Guglielmo Marconi

Guglielmo Marconi, 1st Marquis of Marconi (25 April 1874 – 20 July 1937) was an Anglo-Italian inventor and electrical engineer known for his pioneering work on long-distance radio transmission and for his development of Marconi's law and a radio telegraph system - wikipedia

A publicity photo of Italian radio pioneer Guglielmo Marconi posing in front of his early radio apparatus. (prior to 1937) - wikimedia

He is usually credited as the inventor of radio, and he shared the 1909 Nobel Prize in Physics with Karl Ferdinand Braun "in recognition of their contributions to the development of wireless telegraphy".

Guglielmo Marconi (circa 1908). This image is available from the United States Library of Congress's Prints and Photographs division under the digital ID cph.3a40043 - wikimedia.org

Marconi was also an entrepreneur, businessman, and founder of The Wireless Telegraph & Signal Company in the United Kingdom in 1897 (which became the Marconi Company).

British Post Office engineers inspect Guglielmo Marconi's wireless telegraphy (radio) equipment, during a demonstration on Flat Holm island, 13 May 1897. This was the world's first demonstration of the transmission of radio signals over open sea, between Lavernock Point and Flat Holm Island, a distance of 3 miles.

In the background is the spark-gap transmitter, an induction coil (right) that generates high voltage pulses that create sparks between the balls of the Righi spark gap (left), which excites oscillating currents in a wire antenna suspended aloft by the pole seen in the center, ratiating radio waves. Information is transmitted by switching the transmitter on and off rapidly using a switch called a telegraph key (not visible), spelling out text messages in Morse code. - wikimedia.org

He succeeded in making an engineering and commercial success of radio by innovating and building on the work of previous experimenters and physicists. In 1929, Marconi was ennobled as a Marchese (marquis) by King Victor Emmanuel III of Italy and, in 1931, he set up the Vatican Radio for Pope Pius XI.

Photograph of Marconi and associates raising the receiving antenna by kite at St. John's, Newfoundland in December, 1901. Appeared in the article "Marconi's Achievement" in the February, 1902 issue of McClure's Magazine. - wikimedia.org

Electrical engineer/inventor Guglielmo Marconi with the spark-gap transmitter (right) and coherer receiver (left) he used in some of his first long distance radiotelegraphy transmissions during the 1890s. - wikimedia.org