History of Technology Volume 32 9781472527240, 9781474210713, 9781472530240

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HISTORY OF TECHNOLOGY

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HISTORY OF TECHNOLOGY

Editor Ian Inkster Professorial Research Associate Centre of Taiwan Studies SOAS, University of London Thornhaugh Street, Russell Square London WC1H 0XG [email protected]

Professor of Global History Department of International Affairs Wenzao Ursuline College of Languages Kaohsiung 80793 Taiwan R.O.C. [email protected]

EDITORIAL BOARD Professor Hans-Joachim Braun Universitat der Bundeswehr Hamburg Holstenhofweg 85 22039 Hamburg Germany Professor R. A. Buchanan School of Social Sciences University of Bath Claverton Down Bath BA 7AY England Professor H. Floris Cohen Raiffeisenlaan 10 3571 TD Utrecht The Netherlands Professor Mark Elvin Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies Australian National University Canberra, ACT 0200 Australia Dr Anna Guagnini Dipartimento di Filosofia Universita di Bologna Via Zamboni 38 40126 Bologna Italy Dr Irfan Habib Department of History Aligarh Muslim University Aligarh (UP) 202001 India

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Dr Richard Hills Standford Cottage 47 Old Road Mottram-in-Longendale Cheshire SKI4 6LW England Dr Graham Hollister-Short Imperial College Sherfield Building London SW7 2AZ England Dr A. G. Keller Department of History University of Leicester University Road Leicester LEI 7RH England Dr Jerry C.-Y. Liu Department of International Affairs Wenzao Ursuline College of Languages 900 Mintsu 1st Road Kaohsiung 807 Taiwan Professor Simon Schaffer Department of History and Philosophy of Science University of Cambridge Free School Lane Cambridge CB2 3RH England

HISTORY OF TECHNOLOGY VOLUME 32, 2014

Edited by Ian Inkster

Special Issue: Italian Technology from the Renaissance to the Twentieth Century Edited by Anna Guagnini and Luca Molà

Bloomsbury Academic An imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc

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Bloomsbury Academic An imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc 50 Bedford Square London WC1B 3DP UK

1385 Broadway New York NY 10018 USA

www.bloomsbury.com BLOOMSBURY and the Diana logo are trademarks of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc First published 2014 © Ian Inkster and the Contributors, 2014 Ian Inkster has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as Editor of this work. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publishers. No responsibility for loss caused to any individual or organization acting on or refraining from action as a result of the material in this publication can be accepted by Bloomsbury or the authors. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. ISBN: HB: 978-1-4725-2724-0 ePDF: 978-1-4725-3024-0 ePub: 978-1-4725-3264-0 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress. Series: History of Technology, volume 32 Typeset by RefineCatch Limited, Bungay, Suffolk

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CONTENTS

EDITORIAL INTRODUCTION Ian Inkster 1.

Introduction Anna Guagnini and Luca Molà

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Part One Early Modern Italian Leadership

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2.

Inventors, Patents and the Market for Innovations in Renaissance Italy Luca Molà

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3.

The Microcosm: Innovation and Technological Transfer in the Habsburg Empire of the Sixteenth Century Cristiano Zanetti

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Diamonds in Early Modern Venice: Technology, Products and International Competition Salvatore Ciriacono

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A Global Supremacy: The Worldwide Hegemony of the Piedmontese Reeling Technologies, 1720s–1830s Roberto Davini

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4.

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Part Two Object Innovation: Ceramics 6.

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Raw Materials, Transmission of Know-how and Ceramic Techniques in Early Modern Italy: A Mediterranean Perspective Marta Caroscio

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Anabaptist Migration and the Diffusion of the Maiolica from Faenza to Central Europe Emese Bálint

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Part Three Modernity: Three Case Studies 8.

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A Bold Leap into Electric Light: The Creation of the Società Italiana Edison, 1880–1886 Anna Guagnini

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CONTENTS

Keeping Abreast with the Technology of Science: The Economic Life of the Physics Laboratory at the University of Padua, 1847–1857 Christian Carletti

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10. Mechanics ‘Made in Italy’: Innovation and Expertise Evolution. A Case Study from the Packaging Industry, 1960–1998 Matteo Serafini

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Part Four Communications

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11. Telecommunications Italian Style: The Shaping of the Constitutive Choices (1850–1914) Simone Fari, Gabriele Balbi and Giuseppe Richeri

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12. Beyond the Myth of the Self-taught Inventor: The Learning Process and Formative Years of Young Guglielmo Marconi Barbara Valotti

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13. Technology Transfer, Economic Strategies and Politics in the Building of the First Italian Submarine Telegraph Andrea Giuntini

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Part Five Lights and Shades: Italian Innovation Across the Centuries

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14. European Steel vs Chinese Cast-iron: From Technological Change to Social and Political Choices (Fourth Century BC to Eighteenth Century AD) Mathieu Arnoux

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15. The Italian National Innovation System: A Long-term Perspective, 1861–2011 Alessandro Nuvolari and Michelangelo Vasta

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THE CONTRIBUTORS

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EDITORIAL INTRODUCTION IAN INKSTER

Organized and edited by Anna Guagnini and Luca Molà, the present volume of History of Technology represents a very novel and timely English-language contribution to the history of Italian technology. With a huge variety of politicians, policy-makers and academics searching for core integrating principles for the new and ever-expanding conception of a European comity of nations, we might claim that mutual recognition of the individuality of nations may combine with courtesy and friendship amongst nations to clarify present dynamics of a region that has been beset with major economic and regulatory problems for some time. This collection brings together, for the first time within the covers of a major journal, new researchbased essays in Italian technological history. As the editors make clear in their introduction, the articles vary widely in time and theme as well as in disciplinary tendencies, ranging from economistic study of recent years to finely nuanced institutional and network interpretations of knowledge evolution, creativity and innovation that extend back to the Renaissance and that refuse to be drawn into simple linear analyses of applications of intellect to problems of production. One of the most interesting features of this collection is the emphasis on movements of knowledge and sites of innovation, transfers of technology and international trading competition in the evolution of a nation’s technological capacities and achievements. It dispels any idea of the untoward or debilitating character of today’s patterns of late development, and the associated claims that recent high growth in China, East and South Asia more generally, in India and Eastern Europe, and now in Brazil, Indonesia and parts of Africa are mere infirm shadows of core-centred globalization, possibly to regress both technologically and culturally in the near future. In fact all nations show technological learning and dependency at times, and only detailed accounting by historians can yield the reasons for patterns, success and failure, and nuances within the winners’ club over time. There is a plethora of research-based findings to show that such early starters as Britain, France, the Netherlands and the United States were greatly indebted to both supply-side factors, such as technology import or knowledge movements, and to demand-side stimulation from foreign competition and demand. The essays emerged from a special conference called for by me but organized by the editors and funded and housed by the European University Institute in Florence, on 8–9 November 2012. I hope that the editors will forgive me for saying that within a very comfortable and generous comity we managed to fight and argue for our cases and positions over a very energetic two days. It is in this as much as the expertise and prior work of the contributors that we can find the reason for the sense of thoroughness and commitment that – in my opinion – surrounds the finished volume. This is not a bad model for the European system itself. vii

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Previous volumes of History of Technology have introduced in English some of the best new work in the history of technology of China and Spain, and further volumes are planned along similar grounds for India and Japan, and hopefully France and Greece. And this pursuit of journal-instigated national collections is part of a more general strategy that has been developed over the last ten years or so, of focusing on special issues, either as an entire volume as in the present case, or as a major part of an entire volume. In recent years such special collections of new research have included the world history of the steam engine (with a focus on analytical comparisons of Europe and China), engineering disasters, professional identity of engineers, standards and standardization (emphasizing the years from the 1880s to the present), the mindful hand (with a focus on Europe in the early modern period), useful and reliable knowledge in early modern Europe, and patents and patent agency. Throughout the stress has been on interdisciplinary perspectives, consideration of case-studies from the earliest days to the present, and on an international scale of coverage whenever appropriate. The advantage of the approach through special issues is that a coherent volume can be constructed in advance, new issues or themes can be opened up at journal level (e.g., the mindful hand or global history of technology or patent agency) and work that might be scattered in diverse journals can be seen as a whole and as knowledge rather than mere information. But the approach relies on the goodwill and hard work of contributors and – especially – of issue editors, who are often in effect volume editors. I would like to take this opportunity to fully thank all the editors and organizers of past volumes or part-volumes of special issues. Several have developed from conference sessions or even entire conferences and workshops, and this process has involved prior organization and then post-conference inspiring, nudging and editing, and I am fully aware of the work that has been involved and the goodwill that has always been shown towards myself and the publishers. In one case that has been brought to my attention, however, it is clear that due thanks were not given sufficiently and publicly. Volume 31 of 2012 contained two special issues, one of which, ‘Conceptualising the Production and Diffusion of Useful and Reliable Knowledge in Early Modern Europe’, was edited by Professor Karel Davids of Afdeling Geschiedenis VU University, Amsterdam, and contained five excellent studies of useful knowledge, trading zones, architectural practice, circulation of knowledge and gatekeeping. We failed to acknowledge that one of our contributors, Dr. Simona Valeriani, then research officer of the Useful and Reliable Knowledge – East and West (URKEW) project directed by Patrick O’Brien at the LSE and funded by the ERC under the European Union’s 7th Framework Programme (grant agreement 2303260), was the principal organizer and editor of papers for the conference of the same title held at the LSE in January 2011, from which three of the contributions directly developed, and that she had been important to the subsequent editorial work that led to the History of Technology collection. I apologize to Dr. Valeriani for this entirely unintended slight to her valuable contribution as well as to Patrick O’Brien for somehow not mentioning the importance of the URKEW project nor his generosity in agreeing to publish the papers of the 2011 conference as a special issue. This oversight was entirely my own responsibility.

Introduction ANNA GUAGNINI University of Bologna LUCA MOLÀ European University Institute, Florence

This volume is the result of a conference, ‘The Italian Technology in a European and Global Context, 15th–20th Centuries’, organized by Anna Guagnini and Luca Molà at the European University Institute in Florence, on 8–9 November 2012. The history of technology in Italy has a long-standing tradition. In the past, important contributions have been made by scholars with an established international reputation, such as Carlo Maria Cipolla and Carlo Poni, both economic historians and both with a primary (albeit not exclusive) interest in the pre-industrial period.1 Indeed, Poni has also, for many years, been a member of the Editorial Board of History of Technology. Other ‘schools’ concerned with the history of Italian technology emerged thanks to the studies carried out by Paolo Galluzzi on Renaissance engineers2 and those by Carlo Maccagni, who taught the history of technology at the University of Genoa from 1970 to 1985. In an attempt to provide a focus for the development of the discipline, Maccagni founded a Centro di Studi sulla Storia della Tecnica as early as 1971, which produced relevant works for almost three decades, and this tradition continues to the present day. A survey of the publications on the history of technology in Italy would be beyond the scope of this short introduction. Some aspects of the field, however, emerge clearly. Not unlike what happens in other countries, the contributions come from scholars who are approaching the study of technology from a variety of disciplinary perspectives, most notably economic history, the history of science and more recently sociology. A second aspect, which is peculiar of Southern European regions, is that much of what is being done is published in the language of the country of origin, and therefore does not circulate easily abroad. It must be said that important contributions are now coming from young scholars who, by choice or necessity (more often because of the latter), are pursuing their research in other countries, so that their work tends to be more visible in the international forum. The recent measures adopted by Italian universities in terms of assessment are also strongly encouraging authors to publish in foreign languages, 1

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mostly in English. We abstain from commenting on the value and effects of such measures; however we cannot but welcome the possibility that a previously little known body of scholarship might circulate and be known more widely, and interact effectively with the substantial and stimulating literature emanating from the work of foreign researchers engaged in the study of Italian technology. The present collection does not by any means intend to be representative of the spectrum of Italian scholarship. More modestly, the aim of the volume is to provide a sample of current research on the history of Italian technology in the long run, from the early Middle Ages to the twentieth century, and in a broad range of themes. The contributions focus on many aspects of Italian creativity in a local and transnational dimension, tracing the trajectory from primacy to relative decline and highlighting the interconnections and cross-fertilization with other European regions, Asia and the Americas. The essays are arranged in chronologically ordered thematic sections, with a first part focusing on the early modern period, a second part discussing the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and a final one looking at Italian technological innovation in the longue durée. The opening section on the early modern Italian leadership includes an essay by Luca Molà on the creation of the first patent system and the recognition of intellectual property rights in Italy during the Renaissance, and how this new legal mechanism allowed inventors to exploit and market their findings; Cristiano Zanetti examines the transfer of mechanical techniques in clock making to Germany in the sixteenth century, and the pivotal role played by the Italian engineer Janello Torriani; Salvatore Ciriacono proposes a study of the evolution of diamondcutting techniques between Venice and the Netherlands in the seventeenth century, seen in the context of international long-distance trade; finally, Roberto Davini explores the diffusion of Italian silk technology to India and North America in the eighteenth century, highlighting the problems of transferring complex technological systems across the globe. The second section is dedicated to early modern object innovation through the case study of ceramics. Marta Caroscio offers a wide-ranging overview of the transmission of know-how and techniques, analysing the major features that marked the passage between the late Middle Ages and the early modern period in pottery making in Italy, with reference to the Western Mediterranean context; Emese Bálint discusses the circulation of experts and know-how for the production of new types of ceramics from the Middle East to Italy and Eastern Europe between the Middle Ages and the early modern period. A third section looks at ‘modernity’ through three particular examples. The first essay is set in Lombardy, after the unification. The interplay of different agendas that resulted in the creation of the Italian Edison Company, and the launching of one of the first commercial central power stations in Europe, is considered by Anna Guagnini. The second essay offers a detailed analysis of the cost for the equipment of the University of Padua’s physics laboratory in the mid-nineteenth century. Christian Carletti argues that the Austrian Government, which at the time controlled Lombardy and Veneto in northern Italy, was neither hostile nor unsupportive of science as it is often alleged. If that is the case, then the lack of support for scientific teaching and research can hardly be considered as one of the factors that contributed to the economic and industrial backwardness of

INTRODUCTION

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those regions. Moving on to a very recent period, Matteo Serafini discusses the approach to technological innovation of one of the most dynamic sectors of the Italian instrumental mechanics, i.e. the packaging industry. His essay deals in particular with the case of G.D S.p.A., a Bolognese company specializing in the production of cigarette-packing machinery, and the successful approach to technological innovation that was developed by its technical personnel in the period 1960–1998. The fourth section on communication opens with a discussion by Simone Fari, Gabriele Balbi and Giuseppe Richeri on the distinctive characteristics of the Italian telecommunications system. Starting with a critical survey of the existing (but rather limited) historical analyses on this subject, they focus on the monopolistic model that prevailed in Italy, and on the contrast between the delay in the development of the new technology on the one hand, and on the high quality of both its technical experts and managers on the other. Canonical accounts of how young Guglielmo Marconi conceived his system of wireless telegraphy tends to follow a well-worn narrative. Barbara Valotti examines the early stages in the career of the young inventor, drawing on little known original documents; she explores his social and cultural milieu, the motivations that led him to become an inventor and an entrepreneur, and the process by which he acquired remarkable experimental and practical skills in the period before his departure to Britain. The section ends with a study of the peculiar role of Italy in the development of international submarine telegraphic cables. Andrea Giuntini argues that because of its geographical position, the peninsula was regarded as a natural bridge between Europe and Africa by countries with colonial interests such as Britain and France. As a result, in the period 1850–1870 Italy was at the core of a complex and contentious interplay of technical, political and economic problems. Some lights and shades of Italian technology across the centuries, from the Middle Ages to the present, are offered in the final section. Mathieu Arnoux examines the development of metallurgy in Italy and Europe from the fourth to the eighteenth centuries, demonstrating that European cast-iron – though developed only 1,500 years later – was not borrowed from China, but followed a different and independent technological path. Drawing on a substantial body of quantitative research and on a variety of indicators, Alessandro Nuvolari and Michelangelo Vasta engage in an assessment of the relationship between scientific and technological activities and economic growth in Italy during a period that spans from the unification of the country to the present. Does the Italian case demonstrate that success can be achieved without significant efforts in R&D activities? Their argument has clearly pessimistic undertones with regard to the capacity to benefit from the technosciences: the meal reached the table, but it was not a free one insofar as other factors were at play that replaced the role of science and technology as the engine of economic growth. Finally, we thank the Editor of History of Technology, Ian Inkster, for having encouraged us to organize this collection of essays; each and all of the authors benefited greatly from his typically generous and stimulating comments. We are also grateful to all the participants to the conference for the most valuable comments that were offered during the discussion of the papers.

