When Guglielmo Marconi was born in his father's large house in Bologna, Italy on April 25, 1874, all of the servants crowded into his mother's bedroom to welcome the new baby.  As they stood in admiration, the old gardener suddenly exclaimed, "What big ears he has!"  Guglielmo's mother replied with a smile, " He will be able to hear the still small voice of the air."  Little did she realize how true her words would prove to be.  For when Guglielmo was born, the age of modern technology was just beginning.  And the little boy to whom she gave birth was to be the inventor of the wireless telegraph, radio, and radar.

Guglielmo did not go to real school until he was twelve.  His first school was in Florence and he disliked it.  He felt shy among the other boys who often teased him because he could not speak Italian very well.  His mother, Annie, took Guglielmo and his brothers to live in Livorno on the Mediterranean coast of Italy, where Guglielmo decided to become a naval officer.  Unfortunately he failed the test.  At the age of thirteen, he went to the Livorno Technical Institute where, for the first time, he heard formal lectures on physics and chemistry.

Soon, Guglielmo was spending most of his spare time studying and experimenting with electricity.  However, his father condemned Marconi's boyhood fascination with dismembering electrical devices and constructing new gadgets as "scientific rubbish".   He thought that Marconi should have better spent his time studying other things.  Despite his father's disapproval, Marconi continued to work on his experimental pursuits. To avoid confronting his father Marconi chose a secret place in the garden to do his experiments.

      His relationship with his mother, however, was much closer.  He could not resist telling her about his experiments.  She was very supportive of his scientific interests, and even gave him an old attic in which to do his experiments.  Later on she convinced Professor Augustus Righi, from the Bologna University, to help Guglielmo further develop his interests in electricity.

     While vacationing in the Alps with his half-brother Luigi, Guglielmo read an article about the works of the German physicist, Heinrich Hertz.  The article described how Hertz had set up an experiment proving the existence of electromagnetic waves; waves of energy that travel at the speed of light through solids, liquids, and gases.  Guglielmo immediately saw the exciting opportunities of using these waves for sending and receiving messages without wires.  He could hardly wait to get home and shut himself in his laboratory to work on his new idea.