To truly understand a thing, we must trace its origins. The same applies to communication via electromagnetic waves — by looking back at this history, we deepen our understanding of the wireless communication that is now everywhere around us.

Hertz was the first to prove that electromagnetic waves could travel through air, yet he himself did not believe the discovery had any practical value. It was Marconi who seized on this overlooked physical phenomenon and, starting from scratch, step by step made radio communication a reality.

Marconi was a young Italian in his early twenties when he read about Hertz's spark-gap experiments: the moment of discharge generates electromagnetic waves, which can be detected at a distance by a receiving loop.

At the time, wired telegraphy was already mature, but its major shortcoming was obvious: wires had to be strung, impossible to lay across mountains and seas, and the lines were prone to breaking.

Marconi formed a bold hypothesis: since electromagnetic waves could travel without wires, why not load the Morse code of wired telegraphy onto electromagnetic waves, do away with the copper wires, and send telegraph signals through the air?

To many scientists of the day, this idea seemed impractical. Many scholars believed that since electromagnetic waves travel in straight lines and the Earth is curved, long-distance communication was simply impossible.

Marconi set up his apparatus in the attic of his family estate:

At first, the communication distance was only a few dozen meters. Marconi kept experimenting and refining:

Soon the distance grew to 2.7 kilometers, and signals could be received even across hills. Marconi had successfully proved that electromagnetic waves could carry signals around obstacles.

Marconi submitted his proposal to the Italian government but received little attention. In 1896, he took his experimental equipment to Britain and applied for a radio patent.

Britain at the time had a thriving maritime industry, yet ships at sea had no wired communication — a vessel in distress could not call for help — so wireless technology was urgently needed. Marconi's patent was granted without difficulty.

At a public demonstration in Britain, he successfully achieved communication over several kilometers, won investment, and founded a wireless company. He continued to iterate on his equipment, and the communication distance kept growing.

In 1899, Marconi achieved communication across the English Channel, transmitting a signal from France to Britain across 45 kilometers of sea. By this point, wireless telegraphy had real practical value, and ships began installing Marconi radio equipment.

At the time, the prevailing view held that electromagnetic waves travel in straight lines, and since the Earth is spherical, waves would fly off into space after a few hundred kilometers — making transatlantic transmission impossible.

Marconi insisted on trying. He erected a receiving antenna in Newfoundland, Canada, and built a high-power transmitting station in Cornwall, England.

On December 12, 1901, he successfully received a Morse signal sent across the Atlantic: the letter S (···).

For the first time in human history, wireless communication across an ocean was achieved without a single wire.

It was only later that people came to understand that electromagnetic waves are reflected by the ionosphere in the atmosphere and travel along the curvature of the Earth. Marconi completed this great experiment without even knowing the principle of the ionosphere.

Marconi's radio spread rapidly, and a great number of ocean-going vessels installed wireless stations. The famous Titanic relied on Marconi radio to send distress signals, which helped save lives.

Marconi's core contribution was not the discovery of electromagnetic waves, but rather grafting the mature coding logic of wired telegraphy onto electromagnetic waves — continuously optimizing the antenna, grounding, and coherer detection systems to turn a laboratory phenomenon into a communication tool that could be used commercially over long distances.