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NOTES 1. We refer in particular to Carlo Cipolla, Guns, Sails, and Empires: Technological Innovation and the Early Phases of European Expansion, 1400–1700 (New York: Minerva Press, 1965); and Clocks and Culture, 1300–1700 (London: Collins, 1967). Carlo Poni’s path-breaking work publications of the history of the silk industry (several of them originally in English) are now collected in the volume La seta in Italia. Una Grande Industria prima della Rivoluzione Industriale (Bologna: Il Mulino, 2009). 2. Paolo Galluzzi, Ingegneri del Rinascimento. Da Brunelleschi a Leonardo da Vinci (Florence: Giunti Editore, 1996).

PART ONE

Early Modern Italian Leadership

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Inventors, Patents and the Market for Innovations in Renaissance Italy LUCA MOLÀ European University Institute, Florence

Abstract The law on intellectual property rights that the government of Venice issued in 1474 is still today considered the ancestor of the current patent system. By recognizing that inventors and innovators were entitled to special privileges that would protect their technical discoveries, the Venetian government set a standard for granting monopoly rights for new machines, devices and goods that was soon followed by most European states. This essay concentrates on the variety of technical solutions proposed and patented in Renaissance Italy, on the marketing and economic exploitation of the inventions that received a state privilege, and on the creation of an intellectual climate favourable to innovation. All these elements are then exemplifed through a case study focused on an international company involved in the recycling of industrial waste. It is claimed that during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries the conception of technical innovation changed radically, becoming something on which to invest time and resources in a synergy that involved both public institutions and private individuals. If judged from the point of view of technological development, therefore, Renaissance Italy maintains its traditional label as a laboratory of modernity.

THE PRE-HISTORY OF PATENTS The creation and diffusion of patents for inventions was one of the several legacies that the Renaissance left to the modern world. After some sporadic privileges granted by the Venetian and Florentine governments since the early decades of the fifteenth century,1 the first general regulation of patents and intellectual property rights recorded in history was issued in Venice in 1474. With that law the Venetian Senate 7

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established that anybody could present an invention to a state office and request a patent, which would grant him monopoly rights on the exploitation of the innovation for ten years, guaranteeing him legal protection from plagiarists. One of the main purposes of the law was, in fact, that of incentivating skilled and ingenious men to bring forward new devices, technical procedures or objects without being worried that others could steal the fruits of their ingenuity, implicitly giving them the freedom to transfer the rights to their heirs or sell them on the market. Moreover, the legislative text aimed at protecting both totally new findings and those already known in other states but never applied in the Venetian territory, thus favouring the diffusion of technologies and the circulation of technicians.2 Among the events that probably encouraged the development in Venice of a juridical practice granting exclusive monopoly rights for new technical discoveries were the activities of the Frenchman Antonio Marini, a remarkable character with the peculiar traits of an adventurer. Marini arrived in Venice, together with a fellow countryman, in the autumn of 1440, with the goal of finding financial support for his dubious research on the transformation of base and noble metals into gold. One of his patrons, the Florentine merchant-banker Rinieri Davanzati, provided him with a good amount of silver and set up for him a workshop in his Venetian house ‘believing that he was a great and very learned master in the art and science of alchemy, as he himself explicitly and publicly said’. Unfortunately for Davanzati, his hopes of easy gains turned quickly into disappointment – causing him, as he stated, deep ‘melancholy and sorrow’ – as soon as he realized that Marini, far from dedicating himself conscientiously to experimentation had instead substituted the precious metal with white lead, thus repeating the frauds he had already perpetrated in Padua during the previous years against other naive investors. It is not surprising, therefore, to find Marini in jail in 1441. He was soon able, however, to recover some credibility, since in 1444 the Venetian Senate granted him a monopoly privilege for the construction of twenty-four grain mills of a new type. The documentation does not specify what was the intended mechanism for moving the machines, which is defined simply as ‘without water’ (sine aqua). At any rate, the warm invitation that the Marques Lionello d’Este made to Marini in 1445, in which he was defined as ‘industrious man’ with an expertise ‘in every kind of architectures and other ingenious machines’ (in omni genere architecture et aliorum ingeniosorum edificiorum), conceding him a forty-year patent for building mills in the territory and castles under the jurisdiction of Ferrara, specified that the Frenchman’s specialty consisted in an ‘engine with perpetually moving wheels’ (ingenium circa rotas perpetue volubilitatis). We are then confronted with one of the most enduring and recurrent dreams in the history of technology, perpetual motion, which was not too different from the alchemical fantasies that Marini had advertised in the past. This does not look like a promising start for the man that a few years later, on the contrary, will become one of the most esteemed itinerant technicians in Europe. In 1446 he received a second Venetian patent for twenty years, this time for a dredging machine successfully experimented in front of public authorities, which could excavate efficiently the bottom of the city’s canals without first draining them. More inventions were protected by the government later on, to the point that in March 1456 the Senate – praising him as a man of many talents who had dedicated himself

INVENTORS, PATENTS AND THE MARKET FOR INNOVATIONS

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totally to finding ingenious discoveries – granted him monopoly rights for operating his several machines and inventions in all the dominions of Venice. Among Marini’s new artefacts the most famous one was the cart of Lizzafusina, a complex and largescale mechanism that allowed transport boats to pass from the main water route coming from the north (the Brenta river) into the Venetian lagoon, thus greatly facilitating fluvial navigation. The cart, with some modifications, remained in service for a century and a half, being mentioned in Montaigne’s diary of his Italian travels in the late sixteenth century and drawn by the engineer Vittorio Zonca for his Novo teatro di machine et edificii that was published in the early seventeenth century. Indeed, the machine had an elevated economic value: in 1460, when rumours about the death of Marini – who had been away for four years – spread around Venice, making his patent void, the Venetian state confiscated the cart and lent it to private investors for the notable yearly sum of 300 ducats. As it turned out a few years later, the news on Marini circulating in Venice proved altogether wrong. After leaving the lagoon he had headed to central Europe in order to widen the reach of his technological enterprises. In April 1456, in Graz, he obtained a patent from Emperor Frederich III of Habsburg for the whole territory of Styria, protecting a group of inventions that included a furnace for making bricks and mortar, and the construction of mills and aqueducts. By November of that year he was in Salzburg, where the local Archbishop gave him another patent for the same technologies and also for new methods of brewing, salt refining and the embankment of rivers. In the same city, in 1457, he licensed a jeweller for the use of his patented furnace in exchange for half its profits, while exploiting personally this invention in Vienna in several kilns, each producing around 3,000–4,000 bricks every day. Later on Marini moved to Prague, probably to pursue his technical business, and there he entered the court of Georg Podyebrad, king of Bohemia, becoming one of his closer advisors. After writing several treatises of economic policy – on money, taxation, mining and trade – for this monarch, he even devised a bold project of crusade against the Turks. Entrusted with the task of presenting the project to several Christian powers, in 1463 he was back in Venice, where he recovered his rights on the cart of Lizzafusina and then, magnanimously, ceded them to the government in exchange of an annual pension of 150 ducats.3 The story of Antonio Marini shows how the concession of patents for inventions was already in use outside Italy soon after the middle of the fifteenth century. We might conclude that he was instrumental in the diffusion of this practice, transferring a juridical mechanism from which he had been profiting for some time in Venice and other parts of Italy. It is also true, however, that some historians trace the origins of patents to the fourteenth- and fifteenth-century European mining right, and especially to the agreements between states and private individuals for prospecting and exploiting specific geographical areas.4 Moreover, during the fifteenth century the pressing technical problems caused by the necessity of lifting the ore and pumping out the water from ever deeper deposits in the mines of Poland, Silesia, Bohemia, Moravia, Hungary and Saxony, incentivated technical solutions that would improve the efficiency of machines for drainage and for the transmission of energy from the surface to the tunnels. The invention, construction and exploitation of these machines stimulated the request of privileges from public authorities that have many

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similarities with the Italian patents, and stimulated entrepreneurial solutions that will become common in sixteenth-century Italy – such as, for instance, the partnerships between inventors and businessmen.5 It is therefore difficult to establish with absolute certainty if primacy in the development of patents belongs to Venice or to any area of central and eastern Europe, since probably there was an exchange of know-how and experiences open in both directions. As a matter of fact, since the thirteenth century Venice had been the seat of a flourishing colony of German, Austrian, Hungarian and Polish merchants who lived and traded in the Fondaco dei Tedeschi, an imposing building situated right in the heart of the city, and who consequently attracted technicians coming from their regions of origin with the hope of financial support. It was not by chance, then, that the first privilege for an invention granted by the Venetian government in 1323 – a sort of protopatent – went to the German master Joannes, a ‘mill engineer’, and that the most famous patent of the fifteenth century was obtained by Johann of Spyre in 1469 for printing, a technology that with its quick and enormous success was certainly decisive for the issuing of the general law on patents in 1474.6

THE ESTABLISHMENT OF AN INTERNATIONAL PATENT SYSTEM From the late fifteenth century onward, Venice became the main European centre for the research of new patentable technology, and its councils granted hundreds of privileges during the sixteenth century. Its example was soon followed by other Italian7 and German8 states, the Spanish Monarchy – since the 1520s also for its American colonies9 – and then most other countries of the European continent.10 After the middle of the sixteenth century an international patent system emerged in Europe. The diffusion of technological privileges granted by governments and princes allowed private individuals to obtain patents in several states for a single invention, permitting them to protect their findings over a vast geographical area with the aim of improving the profitability of their enterprises. The operation set up by Bernardo Buontalenti, the architect of the Grand Dukes of Tuscany, is emblematic in this respect. In 1578 he decided to request a patent for three machines he had invented to 42 different states, which included the Emperor, the Pope, the monarchs of France, England, Spain, Portugal and Poland, the archdukes Charles and Ferdinand of Habsburg, the Republics of Venice, Genoa, Lucca and Ragusa, several principalities in Italy (Savoy, Mantua, Ferrara, Parma, Florence, Piombino, Urbino) and Germany (Bavaria, Saxony, Palatinate, Brandenburg, Wurttemberg, Braunschweig-Luneburg, Julich and Cleves, Wurzburg, Mainz, Trier, Cologne, Salzburg), some imperial cities (Augsburg, Nuremberg, Ulm, Strasbourg), the Spanish viceroyalties in Italy (Milan, Naples, Sicily), the duke of Lorraine, the twelve Swiss Cantons and the Great Master of the Knights of Malta.11 The procedure followed to obtain a patent was more or less similar in the various European states. The starting point was invariably a written petition that the inventor presented to a prince or a state council, in which he summarily described the invention, glorified its advantages in both the public and private spheres, and finally requested a patent specifying the number of years during which he wanted a

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monopoly and the penalty that plagiarists should pay in case of infringement. Frequently the petition was then passed on to more specialized offices and institutions with the request for an opinion, and at this stage the inventor could decide, or might be requested, to produce a memorandum, a drawing or even a small model or sample of the innovation in order to support his claims and influence the governmental decision. The very few graphic representations that have survived from the sixteenth century – even though the documents of some cities mention the existence of archival series in which the drawings attached to the petitions were kept, nowadays unfortunately lost – are extremely schematic, in most cases just sketches, and it is difficult to imagine how the feasibility of an invention could be judged on that basis. Models must have had a greater evocative power, but they were submitted primarily when the innovation consisted of a medium or large size machine, which state officials usually praised for its ingenuity. Indeed, the small format of the models permitted anyway to reproduce the basic mechanisms of the contrivance, showing its novelty and efficiency. For this reason in Venice they were kept and catalogued in a separate room with a paper note attached reporting the name of their creator and the date of their presentation, so that in the future they could be compared with the claims of other individuals interested in patenting the same or a similar invention.12 Sooner or later, however, it was necessary to stage a demonstration that could either testify about the possible outcomes of the discovery or prove that it had been put in operation successfully. The testimonies who judged on the experiment could be state officers, but as frequently it was deemed advantagious to summon experts of the craft related to the innovation, hoping that they would approve it, support its candidacy for a privilege and subsequently, knowing its merits, buy it once it had been patented. Guild officials were in many cases involved in these demonstrations, at times because governments asked for their opinion, but also on their own initiative or by request of the inventors themselves.13 Members of corporative mercantile associations rarely gave a negative judgement on innovations, and usually this happened mainly when they feared a threath for the international prestige of local luxury productions. In 1586, for instance, Alamanno di Neri Orlandi came back to Florence after years of work abroad, where he had learnt the secret for producing false gold and silver thread, a material for which he requested a patent. With these low quality materials, imported from Bologna since their manufacturing was severely forbidden in the Florentine state, the nuns of Florence’s convents composed imitation of natural flowers with which they made garlands. According to the Officials of the Silk Guild, however, if fake gold and silver could be freely produced in Florence there would be cause for suspicion among foreign merchants, who might start thinking that unscrupulous entrepreneurs would use them in the weaving of high-quality silk cloth, thus undermining the good reputation of one of the flagship products of the Florentine industry.14 In this instance the patent was refused, but in most other cases guilds approved of new inventions and even praised them in front of the government. For their members the most important issue was that the patent contained a clause that allowed the use of traditional working instruments and methods. As the Apothecaries’ guild of Florence underlined in judging the merits of a paper mill for which some Genoese entrepreneurs had requested a patent

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in 1588, the invention would certainly be useful ‘since these entrepreneurs are happy that everybody else remains free of using it or not, and in this way no monopoly is created and there is no damage for the population, benefiting many and damnifying none’.15 Even the rhetoric with which patents were requested or granted changed little from state to state, recalling a tradition that by the late sixteenth century had consolidated itself. The technicians who presented a petition to the Venetian government often reminded that the city councils had always ‘favoured and helped all those who, straining their intellect and ingenuity, had been able to create new instruments and devices that were convenient and useful for the people willing to use them, granting them a special privilege so that they alone could exploit their inventions’.16 Governments mentioned specular motivations in the opening lines of patents. The Grand Dukes of Tuscany, for instance, underlined that they assented to grant a privilege ‘because, for the benefit and utility of our subjects, we want to favour and help the useful inventions newly found by virtuous and ingenious men, and in order that those things that could be profitable for the common weal and for private individuals should be known and perfected’.17

