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Guglielmo Marconi was born at Bologna, Italy, April 25, 1874. His father, Giuseppe Marconi, was an Italian country gentleman, and his mother was Annie Jameson of Daphne Castle in Ireland. Marconi was privately educated at Bologna, Florence, and Leghorn and developed an interest in Electromagnetism at an early age. Inspired by the work of Heinrich Hertz, who had demonstrated the creation of electromagnetic waves from an electric spark, Marconi began laboratory experiments at his father's country estate at Pontecchio in 1895 to send signals over these electromagnetic waves. Within a year he succeeded in sending wireless signals over a distance of one and a half miles.
In 1896, Marconi brought his device to England where he met Sir William Preece, Engineer in Chief of the Post Office, and later that year was granted a patent for wireless telegraphy. In 1897 Marconi formed The Wireless Telegraph & Signal Company Limited, later renamed Marconi's Wireless Telegraph Company Limited. In 1899 Marconi established wireless communication between France and England across the English Channel. In 1900 he received a patent for Tuned or Syntonic Telegraphy. In 1901 he transmitted the first wireless signals across the Atlantic Ocean between Poldhu Cornwall and St. John's, Newfoundland (2100 miles). In 1909 he shared the Nobel Prize in Physics with Professor Karl Braun in recognition of their contributions to the development of wireless telegraphy.
In 1912 he patented a "timed spark" system for generating continuous waves. From 1914 till the end of WWI, Marconi served in the Italian army and later the Navy. In 1919 he received the Italian Military Medal for his military service. In the 1930s Marconi studied the propagation of shorter waves resulting in the first microwave radiotelephone link between Vatican City and the Pope's summer residence at Castel Gandolfo. In 1935 Marconi gave a practical demonstration of the principles of radar, which he had foretold in an earlier speech in 1922. Marconi died in Rome on July 20, 1937, he was 63 years old.
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Marconi did not invent radio transmission
