On Cape Cod’s Outer Cape, technological change quickly made the South Wellfleet wireless station obsolete after Guglielmo Marconi built it, and natural erosion soon erased the ground where it stood. In 1917, just 16 years after the station was built, it was shuttered as new inventions overtook its technology, while the North Atlantic Ocean continued reshaping the landscape. On average, the Outer Cape loses about three feet of upland bluffs each year as strong winter winds scour the dunes and waves strike the beach every six seconds, pulling sand into the water and depositing it elsewhere. By the 1920s, the station towers stood so near the bluff’s edge that they were cut down and used for firewood to keep them from toppling, and the site of the station has since disappeared.