PATENTED TECHNOLOGY The variety of inventions for which a patent was requested and obtained in Italy during the sixteenth century is kaleidoscopic, practically covering all the craft and industrial sectors of the age. Innovations, however, could be summarily divided into three main categories: those of technical procedures (such as, for instance, chemical and dyeing recipes), of large and small machines and working implements (mills, cauldrons and vats, hydraulic pumps, etc.), and of objects and consumer products (textiles, glass, ceramics and many others). Of course, frequently a patent involved innovations in more than one of these categories, since a new working procedure or tool could bring to the creation of a good that had not been produced before, or, conversely, an innovative product might require the employment of technical instruments and methods never adopted in the past. The textile industry, as might be expected, was among the most active sectors of patented innovation, with the appearance of a wide range of new goods, some of which imitated the luxury products of international trade but in a cheaper version.18 Less predictable was the launch on the market of antirust liquids,19 starch for sizing linen fabrics,20 crimson and green varnishes for painting lutes,21 women’s fans made with parchment, wood and ivory or illuminated in a Spanish style,22 table games that – according to their inventors – were even more exciting than the recently published gioco dell’Oca (goose game),23 wooden boxes for apothecaries,24 hair brushes of various size,25 musical instruments,26 carriages27 and many other objects and findings. At times legal protection was asked for machines without any practical use, mechanical curiosities whose principal aim was probably that of surprising and entertaining. A true apotheosis of automation and an ambitious celebration of human ingenuity, the great wooden machine that Girolamo Soracroda devised and patented in Venice in 1567 showed the operation of no less than 98 ‘arts’, all put in motion by a single – presumably hydraulic – wheel, which also served to supply two

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fountains with water.28 More prosaic and utilitarian, on the contrary, was the mincer machinery that could produce any type of sausage ‘and every other things that are contained in bowls’ for the salami-maker craft, with a notable saving in manpower and a semi-finished product of greater fluidity.29 Several patents were granted in Italy for food processing and products such as pasta, a testimony of the growing degree of refinement in gastronomical practices and the diffusion throughout the peninsula of some common dishes. In 1586 Giovanni dall’Aglio obtained a patent in Bologna for the preparation of fresh noodles with specialized machines and technicians, following the methods used in Venice, Rome and Naples.30 Venice itself issued a privilege in 1587 for making, selling or licensing the production of very thin hand-made lasagne without any tools and macaroni Apulian style produced with a new invention, and another privilege in 1588 for various types of noodles, macaroni and ravioli without holes, made in the Milanese and not the Apulian style, ‘of a different shape from those that are commonly made in this city’ – as the applicant remarked.31 In 1602 a device for the making of spaghetti, lasagne and macaroni was patented in Vicenza, where the penury of those goods, usually imported from Apulia, had caused a steep rise in their price.32 Even more remarkably, in 1592 the Venetian government gave its official protection to new types of meat and fish pies, provided that the two partners who obtained the privilege did not challenge the traditional production of salty pastries made at home or by inn-keepers and confectioners.33 Without any problem of conflicting with already established productions was the barley and spelt soup made with shelled cereals patented in Florence in the late sixteenth century, since that kind of food, according to the applicant, was not yet in use in Tuscany.34 Indeed, the machines that peeled and ground cereals or legumes such as wheat, barley, millet, spelt, chickpeas or broadbeans were equally unknown in that region. They had been developed in Emilia and Lombardy, and were introduced in Tuscany by the Bolognese Giovan Battista Bertoncelli. The machine that this humble entrepreneur patented in Florence in 1572 operated under his direction for over a decade, being particularly used by the poor and sick people in hospitals, who could cook cheaper and more digestible soups and pies with it.35 Other inventors tried instead to improve the conservation of grains or fish in order to avoid waste, but unfortunately we know very little about the methods they wanted to employ in order to achieve that goal. In the food sector there were also several attempts at making new types of bread, mixing traditional flours with other ingredients that had never been used before in bread-making. Numerous recipes were experimented in the last three decades of the sixteenth century, when famines in Italy and the whole Mediterranean basin created the need to find substitutes for the ever costlier cereals produced locally or imported from northern Europe. Among all these recipes, the one that a partnership of Genoese businessmen headed by Taddeo Spinola patented in Venice made a sensation, promising an increase of 20 per cent in the production of bread by mixing rice and lupin flour with grain flour. The partnership advertised the modified product through the operations of a famed physician, who, though admitting that the colour of the newly devised bread was not too appealing, guaranteed its quality and healthiness in front of the local

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College of Medicine.36 News of the discovery of this food spread quickly, to the point that just a few days after the concession of the patent a Florentine living in Venice wrote to prince Francesco de’ Medici claiming he had tried it and found it tasty, and offering to steal the recipe and send it to Tuscany.37 These mixtures, however, did not always prove a success. The partners of a company who had gotten hold of a recipe never experimented before discovered this at their expense; they put on sale in several centres of the Veneto and Lombardy such a noxious kind of bread that in some cases they had to flee – as happened in Bergamo, for instance – in order to escape from being lynched by the mob.38 Far less dangerous were the enterprises that aimed at saving organic fuel for cooking bread and other food. The progressive deforestation of Europe during the sixteenth century had caused an alarming rise in the price of firewood,39 which brought up the costs of food processing, driving several inventors to study new solutions for creating stoves and ovens that would operate with a lower amount of fuel. Particularly interesting in this respect was the portable and multipurpose kitchen invented at the beginning of the seventeenth century by the Dominican friar Gherardo of Flanders, who belonged to the Florentine convent of St. Mark. The versatility of this implement permitted the simultaneous cooking of any variety of food, from pastries to fried food, with a remarkable number of pots and pans of every sort and dimension, and it incorporated automatic spits for roasting – probably actioned by channelled steam – and a boiler that supplied hot water for washing the dishes at the end of the meal. The friar’s invention, promoted by a nobleman who had received a power of attorney from all the brothers of St. Mark (co-interested in the enterprise), got a sceptical evaluation from the Granduke’s Master of the House when he was requested to appraise it personally, but nevertheless it obtained a regular patent. Indeed, according to the sworn testimony that several abbesses of the city’s monasteries gave to the Florentine government, the new instrument guaranteed a saving of fuel of over 50 per cent and therefore had substituted the more traditional kitchens that until then had been employed in religious institutions. Moreover, friar Gherardo’s kitchen had proved valuable also for the nuns’ laundry, cutting the costs of washing linen and clothing, an operation that required large amounts of fuel for the production of hot water.40 Firewood, however, found employment in a wide range of operations. Besides the obvious use for heating, it was in large degree reserved for industrial processing. As mentioned in numerous patents, the new types of furnaces, kilns, ovens and cauldrons could save fuel in a long list of crafts: metallurgy, brick making, glass and soap making, dyeing, woollen-cloth purging, leather tanning, sugar refining, salt and saltpetre production, and several other chemical transformations. For instance, Orazio Barbieri, a Sienese physician living in Mantua, had discovered a cauldron with a high standard of performance. In 1585, as a testimony for the validity of a patent that Barbieri had obtained in Florence the year before, Ferdinando de’ Medici – at the time still a cardinal – wrote to his brother Francesco I, the Grand Duke of Tuscany, that the invention had recently been patented also in Rome after a public experiment conducted at the Campidoglio. In that occasion the huge vessel employed, which had been expressly commissioned in Brescia from highly skilled metal craftsmen for the large sum of 300 scudi, demonstrated that it could refine

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almost 3,000 pounds of salt in two days with considerable energy savings, far surpassing the common lead cauldrons usually employed in Rome.41 Lacking the rich deposits of coal and peat that existed in England and the Dutch Republic, some Italian technicians interested in developing new sources of energy tried to exploit alternative materials, for example recycling the waste products of some local industries. The most interesting case involved Maggino Gabrielli, a Jew who had been active in the technological scene of Venice already at a young age. Around 1590 Maggino moved to Tuscany, starting a multifarious industrial activity, which consisted in a network of partnerships for the manufacture of silk fabrics, woollen cloth, gold thread and glass, with workshops in Florence, Pisa and Leghorn.42 In the meantime he developed new productive enterprises in the district of Prato, at San Niccolò di Calenzano. There he bought a paper mill and a farm, where he installed an artisan with the task of supervising the production of paper and starting rearing silkworms with methods that he had previously patented.43 His projects connected with inventions continued in 1593, when he obtained a patent from the Florentine government concerning a press for producing linen oil, to be made with seeds sent to him from some cousins who bought them wholesale on the market of Alexandria in Egypt.44 The machinery that was installed at Calenzano must be put in relation with two other inventions that in the past few years had been performing well, and which Maggino had been able to get his hands on recently. Indeed, just a few days after receiving the patent for the linen-oil press the Jewish entrepreneur signed a partnership contract with an artisan from Spoleto – a town in Umbria – who since 1591 had patented an oil press that could increment production by 5 per cent and a kiln for making mortar and bricks that used olive pomace as fuel, thereby recycling the by-products of the oil press.45 Until then the artisan centred his patented activities in Leghorn, but after signing the contract with Maggino he agreed to build his inventions in Calenzano, and moved there to control their functioning.46 The production of building material thanks to a new source of energy was favoured afterwards by the monopoly on the trade of olive pumace that the partners obtained in all the territories of the Grand Duchy, adding itself to the productions of olive and linen oil, silk and paper that transformed the Calenzano farm into a veritable centre of technological experimentation.47

AFTER THE PATENT Some testimonies regarding the degree of success of patented inventions were less than optimistic. When proposing an improvement in the mechanisms of mills, the inventors themselves reminded governments of the many failures of their colleagues in the past, both because the operating costs had proved far higher than the savings promised in the petitions, and because, most of all, the passage from the small-scale model – on which they had conducted the first experiments – to the full-size mill revealed a series of structural and technical limitations that became even worse with the continuous use of the machine. In 1552, for example, the Senate of Venice had trustfully granted a patent to the Bergamask Bernardo de Grigis for a dry mill (that is, without the use of hydraulic energy) to be built in the city, praising his ‘ingenious

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inventions’.48 Twenty years later, however, the Milanese Ambrogio Bizzozero quoted precisely de Grigis’ example to show how the promises of technological progress went up frequently in smoke, in this instance due to the strong attritions that had quickly worn out the mechanisms of the mill.49 It is clear, therefore, that inventors recorded several defeats in putting into practice what they had originally promised. Ample proof has remained, however, of efficient machines and technical procedures that remained in operation for a long time, even for several generations. The two dredging machines devised and built by the same Bernardo de Grigis around 1545 and patented in Venice in 1558 were employed regularly in the city’s canals and in various parts of the lagoon on commission by public authorities, supported by a small fleet of more than 30 transport boats with the task of disposing of the resulting sludge, and frequently repaired thanks to government loans. Once Bernardo died, the ownership of the machines and the patent passed to his descendants: in 1568 it was in the hands of Antonio de Grigis, and between 1577 and 1586 in those of a partnership headed by Angela de Grigis, who used part of the monthly profits to supplement the dowry of her daughter.50 At times printed advertisment helped diffuse information about technical innovation among the general public. The most interesting example regards Taddeo Cavallini, the inventor of a machine for planting seeds that was patented in Bologna in 1580.51 A few years after the grant Cavallini visited some Italian capitals to widen the knowledge of his discovery, and most of all to contrast the operations of his fellow citizen Ludovico Fieno, who had patented an identical machine in the Republic of Venice, perhaps stealing and copying its design.52 In order to give more credibility to his claims, Cavallini had three advertising broadsheets printed, for presenting them to the governments from which he wanted to receive a grant and for distributing them to the potential buyers of the device at markets and fairs. The first leaflet contained the text of the proclamation issued by the Bolognese government in 1586 that confirmed his patent, with the threat of a 300 gold scudi penalty for those who dared copy and use the planting machine. The second leaflet had the technical report on the instrument written by five experts appointed by the Reggimento of Bologna, who had not only considered its structure but also its concrete efficacy once put into operation, praising it. Even more interesting is the last flyer, in which there were the sworn declarations of some Bolognese landowners who had agreed to try the new machine in their estates. The experiment had involved planting in adjoining fields the same quantity and quality of wheat both with traditional methods and with Cavallini’s invention, and checking which of the two systems was more profitable at harvest time. As one would expect, considering the scope of the testimonies, results were excellent: the planting machine supposedly allowed a saving of seeds ranging from 25 to 74 per cent. The printed advertisment ended mentioning the price of the invention, equal to 7 gold scudi (that later went up to 8 scudi due to expensive improvements made), its expected life-span of no less than 25 years, and finally alerted future buyers of its loss of efficiency if it was used in low-quality or badly kept fields.53 An alternative method to disseminate information about an invention consisted in publishing – either when a patent was obtained or soon afterwards – a treatise or a how-to-do manual with the description and illustrations of the innovation. The

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mathematician Niccolò Tartaglia published his Travagliata inventione in 1551, only a few months after the Venetian government granted him a privilege for his method to raise sunken ships based on the principle of Archimedes.54 In 1567 another two books of this kind were printed: the Tre discorsi sopra il modo d’alzar acque da luoghi bassi of Giuseppe Ceredi, the court physician of the dukes of Parma and Piacenza, and the Ricordo di agricoltura of the agronomist Camillo Tarello from Brescia. Both treatises were tied to patents issued by the Republic of Venice in 1566: the first one allowed Ceredi to exploit three machines he had invented, the second guaranteed Tarello a profit on each cereal crop obtained with his method.55 Of 1588 are the Dialoghi . . . sopra l’utili sue inventioni circa la seta by Maggino Gabrielli, published in Rome in order to advertise a new system for silkworm rearing patented in several Italian and European states, and conceived as a proper instruction manual that should have been distributed together with his novel instruments for sericulture.56 And at the end of the century, in 1598, came out a booklet written by Attilio Parisio, a jurist from Vicenza, in which the functioning of a new type of water clock – the fruit of fourteen years of study and experimentation, presented to Clement VIII in Rome and patented in Venice and Florence – was described, with at the end a series of occasional sonnets of questionable poetic quality that praised the genius of the inventor and argued against his detractors.57 Even though many patents were issued in the name of single individuals, we know that in most cases a partnership was at work behind the scenes. The inventor was only one element of these companies, at times not even the most important one, and each partner might have different roles and tasks. A frequent occurrence saw the association of a technician and a businessman, who joined their skills so as to guarantee not only the ideation of patentable innovations, but also the capital that was necessary for the development and completion of the invention and for its marketing once the patent had been obtained. Finding a financial backer, however, would not always be enough. When a partnership for the exploitation of an invention was established before obtaining a patent – a common occurrence – there was the need of involving in it a person who, thanks to his political connections, could favour the grant or at least speed up its approval. A partner acting as a ‘patent agent’ would be even more useful when a company aimed at expanding its operations in several states in the Italian peninsula and the European continent. In this case, operating in foreign countries and in a little known environment, it was necessary to rely on an expert of international diplomacy and bureaucracy, someone who knew how to act with court secretaries and city councils – normally, therefore, a member of the aristocracy. At times the partnerships for inventions included artisans in their ranks, especially carpenters, with the option of according them a limited percentage of the gains that would be made.58 Profits and losses were commonly divided in equal parts, both when these companies were composed only of two partners and when they had a more complex structure. Almost as frequent was the division of the rights on the company, and therefore of its profits, in twenty-four shares called carati (karats), according to the old tradition of shipowners who distributed the risks of a maritime enterprise among a large number of investors. In this case there was the possibility of creating partnerships with a fairly intricate organization. In June 1588 four men – Alessandro

