Guglielmo Marconi
Guglielmo Marconi, (April 25, 1874 – July 20, 1937) was an Italian electrical engineer and Nobel Prize laureate, known for the development of a practical wireless telegraphy system commonly known as the "radio". Marconi was President of the Accademia d'Italia and a member of the Fascist Grand Council (and was a loyal Fascist).
Marconi was born in Bologna, Italy, the second son of Giuseppe Marconi, an Italian landowner, and his wife, Annie Jameson, granddaughter of the founder of the Jameson & Sons Distillery.
Although many scientists and inventors contributed to the invention of wireless telegraphy, including Ørsted, Faraday, Hertz, Tesla, Edison, and others, Marconi's practical system achieved widespread use, so he is often credited as the "father of radio."
Marconi was awarded what is sometimes recognised as the World's first patent for Radio with British Patent 12039, Improvements in transmitting electrical impulses and signals and in apparatus there-for on July 2, 1897. In July 1897, Marconi formed the London based Wireless Telegraph Trading Signal Company (later renamed the Marconi Wireless Telegraph Company), which opened the World's first "wireless" factory in Hall Street, Chelmsford, England in 1898, employing around 50 people.
He received the first trans-Atlantic radio signal on December 12, 1901 in St. John's, Newfoundland (now in Canada) using a 400-foot kite-supported antenna for reception. The transmitting station in Poldhu, Cornwall used a spark-gap transmitter to produce a signal with a frequency of approximately 500kHz and a power of 100 times more than any radio signal previously produced. The message received was three dots, the Morse code for the letter S. To reach Newfoundland the signal would have to bounce off the ionosphere twice.
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