Guglielmo Marconi 1874 - 1937

Guglielmo Marconi was born in Italy in 1874. He went to the Livorno Technical Institute, and while there, he read an article that caught his attention.

The article mentioned the possibility of using radio waves to communicate without wires. The most modern way to send a message in 1894 was over telegraph wires. (Heinrich Herz, for whom the units hertz and megahertz are named, had first discovered and produced radio waves in 1888.)

Marconi began experimenting with radio waves at his family's home near Bologna. Within a year he had sent and received signals beyond the range of vision, eventually up to two miles. He took out a patent in 1896. By 1899, Marconi had sent a signal nine miles across the Bristol Channel and 31 miles across the English Channel to France. Most people believed that the curvature of the earth would prevent sending a signal much further than 200 miles, so when Marconi was able to transmit radio signals across the Atlantic Ocean in 1901, people were stunned. In 1909 Marconi won the Nobel Prize in physics.