Guglielmo Marconi: Radio Pioneer

As a boy, Guglielmo Marconi was an indifferent student, a dreamer, and a disappointment. He preferred tinkering with electromagnets to studying textbooks. He imagined sending signals through the air even though great scientists believed it impossible. He assembled contraptions in his attic workshop while his stern father wondered what would become of his foolish son.

By age 20, Marconi had succeeded in sending wireless messages over the hills outside his home in Italy. By age 23, the name Marconi was known around the world. Only a few years after electricity had first been sent over wires to light people's homes, Marconi devised a way to send electrical waves without wires. For this breakthrough, he was hailed as one of the great scientific minds of the early twentieth century.