{"id":105833,"date":"2025-11-24T11:19:22","date_gmt":"2025-11-24T10:19:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.fondazionepirelli.org\/?p=105833"},"modified":"2025-11-24T11:35:08","modified_gmt":"2025-11-24T10:35:08","slug":"looking-inside-from-the-very-beginning","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.fondazionepirelli.org\/en\/activities\/looking-inside-from-the-very-beginning\/","title":{"rendered":"\u201cLooking Inside\u201d, From the Very Beginning"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Pirelli\u2019s commitment to <strong>research and innovation<\/strong> began with its founder,<strong> Giovanni Battista<\/strong>, a young engineer freshly graduated from the Istituto Tecnico Superiore di Milano \u2013 the future Politecnico University \u2013 in <strong>1870<\/strong>. Thanks to his initiative, Italy\u2019s first factory for processing elastic rubber opened in 1873 under the technical direction of Aim\u00e9 Goulard, with forty workers and five office staff. Following the advice of his mentor, Professor<strong> Giuseppe Colombo<\/strong> \u2013 the founder of Edison and one of the key figures of Italy\u2019s<strong> industrial modernisation<\/strong> between the mid-nineteenth century and the First World War \u2013 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 <strong>Emanuele Jona and Leopoldo and Luigi Emanueli<\/strong>, who would long lead the Group\u2019s Research and Development department.<\/p>\n<p>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&#8217;s <strong>Scientific and Technical Library<\/strong> 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: \u201cAdess ghe capissaremm on quaicoss: andemm a guardagh denter (&#8220;Now we&#8217;ll understand something, let&#8217;s go and look inside&#8221;). The idea of &#8220;looking inside&#8221; in order &#8220;to understand&#8221; sums up the whole concept of science as a form of research, study, and commitment.<\/p>\n<p>And so it was that, in <strong>1922<\/strong>, photographers were invited to \u201clook inside\u201d the life of the factory. To celebrate the company\u2019s 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&#8217;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 Societ\u00e0 Italiana Pirelli \u201cwith the help of its technical management and its laboratories, has also [\u2026] 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.\u201d And research never stopped, focusing on new materials and innovative products in the decades that followed, beginning with the development of synthetic rubber.<\/p><p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.fondazionepirelli.org\/en\/exhibition\/an-extraordinary-legacy-of-research\/\">Back to main page<\/a><\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Pirelli\u2019s commitment to research and innovation began with its founder, Giovanni Battista, a young engineer freshly graduated from the Istituto Tecnico Superiore di Milano \u2013 the future Politecnico University \u2013 in 1870. Thanks to his initiative, Italy\u2019s first factory for processing elastic rubber opened in 1873 under the technical direction of Aim\u00e9 Goulard, with forty [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":105777,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[71,82],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-105833","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-activities","category-exhibitions"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v25.0 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>\u201cLooking Inside\u201d, From the Very Beginning - Fondazione Pirelli<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.fondazionepirelli.org\/en\/activities\/looking-inside-from-the-very-beginning\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"\u201cLooking Inside\u201d, From the Very Beginning - Fondazione Pirelli\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Pirelli\u2019s commitment to research and innovation began with its founder, Giovanni Battista, a young engineer freshly graduated from the Istituto Tecnico Superiore di Milano \u2013 the future Politecnico University \u2013 in 1870. 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