“Looking Inside”, From the Very Beginning
Pirelli’s commitment to research and innovation began with its founder, Giovanni Battista, a young engineer freshly graduated from the Istituto Tecnico Superiore di Milano – the future Politecnico University – in 1870. Thanks to his initiative, Italy’s first factory for processing elastic rubber opened in 1873 under the technical direction of Aimé Goulard, with forty workers and five office staff. Following the advice of his mentor, Professor Giuseppe Colombo – the founder of Edison and one of the key figures of Italy’s industrial modernisation between the mid-nineteenth century and the First World War – Giovanni Battista Pirelli decided to start manufacturing parts for industrial machinery, steamships and the railways: various articles, such as transmission belts, valves, and insulators. The range soon extended to consumer items such as toys, balls, waterproofs and haberdashery. Just ten years after the company was founded, the results were clear: the workforce grew from 40 to 300, the facilities expanded, and new sectors were launched. One of these was for the production of rubber-coated telegraph wires, which were introduced in 1879. The first chemical and electrical engineers were hired in 1884, and in the following years important experts in the field of electrotechnics joined the company. These included Emanuele Jona and Leopoldo and Luigi Emanueli, who would long lead the Group’s Research and Development department.
In the late nineteenth century, at the behest of the founder, the company started collecting scientific texts, mainly dedicated to rubber, tyres and electric cables, to broaden the training of Pirelli technicians. These volumes eventually became part of today’s Scientific and Technical Library of over 16,000 titles, kept by the Pirelli Foundation since 2010. It is no coincidence that, ever since it was set up, the Foundation has adopted a quote by Luigi Emanueli as its motto: “Adess ghe capissaremm on quaicoss: andemm a guardagh denter (“Now we’ll understand something, let’s go and look inside”). The idea of “looking inside” in order “to understand” sums up the whole concept of science as a form of research, study, and commitment.
And so it was that, in 1922, photographers were invited to “look inside” the life of the factory. To celebrate the company’s fiftieth anniversary, a photographic shoot was produced at the Milano Bicocca plant, from the production departments to the laboratories. The spaces and technical equipment illustrated Pirelli’s pioneering role in innovation. During these years the company continued to give central importance to research in Italy and abroad. The 1923 annual report stated that the Società Italiana Pirelli “with the help of its technical management and its laboratories, has also […] strongly supported the activity of these foreign plants of ours, continuing its policy of scientific research and refinement at the headquarters and of collaboration with the management of sister companies abroad, which we have constantly pursued throughout these years of expansion of our industrial organisation.” And research never stopped, focusing on new materials and innovative products in the decades that followed, beginning with the development of synthetic rubber.
Pirelli’s commitment to research and innovation began with its founder, Giovanni Battista, a young engineer freshly graduated from the Istituto Tecnico Superiore di Milano – the future Politecnico University – in 1870. Thanks to his initiative, Italy’s first factory for processing elastic rubber opened in 1873 under the technical direction of Aimé Goulard, with forty workers and five office staff. Following the advice of his mentor, Professor Giuseppe Colombo – the founder of Edison and one of the key figures of Italy’s industrial modernisation between the mid-nineteenth century and the First World War – Giovanni Battista Pirelli decided to start manufacturing parts for industrial machinery, steamships and the railways: various articles, such as transmission belts, valves, and insulators. The range soon extended to consumer items such as toys, balls, waterproofs and haberdashery. Just ten years after the company was founded, the results were clear: the workforce grew from 40 to 300, the facilities expanded, and new sectors were launched. One of these was for the production of rubber-coated telegraph wires, which were introduced in 1879. The first chemical and electrical engineers were hired in 1884, and in the following years important experts in the field of electrotechnics joined the company. These included Emanuele Jona and Leopoldo and Luigi Emanueli, who would long lead the Group’s Research and Development department.
In the late nineteenth century, at the behest of the founder, the company started collecting scientific texts, mainly dedicated to rubber, tyres and electric cables, to broaden the training of Pirelli technicians. These volumes eventually became part of today’s Scientific and Technical Library of over 16,000 titles, kept by the Pirelli Foundation since 2010. It is no coincidence that, ever since it was set up, the Foundation has adopted a quote by Luigi Emanueli as its motto: “Adess ghe capissaremm on quaicoss: andemm a guardagh denter (“Now we’ll understand something, let’s go and look inside”). The idea of “looking inside” in order “to understand” sums up the whole concept of science as a form of research, study, and commitment.
And so it was that, in 1922, photographers were invited to “look inside” the life of the factory. To celebrate the company’s fiftieth anniversary, a photographic shoot was produced at the Milano Bicocca plant, from the production departments to the laboratories. The spaces and technical equipment illustrated Pirelli’s pioneering role in innovation. During these years the company continued to give central importance to research in Italy and abroad. The 1923 annual report stated that the Società Italiana Pirelli “with the help of its technical management and its laboratories, has also […] strongly supported the activity of these foreign plants of ours, continuing its policy of scientific research and refinement at the headquarters and of collaboration with the management of sister companies abroad, which we have constantly pursued throughout these years of expansion of our industrial organisation.” And research never stopped, focusing on new materials and innovative products in the decades that followed, beginning with the development of synthetic rubber.
