Guglielmo Marconi. Coloured portrait of the Italian physicist Guglielmo Marconi (1874-1937), the inventor of the radio. Privately tutored in his youth, Marconi had developed his first radio equipment by the age of 21. Its range was about 1.5 km and attracted the interest of the British government. Marconi patented his system in Britain and in 1897 established the Marconi's Wireless Telegraph Company in London. In 1899 he made the first transmission across the English Channel and in 1901 the first trans-Atlantic transmission. In 1909 he won the Nobel physics prize. He later developed short-wave radio and established a worldwide radio telegraph network.