The "Pole Farm"

The "Pole Farm". . , The “Pole Farm” is what people called this place before it became part of Mercer Meadows. If you'd been here in 1950, you would have seen hundreds of timber poles, many as tall as a 10-story building, supporting antenna wires beaming telephone signals to all parts of the world., The Pole Farm’s proper name was the American Telegraph and Telephone (AT&T) International Radio Telephone Transmission Station at Lawrenceville. The 820-acre facility was a crucial link in international telecommunications before the days of satellites and cell phones., How Did It Work? , The telephone converts the human voice into electronic impulses, transmits those impulses over distances, and then converts the impulses back into a tone that sounds like the original voice., The original telephone system was based on a patent by Alexander Graham Bell in 1876. It used copper wires to transmit the signals and link together phones by way of a “land-line” system. At the time, it was impractical for cables to cross oceans and thus the telephone systems of different continents were not connected to one another., In 1927, AT&T's Bell Labs began to experiment with overseas telephone service using radio waves instead of metal wires to transmit the signals. After some initial trials, it was determined that shortwave radio could do the job., AT&T inaugurated service from its transmission station in Lawrenceville in 1929. The first phone call to London cost $45 for three minutes. Over the next 20 years, the radiotelephone technology was improved and the price dropped dramatically. AT&T added circuits to more than 20 international cities. If someone in the United States wanted to call Europe, Africa or South America, chances are their phone call passed through Lawrenceville., Where Are the Poles Now? , In 1975, AT&T discontinued international telephone service at Lawrenceville. The system using tall antennas was replaced by satellites. The buildings and poles were torn down., As you explore Mercer Meadows, you can still find some remnants of the Pole Farm. If you look carefully, there are the remains of poles, service roads and tower foundations. The heritage of telecommunications has also been incorporated into new landscape elements, such as the steel beams that form an outline of the building that housed the transmission equipment., ((image captions) , . The Pole Farm had two buildings that housed the equipment for transmitting the radio signals. They were simply known as Building One and Building Two. You are currently standing outside the footprint of Building Two, shown in the bottom left-hand corner of the above photo, c. 1929. Building One is visible in the distance. , . Engineers and radiomen of the AT&T transmission station, c. 1929. , . The Pole Farm, c. 1950. This view is looking west from the vicinity of Cold Soil Road. A mechanical seed planter is in the foreground. Two of the men appear to be sailors.