The Italian ministry of foreign affairs recently organised some culture and art events. Of the exhibitions put up in Delhi, the 2 most interesting were the wooden models by Leonardo da Vinci and Nobel laureate Gugliemo Marconi, inventor of the radio. Da Vinci's wooden model depicted his vision of innovative engineering. At the Marconi exhibit were the spark transmitter and the primitive coherer-receiver which he invented in 1985. These inventions broke, as it were, the sound barrier, making it possible to communicate over huge distances and making the 20th century the Information Age.