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Franceschini, Giovan Battista Guidoboni, Ferrante dei Anzoli and Paolo Fenario – signed a partnership contract in Venice and agreed to present a package of different inventions they owned to Pope Sixtus V. At the moment of its foundation the company’s shares were divided among the partners in the following way: nine karats each belonged to Franceschini and Guidoboni, three karats each to dei Anzoli and Fenario. Only two weeks later, however, one of the partners decided to assign all his shares to the others, starting a complete reshuffling of the company’s karats that ended with the inclusion of external people in the enterprise. After a month and a half of frenetic transactions, finally the corporate structure stabilized as such: twelve karats belonged to Franceschini; six karats to Fenario; three karats to dei Anzoli; one karat to Marta, wife of dei Anzoli; one karat to the four daughters of Marta and dei Anzoli, i.e. a quarter of a karat each, to be reserved for their dowries; and a last karat to Selvaggia, the daughter of Guidoboni, a former partner, for four years, to be passed on to Isabella, another daughter of Guidoboni, for the following four years, and to be definitively assigned to Sofonisba of Selvaggia, nephew of Guidoboni, after eight years.59 The changing structure of this company demonstrates that by the last decades of the sixteenth century investments in technology and the profits obtained from the exploitation of a patent were considered as any other good, that could be bequeathed, transferred to relatives and heirs, or used for guaranteeing the dowry of young girls and enriching the rent of a married woman. In short, partnerships for inventions did not differ substantially from other commercial enterprises, and like them constituted part of a family patrimony. Frequently these companies included clauses that regulated, more or less precisely, the acquisition of new technology. Indeed, if at the basis of these peculiar business enterprises there was always a specific innovation, which the partners wanted to patent or for which they had already received a privilege, sometimes the contracts provided for the possibility of devising or finding other novelties in the future and fixed the modalities for communicating information among associates, and the procedure to be followed in case of their acceptance or refusal. The clauses inserted in a partnership contract drawn up in Venice in 1569, for example, clearly show the mechanism employed. The four partners decided that their company should concentrate on the search for any type of innovations and machines on which to invest all over the globe (‘devices and inventions of every kind and in any part of the world, under the dominion of any Prince or Lord’), setting the deadlines within which the proposals of one of the partners could be agreed upon by all the others.60 In 1583 a similar agreement established ‘a true and real partnership in the field of making tools, machines and devices for various and different purposes, either concerning hydraulics or making tools for various crafts, both in the wool industry and in other activities, and regarding any matter, both in Venice and outside it’. In this instance the procedure for informing the partners when a new invention had been found was specified more precisely: the proponent had to present all other members of the company with a written report in which he explained the details of the innovation, so that those who either accepted or refused to invest in the enterprise could register their decision at the bottom of the report and avoid unpleasant misunderstandings in the future.61

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AN INTERNATIONAL PARTNERSHIP FOR THE RECYCLING OF INDUSTRIAL WASTE An interesting case study that highlights the complex activity of technicians and businessmen interested in profiting from a patented invention regards the field of soap making. The production of soap, in fact, was not aimed exclusively at reasons of personal hygiene and the cleaning of clothes, but in large measure it was connected with the textile industry, which required considerable amounts of lye. Hard soap was employed in silk manufacturing in order to eliminate sericine (a glue-like substance that keeps together the cocoon) from the thread before dyeing, so as to produce more brilliant colours.62 The wool industry, on the contrary, used soap for the process of purging, with which the fats and impurities that remained in the fabric after it had been woven were eliminated. Most of all, this operation served to clean the wool from the olive oil with which it had been greased at the beginning of the working process for easing its manipulation, a practice that became widespread in Italy and in the rest of Europe from the second half of the fourteenth century.63 The dirty waters resulting from purging were called saponate (soapy waters), and they were usually thrown away in rivers and canals as useless materials. A method for recycling this industrial and polluting waste was devised in the Veneto during the first half of the fifteenth century, and it was probably based on a chemical procedure through which the oily residues in the saponate – generally called oliazi or ogliazzi, i.e. bad oils – could be entirely separated from the dirty water, refined and then employed again for the production of low-quality soap that would be reused in the process of wool-cloth making. Documents from Vicenza of the 1450s mention the presence of ogliazzi in the shops of purgers, and a partnership contract provides for their importation from Mantua, although there is no specification about their final destination.64 A next and crucial step in the recycling of bad oils came half a century later from the Venetian Purgo (Purging House), an institution managed by the guild of woollen-cloth producers and created with the aim of centralizing the phase of purging in a single, large building in which all entrepreneurs were obliged to wash their fabrics. The functioning and administration of the Purging House was entrusted to a guild committee, which had the task of buying the raw materials and paying the workers who processed the cloth. In 1501 the directors, eager to lower the running costs of the industrial plant, financed several experiments resulting in the discovery of a new technique that allowed the production of black soap for purging and white soap for fulling – both of good quality – by mixing together the purified ogliazzi with clean oil.65 Initially the Venetian woollen-cloth guild decided to exploit directly the innovations, hiring a master artisan who had the task of producing soap with the new recipes, but a few decades later the bad oils were also sold at retail to private soap makers.66 In the second half of the sixteenth century the recycling of the ogliazzi aroused the keen interest of some of the greatest international merchants of Venice, who competed fiercely for obtaining exclusive rights on it and explored technical solutions that would enhance productivity. In 1559 a partnership of Genoese businessmen headed by Teodoro Spinola – a man who had obtained monopoly rights for making soap Venetian-style in the Duchy of Ferrara since 1548 – struck an agreement with

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the Purging House and bought all the saponate resulting from the purging of woollen cloth in the city for five years, producing soap with it in a workshop on the island of the Giudecca that had been rented for the purpose. The Genoese monopoly on the saponate was renegotiated and renewed for another five years in 1564, and although there were disagreements among the partners that embittered Spinola, who felt he had been cheated, until 1569 hundreds of thousands of pounds of barrelled bad oils were transported by boat from the Purging House to the Giudecca and there transformed into soap.67 This was big business indeed, since the Venetian woollencloth industry had been growing steadily in the previous decades, reaching the impressive annual production of over 20,000 bolts, which made it one of the greatest textile industries in Europe.68 The amount of olive oil needed for each piece of cloth was worth 5 ducats,69 which multiplied by the number of pieces produced every year totalled 100,000 ducats, a remarkable sum that could be regained, at least in part, through recycling, thus eliciting the greed of top level businessmen. It is not by chance, then, that in the following lustrum, until 1574, the exclusive contract for the ogliazzi was obtained by Giacomo Ragazzoni, perhaps the most successful merchant in the history of late sixteenth-century Venice, with trading interests ranging from London to Lisbon and Constantinople, who was able to marry his nine daughters with members of the nobility spending the astonishing sum of 130,000 ducats in dowries and festivities.70 There is no proof that either the Genoese partnership or Ragazzoni innovated on the methods traditionally employed in refining the by-products of purging. But it was certainly the discovery and application of a new technical procedure that characterized the evolution of this peculiar industrial activity in the 1580s, thanks principally to two men: the Modenese inventor Francesco dalle Arme and the Venetian businessmen Giulio d’Alessandro. Dalle Arme, a gentlemen, had dedicated a good part of his life to the experimentation of chemical recipes that could improve the perfomance of various crafts. Since 1560 he had been in contact with the technological environment of Venice, where a patent gave him the right to use a novel system of making vitriol, and with that of Milan, a city from which in 1568 he informed the Duke of Ferrara about his discovery of a method for producing indigo as good as the one coming from America. In 1572, together with a Milanese artisan who worked in Venice, he revealed to Ottavio Farnese, Duke of Parma and Piacenza, a secret recipe for dyeing with woad with notable cost savings, entering into a partnership with the Duke in order to exploit the invention.71 In the early 1580s Giulio d’Alessandro had financed dalle Arme’s experiments, hosting him in his own Venetian house together with a young assistant.72 Giulio could easily afford the investment, since he was a rich merchant with a specialization in the textile industry. He started his career as a producer of cotton cloth, with a shop at the sign of the Pine Cone, but since 1573 had shifted his interests to the wool cloth industry, founding a company that produced on average the huge amount of 675 bolts per year. At the same time he invested 1,300 ducats in a dyeing shop, rented out a merchant ship he owned, underwrote insurance policies, sent agents to Syria to sell his wool fabrics and imported large quantities of raw materials from the Levant.73 Starting in 1583, Francesco dalle Arme and Giulio d’Alessandro began a frantic activity aimed at scooping the rights of exploitation on the saponate in a wide

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geographical area. In February Francesco presented a petition to the goverment of Venice, in which he claimed to have a recipe that would improve the process of refining bad oils, receiving a ten-year patent for all the territories of the Venetian State. In June he obtained a monopoly on all the soapy waters produced by the Venetian woollen-cloth industry, for twenty years, with the clause that once separated from the dirty water the ogliazzi would be divided equally between himself and the Purging House. Then, in July, he drew up a partnership contract with Giulio, promising the merchant 50 per cent of the profits he would get from treating the saponate and the ogliazzi with his ‘method and secret’, which he would immediately disclose to him, in exchange for financing the whole operation.74 This was, however, only the first stage of a much more ambitious project devised by the two partners. In the following months they engaged several agents who had the task of negotiating the purchase of the soapy waters discarded by various Italian cities and towns, involving these agents in the enterprise by granting them a percentage of the profits or appointing them as company’s factors in the localities where they would centre their activity. Between September and October 1583 the man in charge of managing the operation in the Veneto proved his efficiency; he bought the rights on the saponate of Padua and Vicenza woollen-cloth’s Purging Houses, for the sum of respectively 50 and 70 ducats, and on those of a purgo belonging to a private individual in Vicenza, who rented him a dyeing shop nearby that served as a deposit for the materials and tools.75 November saw the arrival of the Grand Duke of Tuscany’s ‘grace and privilege to collect in perpetuity all the waters and saponate of the woolen-cloth purging houses in the city of Florence, with the right . . . of extracting oil from those waters with their secret’ and the obligation of paying 80 scudi per year. Soon after, other agents were sent to Emilia and Lombardy.76 Less than two years after the beginning of its activity, the partnership for recycling industrial waste with patents had reached a remarkable dimension. Indeed, Giulio and Francesco had been able to appropriate the monopoly on the Purging Houses’ waters of Venice, Padua, Treviso, Verona, Vicenza, Bassano, Brescia, Bergamo, Mantua, Bologna, Modena, Parma and Florence, in many cases bringing their business also to the districts of those cities. This territorial expansion had required a capital of around 1,000 ducats for obtaining the concessions, and naturally it involved the management of several agents and factors, the partial restructuring of the infrastructures for channelling the soapy water, as well as the rent of warehouses and shops where they kept cauldrons, barrels and all other working implements. Moreover, in some cities the refined ogliazzi were directly transformed into soap – in Venice, for instance, by Zuan Maria d’Alessandro, Giulio’s brother – and therefore they required further investments in capital assets and goods, while in other cases they needed to be transported from one centre to another so as to continuously supply the soap-making production. However, notwithstanding the success of the operation, or maybe because of the growing profits that granted Francesco a higher degree of autonomy, in May 1585 the partners decided to split, agreeing to divide their spheres of activity and all the official documentation connected with them. Giulio kept the saponate of Venice and those of most of the Veneto region and Florence. Francesco received the full property of the investments in Emilia, in Lombardy, in Verona and all the Veneto west of the Adige river. He would be the

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only one, in the future, who could expand the enterprise in the Kingdom of Spain, while both former partners would be free to act in any other area.77 It is likely that the clause regarding the Spanish Crown derived from the independent enterprises of Francesco in the Iberian peninsula, since already at the beginning of 1584, together with a Milanese merchant, he had received a privilege from Philip II regarding a new method for purging woollen cloth.78 This became, indeed, his main activity after the separation from Giulio. The technique that Francesco had developed – according to a patent he obtained in Venice for ten years in 1586, which the Senate later extended to twenty-five years – allowed considerable savings of black and white soap in the processes of purging and fulling; it also permitted to avoid employing the cagna, a metallic press used to squeeze the fabrics in order to extract the oily matters, which had a less than ideal performance, given that it frequently damaged the cloth and could also endanger the life of the workers operating it.79 In the Veneto area Francesco succeded in being nominated as sole director of Padua’s Purging House from the local College of the Wool Guild in 1588, promising to reveal the secret technique he would apply in treating the cloth as soon as he had received the same privilege from the Purging House of Venice, while also negotiating with the same institution in Verona.80 Since the beginning, however, he had intended to exploit his invention in a wider Italian and European scenario. In fact, in November 1586 he entrusted an agent with presenting petitions to the Dukes of Ferrara, Mantua, Parma, Pesaro and the Grand Duke of Tuscany, asking for patents that would protect his invention.81 In the meantime a businessman, Andrea Stini, was dispatched to England with the goal first of collecting the patent granted by Queen Elizabeth to ‘Frances dal Arme, alien’, and to the London merchant Robert Clarke, who had acted as intermediary with the English court, and then of administering the operations of purging cloths and collecting bad oils.82 In September 1587 the same Stini was sent to Paris, where he had to reveal the purging secret and thus obtain the registration of the patent that the King of France had conceded through the good offices of André Huralt, lord of Maisse, the French ambassador in Venice, who was also co-interested in the venture with a share of 10 per cent.83 Francesco’s main partner in all these operations, both in Italy and abroad, his principal financial supporter and administator, was the patrician Antonio of Girolamo Priuli. This man belonged to one of the greatest Venetian noble banking families, which in the sixteenth century was able to have two of its members elected as Dogi consecutively. Antonio was an international merchant with a wide range of interests. In 1587 he tried to convince the King of France and the Queen of England to give him a monopoly on a new type of commodity, while at the same time joining a company that wanted to patent a particular quality of fertilizer throughout Europe.84 In that very year he embarked on another technological venture headed by Francesco dalle Arme, dispatching an agent to Madrid that would request a patent from the King of Spain for the exclusive rights on dyeing with logwood, a new colouring matter extracted from a tree (Hematoxylon campechianum) that was common on the Atlantic coast of Central and Southern America.85 In the late 1580s Antonio Priuli played a fundamental role also in the life of Giulio d’Alessandro, who, after the division with Francesco dalle Arme, had likewise begun to move in an international context. Keeping his investments focused

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exclusively on the working of soapy waters and bad oils, in May 1585 Giulio founded a partnership with another businessman, who first moved to Florence for refining the ogliazzi, and then to other cities in the Grand Duchy of Tuscany, in Romagna and in the Marches, acquiring the rights on the by-products of new Purging Houses. Through this partner Giulio struck an agreement with some French merchants in the hope of getting the monopoly for the recycling of dirty waters in Sicily, in the north of France, in Provence and in Languedoc.86 In Venice, together with his brother Zuan Maria and with an annual payment of 650 ducats, he put his hands on the refinement of all the city’s ogliazzi, half of which, according to the old agreement signed by dalle Arme, belonged to the local Purging House. But because of the unreliability of the brother, who was the cause of huge losses, and perhaps due to the overstretching of his multinational activities, after 1587 Giulio faced hard times.87 The death of his wife in 1588 did not help improve the situation, since by law her dowry should revert to their twelve minor children – four sons and eight daughters – as a guarantee for their maintenance. Momentarily short of liquid assets and with no possibility of repaying the dowry immediately, Giulio secured the rights of his offspring by assigning them the profits deriving from the refinement of the saponate in Venice, but since his financial situation was collapsing he had to stop production and finally declare bankruptcy. Confined in the prisons of the Ducal Palace, in 1589 Giulio reached an agreement with his partner Antonio Priuli, selling him his share on the monopoly on soapy waters and all the working implements in exchange for 2,500 ducats in cash.88 From that moment until the end of the century, Priuli remained the entrepreneur with the greatest stake in the Venetian saponate,89 flanked by Ambrogio Arrigoni, a wealthy oil and soap merchant who ran a family company with a capital worth tens of thousands of ducats,90 and by Sebastiano Balbiani, a rich shipowner, maritime insurer and international merchant with trade relations centred in Syria.91 Priuli began losing interest in the ogliazzi only after the beginning of the seventeenth century, when he started climbing the steps of Venetian politics that would eventually lead to him becoming Doge in 1618.92 Therefore the main representative of a political and social group that in the sixteenth century turned its back on trade and invested in agricultural estates had instead dedicated himself for many years to industrial and commercial enterprises that, even though modest in nature, were at the forefront of Renaissance technological innovation. In Venice he learned how to profit from the ogliazzi, but he was not the only one. The Genoese merchants who had signed an agreement with the Purging House before him, had also brought the recycling techniques to their motherland, from where other entrepreneurs disseminated the know-how abroad. It was indeed Genoese merchants who showed a keen interest in the refinement of the ogliazzi in Florence after 1588, probably filling the void caused by the collapse of Giulio d’Alessandro’s partnership.93 Francesco Rosso was the first man active in this field. He asked for the right of collecting the saponate of the Florentine Purging House and channelling them in tanks placed in the drains under the promenade flanking the Arno river, in order to extract the bratta – as the bad oils were called in Florence – and ship it to Genoa, where he would employ it for the production of red soap. The government, after entrusting the architect Bernardo Buontalenti (a prolific inventor himself, as we have seen) with checking the project’s drawings and

