ABSTRACT
While many inventors have laid claim to the title of “father of radio,” there is little question about the individual who moved wireless out of the laboratory and into the marketplace. Guglielmo Marconi expanded on the work of Heinrich Hertz and created a device that transmitted Morse code using radio waves. Marconi, frustrated by the lack of foresight by his native Italian government, obtained a patent for his invention in England and in 1897 established the Marconi Wireless Telegraph Company (Gross, 2003). At this time the technology was primarily viewed as a means to improve ship-to-ship and ship-to-shore communication and had not yet included the transmission of human speech.
