Thursday, August 2, 2007

Marconi's - the first long distance radio communications 1902

We retraced part of our route to Sydney the next day on our way to Glace Bay where Keith was keen to visit the site from which Marconi transmitted the first official wireless message across the Atlantic on Dec 15th 1902. This national historic site honours Marconi's role in the development of today's network of global communications. Next we visited the Glace Bay Heritage Museum that has been set up by the local Historic Society in an old building that was to have been demolished to make way for a parking lot. Our last museum for the day was the Cape Breton Miners Museum. Unfortunately we were a little pressed for time so did not take the underground tour to the coal face as we needed to find a camp for the night in Louisburg. We found one right next to the Louisburg Playhouse where we wanted to go and see the performance of "Lyrics and Laughter", a show put on each night by an extremely talented group of 6 musicians. There were a number of humorous little skits, step dancing and lots of typical Cape Breton fiddling songs and tunes. The guy on the fiddle was absolutely brilliant and made it look so effortless.