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supervising the work, granted the request, provided that the bratta was transformed into soap within the borders of the Florentine state – a clause that made Rosso recede from the operation. The same enterprise was attempted again ten years later, in 1598, by the Genoese businessman Gaspare Chiaveri, who was already producing red soap in Pisa with a Grand Ducal patent of 1596 and could thus couple two privileges and two innovations in a single industrial plant.94 Chiaveri, however, had to share the market with another innovator, Ariodante Gargani of Norcia, an Umbrian artisan who with government approval purged the woollen cloths of several Florentine shops using his own secret process and making soap from the resulting bratte for over a decade, from 1597 to 1608. Gargani was an expert and trustable technician: since 1577 he had applied his secret in the town of Narni for six years, leaving a partner there in 1583 and moving to Camerino on the request of that city’s merchants; there he stayed for another six years, with an annual stipend of 1,000 ducats, which went up to 2,000 scudi – a fabulous wage for a craftsman – with his further transfer to Matelica, a small town that produced 4,000 bolts of woollen cloth per year. Moreover, based as it was on the network of purging enterprises built in Umbria and the Marches over twenty years, Gargani’s production of refined ogliazzi was so large that he could distribute his goods to the soap makers of Rome and other areas of the Papal State.95

CONCLUSION The story of innovation and patenting in the field of recycling industrial waste for the production of black, white and red soap encapsulates several of the traits that characterized the Italian inventive environment of the late Renaissance. It is clear that people belonging to various social, cultural and economic groups saw the possibility of enriching themselves, or at least of diversifying their investments, through the financial support and active participation in partnerships and enterprises whose profits came entirely from the exploitation of inventions. Indeed, by the second half of the sixteenth century a veritable market for innovations had emerged in Italy and many other European regions, a market in which technical secrets and technology could be disseminated, appropriated and exchanged in large degree thanks to the privileges granted by republican and princely states. Probably for the first time we are confronted with an objectification of technical knowledge, an abstract entity that thanks to the creation of an international patent system acquired a dynamic of its own and was transacted on the Italian and European markets like any other good. It is true that frequently those who decided to invest in inventions and entered into a partnership whose main capital was constituted by a patent did not reap the rewards they expected, but, on the contrary, had to face considerable losses due to the failure or malfunctioning of the innovations on which they had bet. And there is no doubt that in several cases inventors deluded themselves and dreamed of impossible achievements. However, it is also true that in many of these men the adventurer and the skilled innovator coexisted, as the case of Antonio Marini demonstrates. As a matter of fact, among those who received a patent there were exceptional individuals who were famous masters in their own field of activity. It

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suffices to mention the names of the sculptor Antonio Rizzo, the painters Jacopo Bassano, Orazio Vecellio (the son of Titian) and Jacopo Ligozzi, the architects Antonio da Ponte and Bernardo Buontalenti, and, of course, Galileo Galilei. Francesco Zamberlano, the chief assistant of Palladio, was among the most prolific proponents of new devices and techniques in the last decades of the sixteenth century, almost a professional inventor, who obtained at least 11 patents in different technical fields.96 The same statements could be repeated for the businessmen who financed the inventors and invested in patents, who were frequently successful merchants and entrepreneurs; it was thanks to the wealth accumulated in many years of shrewd investments that they could afford to bet on new and risky ventures. For all these men the widespread, and well-known, passion for machines of the Renaissance mutated into the hope of accumulating money through the patenting of technical discoveries. And since innovation started to be considered as valuable in itself by princes, court counsellors and secretaries, diplomats, engineers, architects, painters, merchants and artisans of many different countries – in short, since all sixteenth-century political, intellectual and productive groups shared the same technological dreams and ideals, we are confronted with an exceptional phenomenon in the history of the culture of innovation. Such an important development had its centre in Italy but it did not happen in isolation. Skilled technicians coming from Flanders, France and Germany travelled across the peninsula disseminating a great variety of innovations that had originated in Northern and Central Europe, and their role was crucial for the diffusion of technological privileges on both sides of the Alps. During the Renaissance Italy became the driving European centre not so much, or not only, for the creation of new techniques, as for the development and codification of a juridical and economic mechanism that facilitated their diffusion. The main principles of the Venetian patent law of 1474, which inspired the practices of most other European states, are still today considered as the ancestors of the current patent system.97 It was in the peninsula that, starting around the middle of the fifteenth century, the conception of technical innovation changed radically, becoming something on which to invest time and resources in a synergy that involved both public institutions and private individuals. If judged from the point of view of technological development, therefore, Renaissance Italy maintains its traditional label as a laboratory of modernity.

NOTES 1. For Venice see Giulio Mandich, ‘Primi riconoscimenti veneziani di un diritto di privativa agli inventori’, Rivista di diritto industriale, 7 (1958), pp. 101–55. On the famous patent granted in Florence to Filippo Brunelleschi in 1421 see: Frank D. Prager and Gustina Scaglia, Brunelleschi: Studies of his Technology and Inventions (Mineola, NY: Dover Publications, 2004), pp. 111–23; Margaret Haines, ‘Myth and Management in the Construction of Brunelleschi’s Cupola’, I Tatti Studies, 14–15 (2011–2012), pp. 90–6. 2. Giulio Mandich, ‘Le privative industriali veneziane (1450–1550)’, Rivista di diritto commerciale e del diritto generale delle obbligazioni, 34 (1936), pp. 511–47; Luigi Sordelli, Interêt social et progres technique dans la ‘parte’ venitienne du 19 mars 1474

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sur les privileges aux inventeurs, in La legge veneziana sulle invenzioni. Scritti di diritto industriale per il suo 500° anniversario (Milan: Giuffré, 1974), pp. 249–97; Helmut Schippel, La storia delle privative industriali nella Venezia del ’400 (Venice: Centro Tedesco di Studi Veneziani, 1989); Pamela O. Long, ‘Invention, Autorship, “Intellectual Property”, and the Origin of Patents: Notes towards a Conceptual History’, Technology and Culture, 32 (1991), pp. 864–84; Roberto Berveglieri, Inventori stranieri a Venezia (1474–1788). Importazione di tecnologia e circolazione di tecnici artigiani inventori. Repertorio (Venice: Istituto Veneto di Scienze, Lettere ed Arti, 1995); Idem, Le vie di Venezia. Canali lagunari e rii a Venezia: inventori, brevetti, tecnologia e legislazione nei secoli XIII–XVIII (Sommacampagna, Verona: Cierre Edizioni, 1999); Luca Molà, The Silk Industry of Renaissance Venice (Baltimore– London: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2000), pp. 186–214. 3. Antonio Marini’s biography is based on: Nicolas Jorga, ‘Un auteur de projects de croisades: Antoine Marini’, in Études d’histoire du Moyen Âge dédiées à Gabriel Monod (Paris: L. Cerf, 1896), pp. 445–57; Mandich, ‘Le privative industriali’, pp. 515–16; Idem, ‘Primi riconoscimenti’, pp. 117–21, 127–8, 141–2; Marcel Silberstein, ‘The Patents of Marini, 1443 to 1457’, Journal of the Patent Office Society, 37 (1955), pp. 674–6; Adriano Franceschini (ed.), Artisti a Ferrara in età umanistica e rinascimentale. Testimonianze archivistiche, parte I. Dal 1341 al 1471 (Ferrara–Rome: Gabriele Corbo, 1993), doc. 540, pp. 256–7; Archivio di Stato di Venezia (henceforward ASVE), Giudici di Petizion, Sentenze a Giustizia, reg. 87, fols. 18v–22r, 6 November 1441. On his relations with Georg Podyebrad and his project of crusade see also Frederick Gotthold Heymann, George of Bohemia King of Heretics (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1965), and Otakar Odlozilík, The Hussite King: Bohemia in European Affairs, 1440–1471 (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1965), ad vocem. 4. Philippe Braunstein, ‘À l’origine des privilèges d’invention aux XIVe et XVe siècles’, in Idem, Travail et entreprise au Moyen Âge (Brussels: De Boeck, 2003), pp. 45–54. 5. Danuta Molenda, ‘Patent a postep. W sprawie rozwoju prawa patentowego w górnictwie kruszcowym w XV i XVI w.’, Kwartalnik Historii Kultury Materialnej, 17 (1969), pp. 73–88; Idem, ‘Technological Innovation in Central Europe between the XIVth and the XVIIth Centuries’, Journal of European Economic History, 17 (1988), pp. 63–84; Jerzy Wyrozumski, ‘Zagadnienie poczatków prawnej ochrony wynalazku w Polsce’, Zeszyty Naukowe Universytetu Jagiellon´skiego, Prace z wynalazczo´s ci i ochrony wlasnosci intelektualnej, 18 (1978), pp. 17–34. I would like to thank Teresa Halikosky Smith for helping me with the reading of the Polish essays. 6. Mandich, ‘Primi riconoscimenti’, pp. 107, 130–31. 7. On Italy in general see: Luca Molà, ‘Energia e brevetti per invenzioni nell’Italia del Rinascimento’, in Simonetta Cavaciocchi (ed.), Economia e energia. Secc. XIII–XVIII (Florence: Le Monnier, 2003), pp. 981–91; Molà, ‘Il mercato delle innovazioni nell’Italia del Rinascimento’, in Mathieu Arnoux and Pierre Monnet (eds), Le technicien dans la cité en Europe Occidentale (1250–1650) (Rome: Ecole Française de Rome, 2004), pp. 215–50; Molà, ‘Stato e impresa: privilegi per l’introduzione di nuove arti e brevetti’, in Philippe Braunstein and Luca Molà (eds), Il Rinascimento Italiano e l’Europa. Volume Terzo. Produzione e tecniche (Treviso–Vicenza: Angelo Colla Editore,

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2007), pp. 533–72; Idem, ‘Il mercante innovatore’, in Franco Franceschi, Richard A. Goldthwaite and Reinhold C. Mueller (eds), Il Rinascimento Italiano e l’Europa. Volume Quarto. Commercio e cultura mercantile (Treviso–Vicenza: Angelo Colla Editore, 2007), pp. 623–53; Carlo Marco Belfanti, ‘Corporations et brevets: les deux faces du progrès technique dans une économie préindustrielle (Italie du Nord, XVIe–XVIIIe siècles)’, in Liliane Hilaire-Pérez and Anne-Françoise Garçon (eds), Les chemins de la nouveauté: innover, inventer au regard de l’histoire (Paris: CTHS, 2003), pp. 59–76; Belfanti, ‘Guilds, Patents and the Circulation of Technical Knowledge: Northern Italy During the Early Modern Age’, Technology and Culture, 45 (2004), pp. 569–89. For a specific case, see the several studies on Florence, the best-known example: Paolo Malanima, La decadenza di un’economia cittadina. L’industria di Firenze nei secoli XVI–XVIII (Bologna: Il Mulino, 1982), pp. 148–52, 240–45, 250–51; Luca Molà, ‘Artigiani e brevetti nella Firenze del Cinquecento’, in Franco Franceschi and Gloria Fossi (eds), Arti fiorentine. La grande storia dell’artigianato. Vol. III. Il Cinquecento (Florence: Giunti, 2000), pp. 57–79; Daniela Lamberini, ‘ “A beneficio dell’universale”. Ingegneria idraulica e privilegi di macchine alla corte dei Medici’, in Alessandra Fiocca, Daniela Lamberini and Cesare Maffioli (eds), Arte e scienza delle acque nel Rinascimento (Venice: Marsilio, 2003), pp. 47–71 – also in English with the title ‘Patents for Machines in Grand Ducal Tuscany and the Diffusion of Technical Knowledge in Europe, c. 1564–1640’, Zeitsprünge, 8 (2004), pp. 101–20; Marie de Mullenheim, ‘Les privilèges pour invention à Florence à la fin du XVIe siècle et au début du XVIIe siècle’, in Marie-Sophie Corcy, Christiane Douyère-Demeulenaere and Liliane Hilaire-Pérez (eds), Les archives de l’invention. Ecrits, objects et images de l’activité inventive (Toulouse: CNRS, 2006), pp. 333–9. 8. Hansjörg Pohlmann, ‘Neue Materialien zur Frühentwicklung des deutschen Erfinderschutzes im 16. Jahrhundert’, Gewerblicher Rechtsschutz und Urheberrecht, 62 (1960), pp. 272–83; Pohlmann, ‘The Inventor’s Right in Early German Law’, Journal of the Patent Office Society, 43 (1961), pp. 121–39; Marcel Silberstein, Erfindungsschutz und merkantilistiche Gewerbeprivilegien (Zurich: Polygraphischer Verlag AG., 1961); Rolf-Jurgen Gleitsmann, ‘ “Wir wissen aber, Gott lob, was wir thun”: Erfinderprivilegien und technologische Wandel im 16. Jahrhundert’, Zeitschrift für Unternehmensgeschichte, 30 (1985), pp. 69–95. 9. On Spain see: Nicolas García Tapía, Tecnica y poder en Castilla durante los siglos XVI y XVII (Madrid: Junta de Castilla y León, 1989), pp. 195–225; Tapía, Patentes de invencion española en el siglo de oro (Madrid: Oficina Española de Patentes y Marcas, 1990). On early American patents see: Pablo Emilio Pérez-Mallaína Bueno, ‘Los inventos llevados de España a Indias en la segunda mitad del siglo XVI’, Cuadernos de Investigación Historica, 7 (1983), pp. 35–54; Nicolas García Tapía, Del Dios del fuego a la máquina de vapor. La introduccíon de la técnica industrial en Hispanoamérica (Valladolid: Instituto de Ingenieros Técnicos de España, 1992); Antonio BarreraOsorio, Experiencing Nature. The Spanish American Empire and the Early Scientific Revolution (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2006), pp. 57–80, 140–6. 10. For general overviews of the phenomenon see: Frank D. Prager, ‘A History of Intellectual Property from 1545 to 1787’, Journal of the Patent Office Society, 26 (1944), pp. 711–60; Maximilian Frumkin, ‘The Early History of Patents for Invention’,

