Marconi, Guglielmo, mahr KOH nee, goo LYEHL moh (1874-1937), was an Italian inventor who popularized wireless telegraphy, or radio (see Radio). He was one of the first inventors to send telegraph signals through the air using radio waves. Telegraph signals previously had been transmitted through wires. Marconi shared the 1909 Nobel Prize in physics with Karl Ferdinand Braun of Germany, who had developed ways of increasing the range of radio transmissions.