14th National Geographic Science Festival
In April 2019 Pirelli took part in the 14th National Geographic Festival of Sciences at the Auditorium della Musica in Rome. The presence of the “Long P” at this event, which has always been dedicated to innovation, came in the form of the exhibition Pirelli, A Passion for Rubber: A Long History of Commitment and Innovation, curated by the Pirelli Foundation and proposed within the section of the Festival entitled “Inside Invention. Dentro la creatività italiana”. In other words, the evolution of the tyre, from the first patents in the late nineteenth century, through to the cyber-tyres of today: a story gradually built up on the bedrock of fundamental inventions such as those of the Cinturato in the 1950s and the low-profile tyre in the 1970s.
The main target among the thousands of visitors to the exhibition were students of all types and grades: about 18,000 young people, for some of whom it was the first time they had had a direct, close-up view of the technological content of a tyre – an object that for many is still a mystery – with cross-sections of tyres on show alongside patents, catalogues, advertising posters and photographs from the Pirelli Historical Archive.
