The history of electronic radio technology is plagued by controversy over the question of who actually invented the thing. The answer most often given is Italian inventor Guglielmo Marconi, but many others made important discoveries that give them good claim to the title.
Here’s a rundown on the contenders for the title of The Father of Radio:
Marconi: He was the first person to demonstrate radio successfully and exploit it commercially. In 1901, Marconi sent a message via radio across the Atlantic from England to Canada, though the message was faint, consisted of nothing but the letter S, and reception of the message wasn't independently confirmed. Nevertheless, Marconi’s accomplishment was astonishing, and he made many important contributions to the technology and business of radio.
Tesla: In 1943, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that many of Marconi’s important radio patents were invalid because Nikola Tesla had already described the devices covered by Marconi’s patents.
Tesla was a brilliant engineer who is best known for being the champion of alternating current over direct current for power distribution. He publicly demonstrated wireless communication devices as early as 1893. Tesla believed that wireless technology would be used not only for communication, but for power distribution as well.
Lodge: In England, Sir Oliver Lodge was building wireless telegraph systems in the mid-1890s.
Popov: In Russia, Alexander Stepanovich Popov was demonstrating wireless telegraph transmissions around the same time as Lodge.
Bose: In India, Sir Jagadish Chandra Bose was also demonstrating wireless telegraph transmissions in the early 1890s. Whether these demonstrations occurred before, after, or at the same time as other demonstrations by Lodge, Popov, and others is under dispute.
Many others: The list of names of others who did important research and made important discoveries in the last decades of the nineteenth century is long: Heinrich Hertz, Edouard Branly, Roberto de Moura, Ernest Rutherford, Ferdinand Braun, Julio Baviera, and Reginald Fessenden are just a few of the many individuals who made important contributions.
So it seems that no one person has a clear-cut claim to being the first to invent radio. Work was being done all around the world and discoveries were being made it seems every day.
It may be that the best answer is that no one “invented” radio. Radio is a natural phenomenon. It was discovered, not invented.
What was invented were ways to exploit the phenomenon of radio by building devices that could generate radio waves and modulate them to add information, as well as devices that could receive radio waves and extract the information that was added.
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Source:http://www.dummies.com/how-to/content/radio-electronics-who-really-invented-radio.html
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