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Guglielmo Marconi (1874-1937), Italian physicist and inventor of the radio. Privately tutored in his youth, Marconi had developed his first radio equipment by the age of 21. It had a range of 1.5 kilometres, attracting 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 Prize for Physics. He later developed short-wave radio and established a global radio telegraph network. Coloured version of an original portrait by Lafayette, London. (KEYSTONE/SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY/SHEILA TERRY)