In an era when long-distance communication was achieved by sending signals over telegraph wires, Italian electrical engineer Guglielmo Marconi was one of a handful of researchers who suspected invisible radio waves might offer a better solution.

Despite failing his college entrance exams, Marconi (1874–1937) went on to conduct some of the most important technological experiments in history, pioneering long-distance radio transmission and becoming one of the world’s most famous inventors, a successful entrepreneur and a Nobel Prize winner.