Photos of Ottoman Empire’s first radiotelegraph station come to light

Photographs showing the original state of the Radiotelegraph Station, which was built in the ancient city of Patara in 1906 to provide communication between the Derne Port of Libya under the Ottoman rule and the Patara Port, have come to light.

The photos were published in the magazine called Servet-i Fünun in March 1906.

"What we have learned from archival documents is combined with this new data, and almost all issues about the stations have been clarified," said Havva İşkan Işık, the head of the Patara excavations.

The first radiotelegraph station of the Ottoman period, located in the ancient city of Patara in the southern province of Antalya's Kaş district, where many artifacts have been unearthed during the excavations initiated by Professor Fahri Işık and his wife Havva İşkan Işık for 32 years, was officially inaugurated on Aug. 31, 1906, the 30th anniversary of Abdülhamid II's accession to the throne.

Providing communication between Derne Port of Libya under Ottoman rule and Patara Port, which is 850 kilometers away, the station is the first long-distance radiotelegraph network in Europe.

During the restoration process, new findings emerged regarding the Patara Radiotelegraph Station, which was stated to be equipped with the best communication devices and state-of-the-art technology of its time but was bombed by the Italian army in the Tripoli War.

At a recent meeting, Işık and Diren Çakılcı, a research assistant at Akdeniz University's History Department, presented the new data.

Işık and Çakılcı announced that the photographs of the Patara Station were published in the Servet-i Fünun magazine in March 1906, when the station construction was completed, and that the following issues of the magazine provided...