Guglielmo Marconi (1874–1937) was the Italian inventor who turned wireless telegraphy from a laboratory curiosity into a practical global system: in December 1901 he received the first transatlantic radio signal, and in 1909 he shared the Nobel Prize in Physics for the development of wireless communication.
Starting with experiments on his father's estate near Bologna, he moved to Britain, founded the Marconi company in 1897, and spent two decades extending the range of the wireless — from a garden to a continent — until ships, armies and newsrooms depended on it.
