<P> In 1898 Nicola Tesla developed a radio / coherer based remote - controlled boat, with a form of secure communication between transmitter and receiver, which he demonstrated in 1898 . Tesla called his invention a "teleautomaton" and he hoped to sell it as a guided naval torpedo . </P> <P> Guglielmo Marconi studied at the Leghorn Technical School, and acquainted himself with the published writings of Professor Augusto Righi of the University of Bologna . In 1894, Sir William Preece delivered a paper to the Royal Institution in London on electric signalling without wires . In 1894 at the Royal Institution lectures, Lodge delivered "The Work of Hertz and Some of His Successors". Marconi is said to have read, while on vacation in 1894, about the experiments that Hertz did in the 1880s . Marconi also read about Tesla's work . It was at this time that Marconi began to understand that radio waves could be used for wireless communications . Marconi's early apparatus was a development of Hertz's laboratory apparatus into a system designed for communications purposes . At first Marconi used a transmitter to ring a bell in a receiver in his attic laboratory . He then moved his experiments out - of - doors on the family estate near Bologna, Italy, to communicate further . He replaced Hertz's vertical dipole with a vertical wire topped by a metal sheet, with an opposing terminal connected to the ground . On the receiver side, Marconi replaced the spark gap with a metal powder coherer, a detector developed by Edouard Branly and other experimenters . Marconi transmitted radio signals for about 1.5 miles (2.4 km) at the end of 1895 . </P> <P> Marconi was awarded a patent for radio with British patent No . 12,039, Improvements in Transmitting Electrical Impulses and Signals and in Apparatus There - for . The complete specification was filed March 2, 1897 . This was Marconi's initial patent for the radio, though it used various earlier techniques of various other experimenters and resembled the instrument demonstrated by others (including Popov). During this time spark - gap wireless telegraphy was widely researched . In July, 1896, Marconi got his invention and new method of telegraphy to the attention of Preece, then engineer - in - chief to the British Government Telegraph Service, who had for the previous twelve years interested himself in the development of wireless telegraphy by the inductive - conductive method . On June 4, 1897, he delivered "Signalling through Space without Wires". Preece devoted considerable time to exhibiting and explaining the Marconi apparatus at the Royal Institution in London, stating that Marconi invented a new relay which had high sensitiveness and delicacy . </P> <P> The Marconi Company Ltd. was founded by Marconi in 1897, known as the Wireless Telegraph Trading Signal Company . Also in 1897, Marconi established the radio station at Niton, Isle of Wight, England . Marconi's wireless telegraphy was inspected by the Post Office Telegraph authorities; they made a series of experiments with Marconi's system of telegraphy without connecting wires, in the Bristol Channel . The October wireless signals of 1897 were sent from Salisbury Plain to Bath, a distance of 34 miles (55 km). Around 1900 Marconi developed an empirical law that, for simple vertical sending and receiving antennas of equal height, the maximum working telegraphic distance varied as the square of the height of the antenna . This became known as Marconi's law . </P>

Who invented the first radio and what year