British-Italian engineer Guglielmo Marconi obtains a patent for radio in London.

Guglielmo Giovanni Maria Marconi, 1st Marquess of Marconi was an Italian electrical engineer, inventor, and politician known for his creation of a practical radio wave-based wireless telegraph system. This led to Marconi being largely credited as the inventor of radio and sharing the 1909 Nobel Prize in Physics with Karl Ferdinand Braun "in recognition of their contributions to the development of wireless telegraphy". His work laid the foundation for the development of radio, television, and all modern wireless communication systems.

The early history of radio is the history of technology that produces and uses radio instruments that use radio waves. Within the timeline of radio, many people contributed theory and inventions in what became radio. Radio development began as "wireless telegraphy". Later radio history increasingly involves matters of broadcasting.