Camp Evans, originally considered as a part of Belmar Station, has been a site that has gone through many changes and incarnations since its first construction in 1912. The plot of land, which is based in Wall Township, is sometimes mistakenly considered part of Belmar. The land property, including the main operating house, is located on the banks of the Shark River in the Eastern region of Monmouth County. Camp Evans has approximately 500 acres of land, and is currently owned as a branch of Fort Monmouth, an Army military installation based in the Shrewsbury, Monmouth County area. The camp was utilized for everything from the fruition of radio communication to United States Army research.
Belmar Station came about in what is often coined as the Marconi Years. The American Marconi Company, after contractual obligations created with the J.G. White Engineering Corporation, built its first structures on the Monmouth County property in the year 1912 with its full completion in the year 1914. The main operating house on the property was supposedly built to be water impermeable, but when it was being constructed that was a tedious undertaking with underground streams running through and around the building. To this day, the basement still remains flooded.
Belmar Station was an establishment that Marconi used as part of, "…his wireless girdle." Radio transmissions were meant to be broadcasted to destinations such as Hawaii and the Panama Canal. During this period in the Station's history, the staff was so immense that The Marconi Hotel needed to be constructed on the property to accommodate the necessity of twenty-four hour maintenance for the operations at the Belmar Station. The crimson brick structure had contained forty-five rooms along with a lounge, smoking room, and an in-house diner. There were also some cottages for married operators that worked at the Station.
Information technology is the research, conception, creation, and utilization of information communication networks. The expanse of information technology today is furthered by the usage of computers and technology to retrieve data and communicate. In the early1900's by Guglielmo Marconi, an innovator originally from Italy, created radio telegraphy or more commonly known as just radio. The invention of radio eventually led him to the coveted Nobel Prize. Marconi was a true pioneer for information technology and communication. To further his work with this technology, Marconi created Belmar Station to work with a New Brunswick Station transmitter as a branch of wireless support.
The technology created at the Station was a real breakthrough for twentieth century communication. Along with Guglielmo Marconi, many notable professionals and inventors lent their knowledge and expertise to the projects created at the Belmar Station. Dr. Ernst Alexanderson, the technologist who invented the high frequency generator, and Dr. A. Hoyt Taylor from Wall Township, the founder of Naval radar, contributed their work to the wireless communication project. Edwin Armstrong, an electrical engineer who invented frequency modulation or FM radio, along with David Sarnoff, the founder of NBC (The National Broadcasting Company), completed the process called regenerative circuitry at the Belmar Station in 1914. Regenerative circuitry is the process by which an electronically charged signal is increased or amplified by the same vacuum tube or relative active component. An example of this is a unipolar transistor, which depends on an electric field in order to manage the shape of and the conductivity of a particular channel.
After the Marconi Years, this section of Belmar Station was taken over by the Naval operations during World War I within the year 1917 through the year 1919. This included not only the Belmar and New Brunswick Stations, but the Stations located in Tuckerton, New Jersey and out of state in Massachusetts and Maine. Out of all the stations, Dr. Taylor stated that he, "…never did get the one in Tuckerton running satisfactorily." The Navy gave the aforementioned Dr. A. Hoyt Taylor control of communication overseas. Dr. Taylor, a soldier in the Navy, became the Trans-Atlantic Communications Officer.
The Navy installed broadcasting lines that connected to Washington D.C., and could be utilized for Trans-Atlantic radio communication. The most notable Trans-Atlantic communication came about when President Woodrow Wilson was able to converse through an overseas connection with the Italian Minister of Communications in Rome. Around this same time, they placed more wiring underneath the Shark River in order to improve connectivity and reception for transmission.
When World War I concluded the American Marconi Company or the Marconi Wireless Telegraph Company of America, as it became known, was sold to a company called RCA. RCA is a media giant today, but the company's current owner is the General Electric Corporation. Its most popular notoriety today is their media electronics and recording labels. When the company sold to RCA, they meshed all the station's transmissions and receptions into one station in New York. This eliminated the need for any type of radio or communication work at the Belmar Station and for a time quieted the work at the site. Even though New Brunswick, however useful it was for transmitting communication to the United Kingdom in the World Wars, fell silent as well.
The Station went through different changes during the times between 1925 and 1941. During a minor era in the history of the Belmar Station, a group called the Pleasure Seekers Club occupied the camp's premises between the years 1925 and 1935. The group's records are very vague and not much information is prevalent. Within the year 1936 a Christian group, called the Young People's Association for the Propagation of the Gospel, purchased the land that formerly belonged to Marconi along the Shark River. Following in the year 1938, Dr. Percy B. Crawford created King's College in Belmar, New Jersey. This was a four-year Christian college that taught Biblical doctrine to their higher education students, but was not exclusively of a religious nature. The school did not teach broader subjects of an artistic or scientific basis. The college eventually moved to the Briarcliff Manor in New York. The King's College remains in existence, and still functions with offices that remain at the Empire State Building in New York City. They offer courses in Business Management, Philosophy, Economics, and many other degree programs, but they still maintain a theology institution within the college's curriculum.
The US Army then commissioned the camp for use in World War II. The radar laboratory was used for research and proved invaluable during that time. Companies such as AT&T and General Electric funded the research on the camp, along with using radar to detect enemy aircraft during the war. The radar work performed at Camp Evans was considered the redeeming quality of democracy and the tool of victory during the World War II effort. Other researches, such Project Diana, were performed on the camp. Project Diana aimed to send radar signals toward the moon to see what the reflecting signals consisted of. This project is considered the precursor to interest for space exploration and was hailed as the fruition of the U.S. Space Program.
On March 31, 1942 the Belmar Station, then called the Signal Corps Radar Laboratory, named its radar lab and property Camp Evans after the deceased Lieutenant Colonel Paul W. Evans. Evans originally hailed from Ohio and served in the Coast Artillery of the Army. Today the surrounding area near and around the camp retains the name Evans Area. The camp remained a top-secret research and development facility from 1941 to as recently as 1998. Camp Evans is considered to be a landmark of historical significance by the National Registry of Historic Places. Today Camp Evans is the Infoage Science and Learning Center. This Center is a non-profit organization that provides education about information technology and remembers the pioneers that contributed toward the progressions and innovations of communications. The Center is working to restore some of the structures and buildings that remain on the camp. This historical landmark gave birth to the most poignant and important scientific breakthroughs during the information age. This expanse of land needs preservation so that future generations can learn about the evolution of technology and the roots of the information era in America.
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