Marchese Guglielmo Marconi was an Italian inventor and physicist, celebrated for his development of wireless telegraphy. In the field of electromagnetic waves he correlated and improved inventions of H. R. Hertz, Édouard Branly, and other scientists and invented a practical antenna. Experimenting with homemade apparatus, in 1895 he sent long-wave signals over a distance of more than a mile. He patented his system in England (1896) and organised a wireless telegraph company (1897) to develop its commercial applications. In 1899 he transmitted signals across the English Channel and in 1901 received in St John’s, N.F., the first transatlantic wireless signals, sent from his station at Poldhu, Cornwall. After World War I he concentrated on short waves, and in 1930 he turned his attention to microwaves. Marchese Guglielmo Marconi received, jointly with K. F. Braun, the 1909 Nobel Prize in Physics for work in wireless telegraphy.

Marconi died in Rome on 20 July 1937.