India Rubber World: more than a century of tyre history ...

Vittorio Gregotti designed the Pirelli Headquarters in the Bicocca District of Milan around the old cooling tower. In a corner of this building is a machine that dates back to the beginning of the 1900s, the mixing mill built by Farrell Foundry and Machine Co, an American company specialised in rubber processing equipment. In 1904, when young Alberto Pirelli visited the American company in Ansonnia, Connecticut, he was already aware of the quality of Farrell equipment, having read extensively about it in the monthly magazine India Rubber World, the rubber industry "bible" since 1890. Edited by Henry C. Pearson from New York, the publication arrived every month on Pirelli's desk. It played a role in turning the company into a major multinational corporation because by reading the magazine, the trailblazer was continuously updated on what was going on in the still young rubber industry, both in Italy and around the world. The complete collection of India Rubber World is indexed in the National Library Service and is kept at the Group's Technical-Scientific Library. The collection is on display at the Pirelli Foundation and is practically the only one in existence, comprising issues that cannot be found elsewhere.