Guglielmo Marconi had no university degree and no formal training in physics. He taught himself from textbooks in his father's attic, transmitted radio signals across the Atlantic before any established scientist believed it was possible, and built a global wireless communications empire that made the modern connected world inevitable. The professional physicists said long-distance radio was impossible; Marconi did it anyway.

This episode traces Marconi from his Italian-Irish childhood through the attic experiments, the transatlantic transmission, the Titanic connection that proved wireless telegraphy could save lives, and the Fascist associations that complicated his legacy.

• The attic experiments and Marconi's self-taught mastery of electromagnetic transmission
• The transatlantic signal in 1901 that the physics establishm ...