Marconi and the invention of wireless communications

In the author's opinion, Radio, intended as the possibility of transmitting information over long distance through free electromagnetic waves, was a long and difficult parturition, which began in the spring of 1895 with the first experiments of Pontecchio, and ended in 1901, at Signal Hill, at St. John's, Newfoundland, with the first transatlantic transmission. In fact, if the activity Marconi carried out between 1896 and 1901 hadn't been successful, the experiments of the year 1895 would have just opened the way to the invention of Radio, because, as the author notes later, the instruments were not yet syntonic, while the ionosphere had not been discovered yet. The latter had a fundamental role in very-long-distance communications, in particular in the intercontinental communications, until the age of the communications via satellite. As a conisequence, speaking of the invention of Radio is equivalent to speak of the whole period above-mentioned, and not of a single event. The author goes into details in what is significant from a technical point of view in the period going from the autumn of 1894 to December 1901.