Morse was born in Charlestown, Massachusetts (now part of Boston), on April 27, 1791, and educated at Yale College (now Yale University). He studied painting in London and became a successful portrait painter and sculptor. In 1825 he helped found the National Academy of Design in New York City, and the following year he became the first president of the institution. He continued his painting and became a professor of painting and sculpture at New York University in 1832. About that time he became interested in chemical and electrical experiments and developed apparatus for an electromagnetic telegraph that he completed in 1836. The following year he filed a caveat, or legal notice, at the patent office in Washington, D.C., and tried without success to obtain European patents for his apparatus. He also invented a code, now known as the Morse code, for use with his telegraph instrument.

Italian electrical engineer, He was born in Bologna and educated at the University of Bologna. As early as 1890 he became interested in wireless telegraphy, and by 1895 he had developed apparatus with which he succeeded in sending signals to a point a few kilometers away by means of a directional antenna. After patenting his system in Great Britain, he formed (1897) Marconi's Wireless Telegraph Company, Ltd., in London. In 1899 he established communication across the English Channel between England and France, and in 1901 he communicated signals across the Atlantic Ocean between Poldhu, in Cornwall, England, and Saint John's, in Newfoundland, Canada. His system was soon adopted by the British and Italian navies, and by 1907 had been so much improved that transatlantic wireless telegraph service was established for public use. Marconi was awarded honors by many countries and received, jointly with the German physicist Karl Ferdinand Braun, the 1909 Nobel Prize in physics for his work in wireless telegraphy.