The Italian inventor Guglielmo Marconi (1874-1937) designed and constructed the first wireless telegraph. For this work he received a Nobel Prize.

The son of a wealthy Italian father and an Irish mother, Guglielmo Marconi was born April 25, 1874, in Bologna. He was educated by private tutors and attended the Livorno (Leghorn) technical institute for a short time.

In 1894 Marconi began experiments on electromagnetics near Bologna. Leaving aside the fundamental nature of electromagnetic waves, he directed his attention to the distance over which they could be detected with the possibility in mind that they might be used in a telegraph. He repeated Heinrich Hertz's experiments and rapidly extended the range of detection. Moving out of doors in 1895, he introduced a transmitter sparking between an elevated aerial and earth. For detection he used a "coherer" (a glass tube containing metal filings which becomes, and remains, conducting when an electrical discharge passes...