Guglielmo Marconi was born on 26th April, 1874 at Bologna in Italy. He studied Physics in a technical school in Leghorn, Italy and conducted his early experiments near Bologna. He was the man, who, most people say, invented Radio.
When in 1887 he came to know that Heinrich Hertz had discovered radio waves, he thought of using these waves for carrying messages. At that time messages were already being sent in Morse code using electric wires. When he was only 20, he managed to make an electric bell ring in one corner of a room with radio waves sent out from the other corner. The bell was switched on by electric pulse across about 10 metres by radio waves.
By 1895, Marconi was able to develop equipment that could transmit pulses up to a distance of about 2 km. But unfortunately the Italian Government did not take much interest in his work and he decided to try his luck in London. In 1896 he moved to London and during 1896 and 1897 gave a series of successful demonstrations of the wireless telegraphy apparatus he had developed. In May 1897, he transmitted Morse signals from Lavernock point in Wales to an island in Bristol Channel about five km. away. He subsequently started the Marconi Company in 1897.
Two years later i.e. in 1899 he transmitted a radio signal across the English Channel covering a distance of about 50 km. In 1899 he also equipped two U.S. ships to report to newspapers in New York City the progress of the yacht race for the American Cup. On December 12, 1901, the letter S was sent in Morse code across the Atlantic Ocean. The world then realized the tremendous possibilities of this new means of communication. In 1909 he received the Nobel Prize for Physics. He later worked on shortwave wireless communication, which constitutes the basis of nearly all modern long distance radio transmission. In 1930 he was chosen the President of the Royal Italian Academy.
This great physicist and inventor died on July 20, 1937.