guard still maintains a "watch" on emergency shortwave frequencies, listening for distress calls, but most transoceanic ships are now equipped with more modern, higher-bandwidth satellite communications systems.
@[email protected] I listened to those radiotelephone calls on my shortwave in the 80s. Now I'm here in the future. It's better, but we lost many things to creative destruction.