Rugby Radio Station became operational on 1 January 1926, with its GBR transmitter – at the time the most powerful in the world – sending news and telegrams across the globe. A year later it launched the world’s first transatlantic telephone service. <\/p>\n
During the Second World War, station staff supported RAF bombing missions over Germany, and in the 1950s it became the world’s largest radio station with 57 transmitters in operation.<\/p>\n
Technological advances eventually led to the decommissioning of the GBR transmitter in 2003, with all broadcasting from the site ceasing in 2007.<\/p>\n
The site of the station has since been redeveloped into the new Houlton development, which is home to more than 1,250 families. The Grade II listed former “C” building has been converted into a school.<\/p>\n
Developer Urban&Civic named the neighbourhood after Houlton in Maine, which was the destination of the first transatlantic broadcast from the site.<\/p>\n
The launch event on Wednesday featured live music, themed cocktails created by local distillery Rugby Gin and a specially commissioned video incorporating Morse code.<\/p>\n
Among those attending were mayor Barbara Brown, incoming mayor Nooria Sayani, former MP Mark Pawsey and representatives from the borough council and developer Urban&Civic.<\/p>\n
The mayor said at the launch: “Communication is in our DNA in Rugby. This exhibition and celebration involves so many people and shows how we remain a centre for communication and contact. <\/p>\n
“It’s quite a unique thing to have a totally new community that you can bring on, yet keep that touchstone with the past and take it into the future, so it’s great to be able to celebrate that.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Rugby Radio Station became operational on 1 January 1926, with its GBR transmitter – at the time the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":388766,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[156,157,111,139,69],"class_list":{"0":"post-388765","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-music","8":"tag-entertainment","9":"tag-music","10":"tag-new-zealand","11":"tag-newzealand","12":"tag-nz"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/388765","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=388765"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/388765\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/388766"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=388765"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=388765"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=388765"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}