Guglielmo Marconi, the Italian inventor and electrical engineer who pioneered the science of radio communication, was born in Bologna on this day in 1874. Known as the father of radio, Marconi developed and marketed the first successful long-distance wireless telegraph and in 1901 broadcast the first transatlantic radio signal.

Marconi was the second son of Italian aristocrat Giuseppe Marconi and his Irish wife Annie Jameson, the grandaughter of John Jameson, founder of the Jameson whiskey distillery. In 1896, at the age of 22, Marconi moved to London and took out a patent on wireless telegraphy before establishing The Wireless Telegraph & Signal Company, later the Marconi Company.