New Jersey Tech, Business, & Creative Resources
If you spend enough time covering the technology sector, you develop an eye for places where the bones of modern computing are buried. Silicon Valley has the Fairchild garage; Boston has the remnants of the Route 128 corridor. But if you want to see where the DNA of wireless communications, electronic warfare, and satellite tracking actually fused together, you have to go to a 37-acre plot of land tucked away in Wall Township, New Jersey.
This is Camp Evans, home to the InfoAge Science and History Museums.
To the casual tourist, the site looks like a sleepy collection of vintage brick buildings and military-surplus infrastructure. To anyone who has tracked the tech industry for the last few decades, it is hallowed ground. Today, the 1912 Marconi wireless receiving station and WWII-era Signal Corps laboratory operate as a massive, sprawling tech-history cooperative.
If you are planning to make the pilgrimage—and if you care about how the cloud, your smartphone, or modern GPS came to be, you should—here is the practical baseline on how to navigate the campus, layered with some of the operational history that standard tourist brochures tend to leave out.
Logistical Baseline: Planning the Visit
InfoAge is not a single, monolithic museum; it is a complex consortium of 20 distinct mini-museums and exhibits spread across 16 historic buildings.
- Operating Hours: The campus opens its gates to the public from 12:00 PM to 5:00 PM on Wednesdays, Saturdays, and Sundays.
- 2026 Admission Matrix: Entry is structured at $15 for adults (ages 13 and up), $12 for seniors, and $10 for children between 4 and 12. Military personnel with valid identification are admitted for $8, and children under 4 are free.
- The Geography: The main campus sits at 2201 Marconi Road, Wall, NJ. However, do not leave without checking out the InfoAge Space Exploration Center (ISEC), which requires a short walk south to 2300 Marconi Road.
- Accessibility & Prep: The site is heavily volunteer-driven, but infrastructural maintenance has been thorough. Almost all facilities are ADA-compliant with ramps and wide hallways. Because you will be walking outdoors between distinct brick facilities, dress for the weather. Parking is free and plentiful.
What to Look For
When you walk through the doors of the sprawling red-brick building known as the Marconi Hotel, you are stepping into an artifact that was custom-built to house engineers on 24-hour duty more than a century ago.
From an IT perspective, the campus represents a continuous line of innovation that bridges early analog physics with digital logic. If you are budget-constrained for time, focus your attention on three core installations:
1. The Vintage Computer Museum
Curated in partnership with the Vintage Computer Federation, this is where the rapid compression of Moore’s Law becomes a physical reality. The collection doesn’t just show dead plastic; many of the mainframes from the 1940s through the 1960s, minicomputers from the 1970s, and microcomputers from the 1980s are maintained in fully operational condition. It is a rare chance to see early architectural layouts and understand how software optimization functioned when memory was measured in kilobytes rather than gigabytes.
2. The Space Exploration Center (ISEC) & Project Diana
Long before NASA was formed, the foundations of satellite tracking and space communications were laid right here. In 1946, the top-secret Project Diana used a modified SCR-271 radar antenna on this site to bounce a radar signal off the moon and detect its reflection 2.5 seconds later. It proved that radio waves could pierce the ionosphere, effectively opening the Space Age. You can also see the massive 60-foot TIROS dish antenna down the road, which in 1962 received some of the very first weather imagery transmitted from space.
3. The Electronic Warfare Exhibit
For those interested in cybersecurity and signal intelligence, this exhibit connects modern electronic counter-measures to their mid-century mechanical roots. The displays feature everything from World War II-era “black boxes” used to jam German radar to tactical systems engineered to neutralize roadside IEDs.
The Backstory: From Global Wireless to Corporate Survival
To truly appreciate what InfoAge is today, you have to look at the volatility of its real estate history. The property was originally bought in 1912 by Guglielmo Marconi to serve as his American chain’s trans-Atlantic wireless hub. During World War I, the federal government seized it due to its strategic communications value, turning it over to the U.S. Navy.
By the dawn of WWII, the Army took over, establishing “Camp Evans”—a highly classified, cloistered lab where scientists perfected early radar systems that ultimately gave the Allies a massive tactical advantage in Europe and the Pacific. Notably, the lab was a meritocracy ahead of its time, drawing an incredibly diverse pool of talent, including early Black and female engineers who were locked out of corporate tech roles elsewhere.
But when the military permanently shuttered nearby Fort Monmouth and Camp Evans in 1997, the site faced a quiet crisis that many tech hubs know all too well: commercial redevelopment.
The buildings had fallen into extreme disrepair. By 2002, the interiors were so badly degraded by water damage and fungal infestations that hazardous material suits were required just to walk through them. It was a local grassroots push, led by history advocate Fred Carl and backed by tech industry professionals, that saved the site from bulldozers.
Volunteers spent years remediating the buildings, repainting the structures, and securing a National Historic Landmark designation. Today, InfoAge operates as a 501(c)(3) non-profit, keeping the physical history of the IT revolution alive entirely through admission fees, grants, and the institutional knowledge of more than 150 dedicated volunteers. It is an gritty, authentic, and essential stop for anyone who wants to see where the modern world was coded and wired.