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Transactions of the Newcomen Society, 26 (1947–1949), pp. 47–56; Carlo Marco Belfanti, ‘Between Mercantilism and Market: Privileges for Invention in Early Modern Europe’, Journal of Institutional Economics, 2 (2006), pp. 319–38; Mario Biagioli, ‘Patent Republic: Representing Invention, Constructing Rights and Authors’, Social Research, 73 (2006), pp. 1129–72; Idem, ‘From Prints to Patents: Living on Instruments in Early Modern Europe’, History of Science, 44 (2006), pp. 139–86. On the Netherlands, France and England see: Gerard Doorman, Patents for Inventions in the Netherlands during the 16th, 17th and 18th Centuries (The Hague: M. Nijhoff, 1942); C.R.M. Davidson, ‘Historical Development of the Patent Right in the Netherlands’, in La legge veneziana, pp. 101–19; Karel Davids, ‘Patents and Patentees in the Dutch Republic Between c. 1580 and 1720’, History and Technology, 16 (2000), pp. 263–83; Davids, The Rise and Decline of Dutch Technological Leadership. Technology, Economy and Culture in the Netherlands, 1350–1800. Volume 2 (Leiden–Boston: Brill, 2008), pp. 365–457; Jacques Isorè, ‘De l’existence des brevets d’invention en droit français avant 1791’, Revue Historique de droit français et etranger, 16 (1937), pp. 94–130; Henry Heller, ‘Primitive Accumulation and Technical Innovation in the French Wars of Religion’, History and Technology, 16 (2000), pp. 243–61; William Hyde Price, The English Patents of Monopoly (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1913); Joan Thirsk, Economic Policy and Projects. The Development of a Consumer Society in Early Modern England (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1978). 11. Archivio di Stato di Firenze (henceforward ASFI), Diplomatico, Cartacei, 1578–79, Carte Buontalenti, insert 1. See also: Achille Neri, ‘Un privilegio a Bernardo Buontalenti’, Giornale Ligustico di Archeologia, Storia e Letteratura, 13 (1886), pp. 164–7; Achille De Rubertis, ‘Di alcuni privilegi concessi a Bernardo Buontalenti’, L’uomo nuovo (February–March 1922), pp. 32–7; De Rubertis, ‘Bernardo Buontalenti inventore di strumenti per mulini’, Rivista d’Arte (1930) (reprinted in De Rubertis, Varietà storiche e letterarie con documenti inediti (Pisa: Nistri-Lischi, 1935), pp. 20–32). 12. In Venice the models were in the office of the Provveditori di Comun at Rialto; see Markus Popplow, ‘Protection and Promotion: Privileges for Inventions and Books of Machines in the Early Modern Period’, History of Technology, 20 (1998), pp. 109– 10. For the cataloguing system see ASVE, Provveditori di Comun, b. 17, reg. 32, fols. 24v–25r, 7 November 1588. 13. Molà, ‘Artigiani e brevetti’, pp. 60–3. 14. ASFI, Auditore delle Riformagioni, filza 15, fasc. 71, 20 and 24 January 1586. 15. ‘. . . da poiché costoro si contentano che ognuno resti in libertà sua di usarlo o non, che a questo modo non si induce monopolio et non si fa mai pregiudizio a’ popoli, facendosi benefizio a molti et danno a nessuno’; ASFI, Auditore delle Riformagioni, filza 16, fasc. 55, 25 January 1588. 16. ‘. . . favorito et agiutato tutti coloro che affaticando l’inteletto et ingegno suo hanno procurato di dar in luce novi instrumenti et edifficii comodi et utili a ciascuno che li volesse usare, concedendoli gratia speciale che altri che loro non si possino prevalere di tal sue inventioni’; ASVE, Collegio, Risposte di dentro, filza 7, n. 177, 2 April 1583. 17. ‘. . . volendo noi per benefitio et commodo de nostri sudditi favorire et aiutare le utili inventioni nuovamente trovate dagl’huomini virtuosi et ingegnosi, et che quelle cose

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che publica et privatamente possono giovare venghino a luce, et habbino la loro perfettione’; see the various privileges in the series ASFI, Pratica Segreta. 18. Molà, ‘Il mercante innovatore’, pp. 648–9. 19. ASFI, Auditore delle Riformagioni, filza 19, fasc. 53, 1 September 1592. 20. ASFI, Pratica Segreta, reg. 190, n. 3, fols. 3v–4r, 24 December 1594. 21. ASVE, Senato Terra, reg. 53, fol. 43r, 14 May 1580; cfr. anche: Berveglieri, Inventori stranieri cit., n. 25, pp. 70–1. 22. ASVE, Provveditori di Comun, b. 15, reg. 29, fols. 165v–7r, 11 May 1584; Francesco Carta, Codici corali e libri a stampa miniati della Biblioteca Nazionale di Milano. Catalogo descrittivo (Rome: Martinelli, 1891), docs. 17–18, pp. 171–2. 23. ASFI, Pratica Segreta, reg. 189, n. 64, fol. 38r–v, 14 January 1586. 24. ASFI, Auditore delle Riformagioni, filza 19, fasc. 62, 18 September 1592. 25. ASFI, Auditore delle Riformagioni, filza 25, fol. 429r–v, 17 June 1605. 26. ASVE, Senato Terra, reg. 51, fols. 46v–7r, 22 October 1575; Senato Terra, reg. 52, fol. 276v, 6 February 1580; Senato Terra, reg. 54, fol. 72r, 13 June 1582; Stefano Toffolo, Antichi strumenti veneziani. 1500–1800: quattro secoli di liuteria e cembalaria (Venice: Arsenale Editrice, 1987), p. 182 and appendix V, p. 213. 27. ASVE, Senato Terra, reg. 40, fol. 47r, 7 May 1555. 28. ASVE, Collegio, Risposte di dentro, filza 2, n. 150, 17 April 1567; ASVE, Senato Terra, reg. 46, fol. 153v, 3 May 1567. 29. ASVE, Senato Terra, filza 79, under 5 December 1579, 6 November 1579; Senato Terra, reg. 52, fol. 259r, 5 December 1579. 30. Archivio di Stato di Bologna, Senato, Istrumenti scritture e altro, serie segnata B, b. 25, n. 69, 20 September 1586; Archivio di Stato di Bologna, Senato, Partiti, reg. 11, fol. 142r–v, 20 November 1586. 31. ASVE, Provveditori di Comun, b. 16, reg. 31, fol. 79r–v, 2 June 1587; Provveditori di Comun, b. 17, reg. 32, fols. 4v–5v, 5 August 1588. 32. Biblioteca Civica Bertoliana di Vicenza, Archivio Torre, Parti (4), 866, fols. 517r–18r, 2 December 1602; on this privilege see also Giovanni Mantese, Memorie storiche della chiesa vicentina. Volume quarto, parte prima (dal 1563 al 1700) (Vicenza: Scuola Tip. Istituto S. Gaetano, 1974), p. 706. 33. ASVE, Provveditori di Comun, b. 17, reg. 33, fols. 62v–3r, 19 September 1592. 34. ASFI, Auditore delle Riformagioni, filza 23, fol. 242r, 12 October 1599; ASFI, Pratica Segreta, reg. 190, n. 76, fols. 45v–6r, 27 October 1599. 35. ASFI, Auditore delle Riformagioni, filza 11, fasc. 69, 11 February 1572. 36. ASVE, Collegio, Risposte di dentro, filza 5, n. 58, 31 July 1572; ASVE, Senato Terra, reg. 49, fol. 107v, 3 December 1572; ibid., fol. 151r, 27 April 1573; ibid., fols. 190v–91r, 26 September 1573. 37. Paola Barocchi and Giovanni Gaeta Bertelà (eds), Collezionismo mediceo. Cosimo I, Francesco I e il Cardinale Ferdinando. Documenti 1540–1587 (Modena: Panini Editore, 1993), doc. 49, p. 52.

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38. ASVE, Notarile Atti, b. 5773, notary B. Fiume, fols. 275r–6r, 7 May 1588. 39. Paolo Malanima, Energia e crescita nell’Europa preindustriale (Rome: NIS, 1996), pp. 55–63. 40. ASFI, Auditore delle Riformagioni, filza 25, fols. 285r–8r, September 1604– January 1605. 41. ASFI, Pratica Segreta, reg. 189, n. 38, fols. 23v–24r, 25 October 1584; ASFI, Auditore delle Riformagioni, filza 15, fasc. 61, August 1585. 42. Giovanni Grazzini, Le condizioni di Pisa sotto il Granducato di Ferdinando I de’ Medici (Empoli: 1898), pp. 224–38; Lucia Frattarelli Fischer, ‘Ebrei a Pisa fra Cinquecento e Settecento’, in Michele Luzzati (ed.), Gli ebrei di Pisa (secoli IX–XX). Atti del Convegno internazionale. Pisa, 3–4 ottobre 1994 (Pisa: Pacini, 1998); Renzo Toaff, La Nazione ebrea a Livorno e a Pisa (1591–1700) (Florence: Olschki, 1990), pp. 42–55, 109–12, 204 note 69. For the best general overview of Gabrielli’s activities in Tuscany see Dora Liscia Bemporad, Maggino di Gabriello ‘Hebreo Venetiano’. I Dialoghi sopra l’utili sue inventioni circa la seta (Florence: Edifir, 2010), pp. 11–96. 43. ASFI, Notarile Moderno, 6646, notary G. dal Poggio, doc. 290, fols. 129r–30r, 28 December 1590; ibid., doc. 292, fols. 131r–2v, 3 January 1591. On the Calenzano farm see Liscia Bemporad, Maggino di Gabriello, pp. 61–80. 44. ASFI, Auditore delle Riformagioni, filza 20, fasc. 5, fol. 26r–v, 17 December 1593; ASFI, Pratica Segreta, reg. 189, n. 219, fol. 206r–v, 29 December 1593. 45. ASFI, Auditore delle Riformagioni, filza 18, fasc. 80, fol. 401r–v, 5 March 1591; ASFI, Pratica Segreta, reg. 189, n. 168, fols. 110v–11r, 26 March 1591. 46. ASFI, Notarile Moderno, 6647, notary G. dal Poggio, docc. 13–15, fols. 7v–10r, 18–20 January 1594. 47. ASFI, Auditore delle Riformagioni, filza 20, fasc. 15, fol. 110r–v, 28 February 1594. 48. ASVE, Senato Terra, reg. 38, fol. 164v, 17 September 1552. 49. ASVE, Collegio, Risposte di dentro, filza 5, n. 84, 21 September 1572. 50. Berveglieri, Le vie di Venezia, doc. 15, p. 52; doc. 111, p. 277; doc. 129, p. 288; docs. 161–2, p. 303; docs. 170–71, pp. 310–11; doc. 174, p. 312. See also: ASVE, Notarile Atti, b. 8283, notary P.G. Mamoli, fols. 200v–202r, 15 April 1568; Notarile Atti, b. 7895, notary P. Lion, fols. 80r–81r, 13 May 1585; Notarile Atti, b. 11890, notary G. Savina, fols. 759r–60r, 23 June 1586. 51. Archivio di Stato di Bologna, Senato, Partiti, reg. 10, fol. 140r–v, 14 December 1580. 52. On the struggle between Cavallini and Fieno see Carlo Poni, ‘Ricerche sugli inventori bolognesi della macchina seminatrice alla fine del secolo XVI’, Rivista Storica Italiana, 76 (1964), pp. 455–69. 53. A copy of the three leaflets is in ASFI, Miscellanea Medicea, filza 39, insert 40, fols. 1r–3r, 1586. For another leaflet meant to advertise a new type of spindle for the silk industry, printed in 1570 after the grant of a patent in Bologna, see Carlo Poni, ‘Piccole innovazioni e filatoi a mano: Venezia (1550–1600)’, in Studi in onore di Luigi Dal Pane (Bologna: CLUEB, 1982), pp. 381, 383 – the leaflet is reproduced also in

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Roberto Berveglieri and Carlo Poni, ‘L’innovazione nel settore serico: i brevetti industriali della Repubblica di Venezia fra XVI e XVII secolo’, in Luca Molà, Reinhold C. Mueller and Claudio Zanier, La seta in Italia dal Medioevo al Seicento. Dal baco al drappo (Venice: Marsilio, 2000), fig. 1. 54. Antonio Favaro, ‘Di Niccolò Tartaglia e della stampa di alcune sue opere con particolare riguardo alla “Travagliata inventione” ’, Isis, 1 (1913), pp. 329–40; Alexander G. Keller, ‘Archimedean Hydrostatic Theorems and Salvage Operations in 16th Century Venice’, Technology and Culture, 12 (1971), pp. 602–17. 55. Markus Popplow, ‘Hydraulic Engines in Renaissance Privileges for Inventions and “Theatres of Machines” ’, in Fiocca, Lamberini and Maffioli, Arte e scienza delle acque nel Rinascimento, p. 81; Carlo Poni, ‘Un “privilegio” d’agricoltura: Camillo Tarello e il Senato di Venezia’, Rivista Storica Italiana, 82 (1970), pp. 592–610. 56. Molà, The Silk Industry, pp. 204–14; Liscia Bemporad, Maggino di Gabriello, pp. 99–252. 57. Discorso dell’Eccell. D. di Leggi, il S.r Attilio Parisio, Sopra la sua Nuova Inventione d’Horologi con una sola Ruota. Nel quale si dimostra la real essentia loro, le qualità, i moti, et effetti maravigliosi, insieme con le risolutioni di quante oppositioni gli potessero esser fatte (Venice: Giorgio Angelieri, 1598). On this invention see Silvio A. Bedini, ‘The Compartmented Cylindrical Clepsydra’, Technology and Culture, 3 (1962), pp. 115–41. 58. Luca Molà, ‘Le società per lo sfruttamento delle invenzioni nell’Italia del Cinquecento’, Cheiron, 42 (2006), pp. 149–68. 59. ASVE, Notarile Atti, b. 3359, notary G.A. Catti, fols. 237v–8v, 15 June 1588; ibid., fols. 255v–6v, 30 June 1588; Notarile Atti, fol. 285r, 28 July 1588; ibid., fols. 292v–3r, 30 July 1588. 60. ASVE, Notarile Atti, b. 2577, notary P. Contarini, 12 November 1569. The text of the contract is published in Molà, ‘Il mercato delle innovazioni’, Appendix 3, pp. 246–7. 61. ASVE, Notarile Atti, b. 10519, notary O. Novello, second numeration, fols. 96r–7v, 14 May 1583. This contract too is published in Molà, ‘Il mercato delle innovazioni’, appendix 4, pp. 247–8. 62. Girolamo Gargiolli, L’industria della seta in Firenze: trattato del secolo XV (Florence: G. Barbera Editore, 1868), pp. 12–16. 63. Dominique Cardon, La draperie au Moyen Age. Essor d’une grande industrie européenne (Paris: CNRS, 1999), pp. 164–8. 64. Edoardo Demo, L’‘anima della città’. L’industria tessile a Verona e Vicenza (1400–1550) (Milan: Unicopli, 2001), p. 99 and note 56. 65. Andrea Mozzato (ed.), La Mariegola dell’Arte della Lana di Venezia (1244–1595), vol. I (Venice: Il Comitato Editore, 2002), pp. 352–3. 66. Andrea Mozzato (ed.), La Mariegola dell’Arte della Lana di Venezia (1244–1595), vol. II, pp. 508–10. 67. ASVE, Cancelleria Inferiore, Miscellanea Notai Diversi, b. 40, n. 64, inventory of the house and shop of Alessandro di Gelo, 17 August 1560; ASVE, Notarile Atti, b. 437, notary R. de Benedetti, fols. 223r–4v, 22 June 1570, report produced by Teodoro

