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2015

RUGBY AND HOULTON – AN HISTORIC CONNECTION

On Friday 7th January 1927 the world of communication changed. This was the day that Rugby Radio Station’s second long wave transmitter opened the world’s first telephone service, spanning the great divide that was the Atlantic Ocean.

Arriving by landline at Rugby Radio Station, that first call from London was transmitted across thousands of miles to the engineers waiting at the Houlton Receiving Station in Maine on America’s East Coast, and then sent onwards, all the way to New York.

It was an historic connection, one that Urban&Civic and its partners in RadioStation Rugby are delighted to help celebrate and continue to build upon. The development will be named Houlton in honour of that first transatlantic call; a true milestone of the ‘communication age’.