Matt BlazeShortwave "Discone" Antenna, AT&T High Seas Transmitter Site, Ocean Gate, NJ, 2009.
All the pixels, none of the risk of sea sickness or scurvy, at https://www.flickr.com/photos/mattblaze/4141766569
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.
@stevewfolds@mattblaze
Had a SSB license as crew on a sailing yacht in the Caribbean, ‘71. You called on the radio and were asked your location in latitude & longitude. They focused an antenna on that location and then placed your telephone call, 2,100 miles away.
Used LORAN and another radio system that gave a bearing from counting dots and dash tones with headphones in ‘65, as return crew from Bermuda.
Had a SSB license as crew on a sailing yacht in the Caribbean, ‘71. You called on the radio and were asked your location in latitude & longitude. They focused an antenna on that location and then placed your telephone call, 2,100 miles away.
Used LORAN and another radio system that gave a bearing from counting dots and dash tones with headphones in ‘65, as return crew from Bermuda.