There were several independent and parallel radio developments in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Radio communication was discovered and developed by a succession of incremental improvements on earlier technology.
One of the key protagonists in the creation of radio is the Scottish physicist and mathematician James Clerk Maxwell, whose equations from the 1860s anticipated the existence of electromagnetic waves. Later, other researchers discovered these waves, including radio waves, and used them to transmit data.
The first radio transmission method is credited to Serbian-American scientist and electrical engineer Nikola Tesla, who also made a substantial contribution to the development of radio. Tesla demonstrated the viability of radio communication in the late 1800s by successfully transmitting signals across short distances.
Guglielmo Marconi, an Italian electrical engineer and inventor, is usually credited with developing radio as we know it today. Marconi developed a practical and reliable wireless communication technology by building on the work of Tesla and others. A major turning point in the history of radio was reached in 1901 when Marconi successfully sent the first transatlantic radio signal.
Other important individuals in the history of radio include Oliver Lodge, who demonstrated the possibility of wireless communication using Hertzian waves (a type of electromagnetic wave), and Alexander Popov, a Russian physicist who is credited with developing the first radio receiver in 1895.
Throughout the evolution of radio, various scientists and inventors worked together and built upon one another's ideas. It was a lengthy, intricate, and highly sophisticated process that took place over many years.