Summer 1895.
For several weeks, Guglielmo Marconi has been experimenting with the waves recently discovered by Heinrich Hertz. By cleverly combining a Branly coherer with an antenna, he creates the first wireless telegraph link, over 2.4 kilometres. After a few years of research and a spat with Tesla (the inventor, not the cars), he moves to England, the Italian authorities having refused to back his work, which he tests just about everywhere. In 1903 he will even be one of the first to use the Eiffel Tower as a transmitter, during his first international experiments in long-distance radio transmission. The following year his system works, and he starts fitting ships so they can talk to the shore, or to each other. Finally, a business model for his research.
Meanwhile, in Germany.
Two big German companies, AEG (since partly broken up via Daimler-Benz, then Alsthom, then Electrolux) and Siemens (then working on the telegraph), set up Telefunken. The company mainly funds research into wireless telegraphy1, led by Ferdinand Braun. All this while Adolf Slaby was developing (inside AEG) technically superior equipment that only worked with his own receivers, whereas the other two managed to get Marconi’s and Braun’s sets talking to each other.
In 1909, Braun and Marconi share the Nobel Prize in Physics. Slaby has to settle for the booby prize. And for dying 4 years later.