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Spinola in the register of Giovan Battista Negroni, Consul of the Genoese in Venice; ASVE, Provveditori di Comun, b. 15, reg. 26, fols. 4r–5r, 28 July–11 August 1571. 68. Domenico Sella, ‘The Rise and Fall of the Venetian Woollen Industry’, in Brian Pullan (ed.), Crisis and Change in the Venetian Economy in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries (London: Methuen, 1968), p. 109. 69. ASVE, Collegio, Risposte di dentro, filza 7, n. 161, 16 December 1582. 70. ASVE, Provveditori di Comun, b. 15, reg. 26, fol. 120v, 19 February 1574; ASVE, Notarile Atti, b. 8294, notary P.G. Mamoli, fol. 391r–v, 24 July 1574; ibid., fol. 591v, 22 December 1574. For a biographical note on Ragazzoni see Luciano Pezzolo, ‘Sistema di valori e attività economica a Venezia, 1530–1630’, in Simonetta Cavaciocchi (ed.), L’impresa. Industria commercio banca (sec. XIII–XVIII) (Florence: Le Monnier, 1991), pp. 986–7. Other information in Alberto Tenenti, Naufrages, corsaires et assurances maritimes à Venise, 1592–1609 (Paris: Sevpen, 1959), ad vocem; Anna Bellavitis, Identitè, mariage, mobilitè sociale. Citoyennes et citoyens à Venise au XVIe siècle (Rome: Ecole Française de Rome, 2001), pp. 162–3. 71. ASVE, Senato Terra, reg. 42, fols. 178v–9r, 14 August 1560; Archivio di Stato di Modena, Archivio per Materie, Arti e mestieri, b. 30, Sapone, unnumbered folios, 13 February 1568; Archivio di Stato di Parma, Notai Camerali di Parma, filza 203, notary B. Acquila 1572–1584, 24 May and 12–13 November 1572; Archivio di Stato di Parma, Patenti, reg. 3, fol. 223r, 13 November 1572. In 1572 dalle Arme also proposed the secret on woad to the Venetian government; see ASVE, Collegio, Risposte di dentro, filza 5, n. 52, 28 June 1572. 72. ASVE, Notarile Atti, b. 3355, notary G.A. Catti, fols. 305r–307r, 22 September 1584. 73. ASVE, Notarile Atti, b. 3, notary C. Bianco, 11 December 1572; Notarile Atti, b. 3352, notary G.A. Catti, fol. 18r–v, 18 January 1581; Notarile Atti, b. 3353, notary G.A. Catti, fols. 165r-6r, 12 July 1582; Notarile Atti, b. 3354, notary G.A. Catti, fols. 285r–6v, 11 August 1583; Notarile Atti, b. 3357, notary G.A. Catti, fols. 257v–9r, 1 August 1586; Notarile Atti, b. 8291, notary P.G. Mamoli, fols. 13v–14r, 7 January 1573; Notarile Atti, b. 8294, notary P.G. Mamoli, fol. 389r–v, 23 July 1574; Notarile Atti, b. 8297, notary P.G. Mamoli, fols. 230v–34r, 28 June 1576; Notarile Atti, b. 8301, notary P.G. Mamoli, fols. 321v–3r, 18 July 1579; Notarile Atti b. 8313, notary F. Mondo, fol. 348r–v, 7 November 1576. 74. ASVE, Provveditori di Comun, b. 15, reg. 29, fols. 8v–10r, 11 February 1583; ASVE, Notarile Atti, b. 3354, notary G.A. Catti, fols. 151r–3r, 28 July 1583. 75. ASVE, Notarile Atti, b. 3354, notary G.A. Catti, fol. 185r, 7 September 1583; ibid., fols. 198v–200r, 10 October 1583; Archivio di Stato di Padova, Università dell’Arte della Lana, reg. 95, fol. 146r–v, 14 September 1583; Archivio di Stato di Vicenza, Notai Vicenza, 723, notary Giuseppe Zugian, unbound minutes, 20 September 1583 (two separate acts). 76. ASVE, Notarile Atti, b. 3354, notary G.A. Catti, fols. 234v–5r, 9 December 1583; Notarile Atti, b. 3355, notary G.A. Catti, fol. 3v, 30 December 1583; ibid., fols. 132v–3r, 2 May 1584. 77. Archivio di Stato di Padova, Notarile, reg. 1142, notary V. de Toschi, fols. 212v–17v, 13 May 1585.

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78. This informatin comes from a notarial deed in which Francesco appoints a representative to contest the grant of a patent in the Kingdom of Naples that infringed on his Spanish privilege of 1584; ASVE, Notarile Atti, b. 10527, notary O. Novello, fols. 119v–20r, 2 March 1588. 79. For these patents see ASVE, Provveditori di Comun, b. 16, reg. 31, fol. 21v, 23 October 1586; ASVE, Senato Terra, filza 102, under 13 August 1587, 28 July 1587; Senato Terra, reg. 57, fol. 190v, 13 August 1587; ASVE, Cinque Savi alla Mercanzia, series 1, b. 138, fol. 7v, 29 July 1587. 80. Archivio di Stato di Padova, Università dell’Arte della Lana, reg. 95, fol. 188r–v, 21 December 1587; ibid., fol. 198r, 26 August 1588; Università dell’Arte della Lana, reg. 2, fols. 197–202, 16 July 1588; Archivio di Stato di Padova, Notarile, b. 4857, notary Z. Villano, fols. 149r–52v, 16 July 1588; idid., fols. 155r–6v, 29 October 1588; ASVE, Notarile Atti, b. 3162, notary G. Chiodo, fol. 44r–v, 7 April 1588; Notarile Atti, b. 10528, notary O. Novello, fol. 463r–v, 28 July 1588. 81. ASVE, Notarile Atti, b. 10524, notary O. Novello, fols. 485r–6v, 8 November 1586. 82. ASVE, Notarile Atti, b. 10524, notary O. Novello, fol. 488r–v, 10 November 1586. For the English patent see Edward Wyndham Hulme, ‘The History of the Patent System Under the Prerogative and at Common Law. A Sequel’, Law Quarterly Review, 16 (1900), p. 48, n. XLI. We know the profession of Robert Clarke thanks to a donation of land in Suffolk made him by Thomas Baxter, one of the main English merchants that lived in Venice; ASVE, Notarile Atti, b. 11895, notary G. Savina, fol. 272r–3v, 8 August 1584; Notarile Atti, b. 11896, notary G. Savina, fols. 454r–6r, 28 February 1584. 83. The task of Stini consisted in ‘publicatione cuiuscumque secreti sine terra pannos purgandi, follandi, lavandi, olea ab eis exauriendi, saponosque componendi et construendi’; ASVE, Notarile Atti, b. 10526, notary O. Novello, fol. 454r–v, 4 September 1587; ibid., fols. 472v–3v, 11 September 1587. 84. ASVE, Notarile Atti, b. 10525, notary O. Novello, fols. 285v–6r, 10 June 1587; Notarile Atti, b. 7842, notary C. Lio, fol. 581r, 2 October 1587. 85. ASVE, Notarile Atti, b. 10526, notary O. Novello, fols. 471v–2v, 11 September 1587. On logwood and its use in Europe see Paola Massa Piergiovanni, ‘I coloranti del nuovo mondo e l’industria tessile europea: tra economia e tecnica’, in Lilia Capocaccia Orsini, Giorgio Doria and Giuliano Doria (eds), 1492–1992. Animali e piante dalle Americhe all’Europa (Genoa: Sagep, 1991), pp. 236, 246. 86. ASVE, Notarile Atti, b. 3356, notary G.A. Catti, fols. 170r–72r, 26 May 1585; Notarile Atti, b. 7856, notary G. Luran, fols. 490v–3v, 23 August 1585; ibid., fols. 503r–5r, 27 August 1585. 87. ASVE, Notarile Atti, b. 3335, notary G. Carlotti, 4 February 1580; Notarile Atti, b. 3357, notary G.A. Catti, fols. 38v–43r, 26 January 1586. 88. ASVE, Notarile Atti, b. 8213, notary V. de Maffei, fols. 37r–9v, 26 January 1589; ibid., fols. 450v–51v, 21 April 1589; ibid., fols. 456v–7r, 29 April 1589. 89. ASVE, Provveditori di Comun, b. 17, reg. 32, fols. 166v–7v, 16 March 1591; Provveditori di Comun, b. 18, reg. 35, fol. 36r–v, 10 July 1598.

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90. ASVE, Notarile Atti, b. 516, notary G. De Beni, fols. 94r–6r, 11 May 1591; Notarile Atti, b. 518, notary G. De Beni, fols. 363v–4v, 22 October 1592. 91. ASVE, Provveditori di Comun, b. 18, reg. 35, fols. 87v–8v, 8 March 1599; Ugo Tucci, entry Balbiani Giovanni, in Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani, vol. 5 (Rome: Istituto Treccani, 1963), pp. 385–6. 92. On Priuli’s career as a Doge see Andrea Da Mosto, I Dogi di Venezia nella vita pubblica e privata (Florence: Aldo Martello – Giunti Editore, 1977), pp. 348–54. 93. A brief account of the Florentine patents in this sector is in Malanima, La decadenza di un’economia cittadina, pp. 240–41. 94. ASFI, Arte della Lana, 61, Ordini dei Riformatori, fols. 18r–19r, 8 January 1588; ibid., fol. 67v, 3 December 1588; ASFI, Auditori delle Riformagioni, filza 17, fasc. 52, December 1588–February 1589; Auditori delle Riformagioni, filza 23, fol. 45r–v, 48r, 19 August 1598; ASFI, Pratica Segreta, reg. 189, n. 119, fol. 75r–v, 25 February 1589; Pratica Segreta, reg. 190, n. 61, fol. 38r–v, 5 December 1598. For Chiaveri’s soap making patent see Molà, ‘Il mercante innovatore’, p. 632. 95. ASFI, Auditore delle Riformagioni, filza 27, fols. 81r–2r, 13 August 1597; ibid., fol. 79r–v, 9 June 1598; ibid., fol. 78r–v, 19 November 1608. On Gargani’s petition to the Florentine government see also de Mullenheim, ‘Les privilèges pour invention à Florence’, p. 333. 96. See Franco Barbieri, ‘Francesco Zamberlan architetto de “La Rotonda” di Rovigo’, in La Rotonda di Rovigo (Vicenza: Neri Pozza, 1967), pp. 37–72. 97. Christopher May, ‘The Venetian Moment: New Technologies, Legal Innovation and the Institutional Origins of Intellectual Property’, Prometheus, 20 (2002), pp. 159– 79; Christopher May and Susan K. Sell, Intellectual Property Rights. A Critical History (Boulder–London: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2006), pp. 43–74.

The Microcosm: Innovation and Technological Transfer in the Habsburg Empire of the Sixteenth Century CRISTIANO ZANETTI The Medici Archive Project

Abstract This article aims to contribute to the history of technological innovation by using a case study to investigate the practice of invention and the transfer of knowledge in the field of planetary horology in sixteenth-century Europe. Planetary clocks can be considered some of the highest achievements of Renaissance mechanics: the Microcosm, Emperor Charles V’s planetary clock, which was made in the middle of the sixteenth century by Janello Torriani, was considered an innovative technological marvel, the first clock of its kind, but was sadly lost. In this article I will shed light on this mysterious object. I will consider the novelty of Torriani’s Microcosm and how this clock provoked the transfer of technical knowledge from the Duchy of Milan to the Kingdom of Germany. Furthermore, I will show how princely patronage promoted interaction between different fields of knowledge, inspiring, directing and supporting economically technological innovation in a specific craft.

GERMANY: CLOCKMAKERS’ HEIMAT Since about the middle of the sixteenth century, the Kingdom of Germany, and especially the cities of Augsburg and Nuremberg, had been acknowledged as the 35

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centre of clockmaking. Contemporary writers on technical issues, such as the German Johann Neudörffer (1497–1563),1 the Frenchman Petrus Ramus (1515– 1572)2 and the Italian Tommaso Garzoni (1549–1589) were all in agreement on this matter. According to Garzoni, who published his book in 1585, the Germans are now the pride of this profession, because all the most beautiful and correct clocks are coming forth from their regions. Among these clocks, the one that Emperor Ferdinand sent to Soleiman, King of the Turks (as Bugatto3 writes) was a miracle.4 Following the example of Paris, which was most probably the first city to have a guild of clockmakers (established in 1544), Augsburg and Nuremberg set up their own guilds of clockmakers, the earliest in the Kingdom of Germany, in 1564 and 1565 respectively. To create a guild of clockmakers, one needed numerous specialized workshops. This can be interpreted as a sign of a shift in strategy regarding the production of clocks and watches. Traditionally, clocks were luxury goods that few could afford and so their production would usually be in response to a specific commission. These new guilds of clockmakers boosted production and therefore made it possible for a customer to enter a workshop and buy there and then a finished timepiece that he had not commissioned in advance.5 It seems that because of the increasing manufacture of off-the-shelf timepieces, German products could also be easily exported, flooding other European markets.

ITALIAN NOVELTIES However, the superiority of sixteenth-century German production did not necessarily mean that its timepieces were also superior in terms of innovation. It seems that the cities of Italy remained centres for the highly specialized production of clocks and were the starting point for the dissemination of new technologies.6 A manuscript written by a contemporary of Garzoni, the Mantuan nobleman Camillo Capilupi (1531–1603), affirms that Germans, French and Italians of the time had learned from a Lombard master how to build the most complex clocks.7 The Lombard master was a certain Janello Torriani and the ‘most complex products’ of Renaissance horology were the so-called ‘planetary clocks’. Camillo Capilupi was connected with the Milanese circle of Ferrante Gonzaga, Lord of Guastalla, who, as imperial governor of Milan, authorized the funding for the construction of the Microcosm, Janello Torriani’s clock, which was made for Emperor Charles V. Janello Torriani (b. Cremona ca. 1500 – d. Toledo 1585) was a craftsman who had benefited from both a practical and a theoretical education: an early predisposition in mathematics meant that, while still a child, he was taught mathematical astrology by a university-trained physician named Giorgio Fondulo. Fondulo practised privately as a cultural mediator, translating Latin university knowledge into the vernacular. Torriani went on to train as a blacksmith and we know that he fixed the public clock of the city of Cremona. For the same

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community he also crafted four little doors with locks employed in the stoup of the Baptistery, which still exist to this day. In his forties, he was employed in the capital of the Duchy of Milan in the service of at least two imperial governors as engineer and clockmaker. This was the first prestigious stage of a career that took him to the imperial court of Charles V and later to that of the Spanish ruler Philip II. Torriani created a number of devices that were hailed by his contemporaries as mechanical marvels, nimbly passing from micro to macro-mechanics. This was indeed a century that witnessed great steps forward in the miniaturization and enlargement of machines, progress which was enabled by those artisans dealing with movement-transmission, metallurgy, magnifying lenses, and with the production of precision tools. Janello Torriani can be considered one of the most significant practitioners of technological innovation of his time; working for two of the most powerful lords of the sixteenth century gave him the chance to challenge his talents with endeavours suitable for imperial and royal patronage. In fact, Torriani’s journey was not merely geographical: moving from Milan to Germany, the Netherlands and Castile also meant that the Lombard clockmaker had moved from an urban context, where he had to attend guilds and satisfy municipal obligations, to the court. First of all, at court he had no reason to fear for himself or for his household the horrors of war, something that Torriani had experienced several times during his life. At court, a talented artisan could aspire to large commissions, and employment by the some of the world’s greatest monarchs did wonders for one’s reputation. Unfortunately, the creations that contributed to Janello Torriani’s fame, the Microcosm and the Toledo Device, have been lost. In addition to these pieces, we know from Girolamo Cardano (1501–1576) that Torriani was capable of creating Ctesibian pumps and that he had invented several mechanical devices, such as a combination lock and the universal joint, which, ironically, is also known as a ‘Cardan joint’. This was adapted to Charles V’s litter8 to alleviate the pain caused by his gout. Moreover, under the command of Philip II, Torriani participated in the Gregorian Reform of the Calendar, contributing a tract and mathematical instruments for calculus, and he was also granted privileges for invention in several states. Torriani is also remembered for his curious automata and other virtuoso-clockworks, such as a tiny ring-watch. As royal clockmaker, Torriani performed the additional roles of waterworks-surveyor, designer and supervisor for the casting of El Escorial’s bells, and was a stargazer for a project of collective astronomical observations made by a group of court officials spread throughout the Spanish empire.9 Nonetheless, the two greatest accomplishments made under imperial and royal commission were the Microcosm and the Toledo Device. The Microcosm was the most complex and compact clockwork ever built and the Toledo Device was the first gigantic machine in history (a 300m-long complex mechanical system that could elevate water for a good 100m). It is the Microcosm that will be the focus of this article. Torriani came from the Duchy of Milan, where one could find the most celebrated and complex medieval planetary clock: Giovanni de’ Dondi’s Astrarium. Giovanni de’ Dondi (1330–1388) was a physician of the University of Padua who also worked

