Telecommunication Early means of communicating over a distance included visual signals, such as beacons, smoke signals, semaphore telegraphs, signal flags, and optical heliographs. Other examples of pre-modern long-distance communication included audio messages such as coded drumbeats, lung-blown horns, and loud whistles. 20th- and 21st-century technologies for long-distance communication usually involve electrical and electromagnetic technologies, such as telegraph, telephone, and teleprinter, networks, radio, microwave transmission, fiber optics, and communications satellites. A revolution in wireless communication began in the first decade of the 20th century with the pioneering developments in radio communications by Guglielmo Marconi, who won the Nobel Prize in Physics in
Alenia Marconi Systems 2001 AMS' missile systems division was merged with Aerospatiale Matra Missiles and Matra BAe Dynamics to form MBDA. On 7 October 2003 the UK holding company for AMS changed its registered name from Alenia Marconi Systems Limited to AMS Limited to comply with the agreements reached regarding use of the name "Marconi" following the sale of Marconi Electronic Systems by GEC (later Marconi plc). This name change was reflected in rebranding across the company, although the Italian holding company retained the name Alenia Marconi Systems SpA. On 28 January 2005 BAE Systems and Finmeccanica announced the intention to dissolve their