Guglielmo Marconi (1874-1937) was an Italian physicist who obtained a patent for a successful system of radio telegraphy (1896) at age twenty-two and remained a leader in radio technology for four decades. In 1909 he received the Nobel Prize for Physics. Marconi's great triumph was in 1901 when he succeeded in receiving signals transmitted across the Atlantic Ocean despite the general opinion that the curvature of the Earth would limit the range of communication by electromagnetic waves. This sensational achievement was the start of the vast development of radio communication and broadcasting.