Marconi, Guglielmo

Marconi, Guglielmo

Guglielmo Marconi, c. 1908.

(credit: Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.)

(born April 25, 1874, Bologna, Italy—died July 20, 1937, Rome) Italian physicist and inventor. He began experimenting with radio waves in 1894. In 1896 he went to England, where he developed a successful system of radio telegraphy. His work on the development of shortwave wireless communication constitutes the basis of nearly all modern radio broadcasting. His improved aerials greatly extended the range of radio signaling. In 1899 he established communication across the English Channel. In 1900 he established the American Marconi Co. In 1901 he sent signals across the Atlantic for the first time. He acquired numerous patents, though probably his most famous one, No. 7777, for an apparatus that enabled several stations to operate on different wavelengths without interference, was later overturned. Marconi shared the 1909 Nobel Prize for Physics with K. Ferdinand Braun (1850–1918). He was made a marquis and was nominated to the Italian Senate (1929), and he was elected president of the Royal Italian Academy (1930).