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for the Visconti in Milan. His planetary clock was probably made between 1365 and 1381, and was later offered to the Lord of Milan Gian Galeazzo Visconti (1347– 1402). The House of Sforza succeeded the Visconti in the fifteenth century, and in 1535, when the last ruler of the Sforza stock died without heirs, the Duchy of Milan returned to the care of its feudal lord, the Holy Roman Emperor, who at that time was Charles V of Habsburg. The Emperor would later charge his son Philip, the future King of Spain, with the Duchy of Milan. In the 1540s, it seems that the Astrarium was too worn out to be restored, and so Janello Torriani substituted it with a more advanced one. Torriani’s Microcosm was thus not the first planetary clock. Torriani was not even the first to try to emulate the Astrarium,10 but he was the last and the most successful in a long line of European specialists who had challenged themselves with the task. From a theoretical perspective, the science behind Janello Torriani’s planetary clock was no different to that accessible to any other part of Latin Christendom and was based on Campanus da Novara’s equatorium.11 The Microcosm was a planetary clock that one can describe as an equatorium driven by an automatic engine. Indeed, seen from a technical standpoint, the equatorium is a geared device that simultaneously represents the position of the seven heavenly bodies (Moon, Venus, Mercury, Sun, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn) from a Ptolemaic geocentric perspective analogically on bi-dimensional geometrical dials. Aequare or equare is the medieval Latin verb used to define the action of determining the position of the sun in the sky, i.e. to see in which part of the zodiac it appears. Campanus did not invent the equatorium. In fact, we know of the existence in classical times of several planetaria: the Antikythera machine, perhaps based on Archimedes’ planetary devices, was lost in a shipwreck in the first century BC and found 2,000 years later. It has been interpreted as a planetarium showing the motions of the seven heavenly bodies and is considered the oldest known geared device.12 In the second century AD Ptolemy standardized the geometrical technique behind any later equatorium and Campanus popularized it. The great difference between Antikythera and the medieval or Renaissance planetary clocks was the engine: since the end of the thirteenth and the beginning of the fourteenth centuries, clocks had become weight-driven machines with the newly invented mechanical escapement. Giovanni de’ Dondi, Zelandinus, Gugliemo de Parise, Regiomontanus and Gerolamo Cardano (who also studied the Astrarium) shared this basic mathematical theoretical knowledge with Torriani and with other skilful astronomers before him. However, Janello Torriani was a craftsman and it was thanks to his mentor Giorgio Fondulo that he could acquire a knowledge that was certainly common to Europe, but not to all Europeans: taught at universities, this knowledge was expressed in Latin, the common language of the cultural elites of Christendom.

ASTROLOGY AND TECHNOLOGY Historians of technology have looked at the mathematical structure of these instruments but not at their uses. As its medieval theoretician Campanus of Novara (1220–1296) explained, the purpose of an equatorium was practical. Campanus states that the equatorium was made

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for those who, because of other occupations, or because of their lack of experience, or even due to their intellectual limitations, encounter difficulties in the solution of these problems [the calculation of the position of the planets], in order to allow them to overcome these difficulties in the quest for numbers and so that they can always find the exact position of the planets and see it through the means of a practical instrument.13 Planetary clocks were useful instruments for astronomical observation: the process of defining the position of a star in the planispherium was dependent on the positions of Venus and the Sun. Thanks to a planetary clock, such deductions were possible at every hour of the day or night, with no need for direct observation of the phenomena. In a scientific system that attributed great relevance to astrological theories, the precise observation of planetary positions in the zodiac was of paramount importance. The practical uses of a planetary clock were varied: on the one hand, they were helpful instruments for casting horoscopes, displaying all the necessary information for such a task, and were also used to forecast eclipses and other cyclical astronomical events. In addition, astrologers could use such clocks to conclude whether a certain hour was propitious or ill-omened for certain activities. Among those disciplines concerned with the use of such instruments, the most systematic and learned was medicine. It was believed that if two equal human bodies created under the influence of the same stars and suffering from the same illness were cured with the same medication, administered in equal quantities but at different times, they would respond in different ways due to astrological influences.14 Willelm Gilliszoon de Wissekerke (Gulliermus Aegidii Zelandinus), who attempted a repair or reconstruction of de’ Dondi’s Astrarium before Torriani, wrote a book called Liber desideratus super celestium motuum indagatione sine calculo, which was printed in the last decade of the fifteenth century in Lyon and Cremona (Torriani’s birthplace). This book offers a good example of the close relationship between astronomy and medicine, one which was likely known to Giorgio Fondulo and to his pupil. The book describes the dimensions, movements and mathematics of the cosmos and then provides information about the practical use of this knowledge, which is described to be primarily medical, and then judicial.15 Hence, practitioners of the ars medica had to be able to cope with astrology and mathematical calculations concerning the position of the planets in the zodiac. For this reason, in response to the Cortes,16 which had attributed the failures of physicians to their ignorance of planetary motions, in 1571, King Philip II of Spain forbade universities from allowing physicians to graduate in medicine without having already obtained a bachelor’s degree in astrology.17 Philip II’s instructions followed a trend already started in Italian universities in the fifteenth century, where astronomy/astrology had become an academic discipline, taught by physicians, with courses covering the span of four years.18 It has been observed that in the first two centuries (fourteenth and fifteenth) of the existence of the mechanical clock, ‘there was no such thing as a typical clockmaker’19 or a well-defined profession of clockmaking. In fact, it has been argued that prominent manufacturers of astronomical and planetary clocks were usually physicians, who acted as the designers and then employed metalworkers to complete their projects.20 Beside the category of utilitas, instruments like these

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clocks would provoke awe in the beholder because of their complexity – as they still do today – and the clocks’ owners therefore enjoyed a high degree of prestige.21 Planetary clocks were considered marvels; they were exclusive luxury products that only emperors, kings, popes, cardinals, dukes and other wealthy princes or cities could afford.

THE PRINCE AND TECHNOLOGICAL INNOVATION Charles V’s passion for clockworks had unexpectedly fortunate consequences for Torriani’s career. Though some historians, in a reaction against the excessive embroidery of narrative and poetic literature on the issue, rejected it as a ‘pink legend’,22 the Emperor’s obsession with clocks was not a myth, nor, as Daniel Damler saw it, part of the Burgundian courtly tradition of providing patronage for automata as a practice of power-representation.23 There is plenty of evidence of the Emperor’s true interest in clocks: when he abdicated in 1556, and all his belongings were packed for the last voyage from Flanders to Spain, he waited until the very last moment to have his bed and clocks packed up.24 He found refuge in the monastery of Yuste in Extremadura and among the small court that he took with him were two clockmakers and an apprentice, namely Janello Torriani, Jan de Valin and Giorgio de’ Diana. Contemporary sources tell us that after an abundant breakfast and a moment of prayer with his confessor friar Juan Regla, Charles spent the part of the morning before ten o’clock with Janello Torriani and his clocks.25 To the Emperor, clocks were a serious matter. In a letter with instructions for his son Philip, dated 4 May 1543, Charles found no metaphor more suitable to express reliability than that of a clock. Advising his son to place his utmost faith in a loyal courtier, he wrote: ‘keep don Joán Çuñaga as your clock and alarm, and be always ready to listen to him and to trust him too’.26 Another factor brought clocks to Charles’ attention: astrological influences, as we have already seen, were an important part of the contemporary scientific paradigm. Among the array of hypotheses as to why Charles elected to reside in Yuste, there is one theory that attributes the choice to Janello Torriani. According to the friar Jose de Sigüenza (1544–1606), Torriani told the monks of San Jerome of Yuste that he had chosen the area of Yuste because it was the best place for the Emperor’s health. According to this report, the decision was taken with astrological calculations in mind.27 Sigüenza was well-connected at court and he personally knew many people involved with this story, including Torriani. With regard to the use of astrological calculation in relation to prognoses for health, this testimony, when considered in the light of the Emperor’s terrible gout, while if not true, may well have been considered credible. Moreover, according to the historiographer Ludovico Dolce (1508–1568), Charles V used an astrological rhetoric to explain his thoughts on the role of the monarchy: [the Emperor] used to say that princes, like the sphere of Saturn, the highest of all seven planets, and the slowest in motion, should not be hasty in their decisions and actions. And in the same way as the Sun is the same towards the poor and the

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rich, equal and common to everybody, those who rule have to equally show benevolence and justice to each person. And as the eclipse of the Sun is generally a sign of great turmoil, so each half-mistake that the king or lord makes provides humankind with great disturbance. He also used to say that as the Sun melts the wax down and hardens the mud, so kings’ liberality makes good people better, and the evil ones ungrateful and worse. He also added that as the Moon moves inferior things especially, not because she is more powerful, but because she is the closest planet to Earth, so the proximity of the king is of paramount importance in quietening war or calming turmoil that may be generated in peace.28 Furthermore, it has been recorded that Charles revealed his curiosity about science and scientific instruments in his late thirties. The cosmographer Alonso de Santa Cruz, who wrote a chronicle about the Emperor, claimed that Charles spent time with him in 1538 and 1539, seeking to learn about astrology, the sphere, the theory of planets, navigation issues and cosmographical globes.29 The two planetary clocks that Torriani made for the Emperor reflected this same scientific knowledge in their construction and application. By the end of his reign, Charles’ passion for clocks was clearly discernible. From the letters of the ambassadors of England, France and Venice, it seems that Charles V, especially after the failure of the siege of Metz (which ended in January 1553), could only find pleasure when in close contact with his collection of clocks. Indeed, at that time, the Emperor had entered a state of mental and physical prostration. Before Yuste, on his return from Metz, he spent long hours plunged in deep thought and weeping like a child. Nobody dared to offer any comfort to him. Neither had anybody sufficient authority to dispel the sad notions which were so prejudicial to his health. He granted audiences to ambassadors which lasted as long as it might take to say a Creed. His only occupation and his exclusive concern day and night was to care for his clocks and keep them all working in unison. He has many of them, and they constitute his greatest obsession, together with another kind of clock, which he may have invented and which he has ordered to be placed in the frame of a window. As he cannot sleep at night, he often calls together his servants and others and orders them to light torches and to help him to take certain clocks to pieces and put them together again.30 Another contemporary source, a biography of the Emperor written by his courtier Zenocarus (Guill Van Snouckaert), gives similar reports of Charles V neglecting diplomatic audiences and amusing himself by keeping all his clocks working in unison.31 Furthermore, despite suffering from painful gout, the Emperor did not give up his gargantuan meals, which were heavy and rich in condiments and spices. Federico Badoer, Venetian Ambassador to the King of the Romans, wrote a relation to the Senate of Venice about Charles V and observed thus: With regard to the table, the Emperor eats excessively everyday . . .. But this is not enough for him. One day he said to his butler Monfalconnet, with a bitter tone in his voice, that the butler could not be showing any judgment in the orders he gave to the cooks, because all the courses served to him were tasteless. ‘I do not know – responded the butler – what more I could do to please Your Majesty,

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unless I try a new dish for Your Majesty: a broth made out of clocks.’ These words made the Emperor laugh a lot, and longer than anyone had ever seen him laugh before; those in the room did not laugh any less, because, as everybody knows, there is nothing in the world that His Majesty loves more than standing in front of clocks.32 But Charles V did not just stand in front of clocks and watch them. As we have learned from the English ambassador, he both assembled them and took them to pieces. He synchronised them. He might have even contributed to their invention. The French ambassador wryly suggested that even if Charles had three fingers of a hand amputated due to gout, he would still amuse himself by using the remaining two fingers to put clocks together.33

THE COURT AS TRADING ZONE Charles V ordered Ferrante Gonzaga, who was governor of the Duchy of Milan from April 1546, to fund the construction of Torriani’s planetary clock.34 Charles’ order had probably arrived in 1545 when Janello Torriani travelled to the imperial court held in Worms. The clockmaker was accompanying Marquis Alfonso d’Avalos, Ferrante Gonzaga’s predecessor as governor of Milan.35 The idea of reconstructing the Astrarium was older, perhaps dating back to the last duke of the House of Sforza, Francesco II, who died in 1535. The Microcosm was funded by the ducal treasure. A series of five tranches of payment totalling 600 scudi were issued between 19 April 1547 and 11 October 1548.36 In the following years, Torriani brought his clock across the Alps to the imperial court held in Augsburg, Innsbruck and Brussels four times. Torriani visited Augsburg between the end of August and the end of October in 1550, Innsbruck during the winter of 1551–1552, and Brussels between March 1554 and November 1555. The following year, the clockmaker went once again to Brussels and the Low Countries, from where he departed for Spain with the abdicating Emperor in September 1556. It may have been under the direct suggestion of the Emperor or of Ferrate Gonzaga that Torriani began collaborating with the precious stone worker Jacopo Nizzola da Trezzo, who produced a globe of rock crystal for the clock. Jacopo Nizzola da Trezzo also had a workshop in Milan and went on to share the same Spanish destiny as Torriani. The rock crystal sphere contained a geographical paperglobe which had been made on imperial command by the Flemish cosmographer Gerhard Kremer, also known as Mercator (1512–1594). The two spheres geared to the mechanisms of the clock and coroneted the top of it. However, despite this precious addition, the clock had already been finished in 1549. Indeed, as the Milanese historiographer and eyewitness Gasparo Bugato wrote, the clock worked even without the crystal sphere and it was shown to the resident ambassadors in Milan without this feature.37 In 1550, Torriani’s fellow countryman Marco Girolamo Vida (ca. 1480–1566), a humanist bishop, had also described the clock as finished and already functioning.38 In March 1554, Torriani and Nizzola delivered the finished Microcosm, complete with its sphere, to Charles V. The Emperor, who in 1552 granted Janello Torriani a lifelong pension (that would later be turned into an

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hereditary one) and bestowed upon him the ‘title’ of ‘prince of the clockmakers’ and consequently hired him in his household, where the clockmaker remained until the end of his days. Torriani was part of the 50–70 servants who followed the retired Emperor to the monastery of Yuste and worked for him there. At this stage, Janello Torriani was already working on a second planetary clock for the Emperor and most probably designing it with royal input: this second clock would be the Crystalline. The Spanish royal historiographer Ambrosio de Morales (1513–1591) wrote that Janello Torriani had once told him that he had been working on designs for the Microcosm for twenty years. During this time Torriani said that he was so absorbed by the task of designing the clock that twice he fell seriously ill, risking his own life. After the careful and lengthy preparations, it took him only three and a half years to actually make the clock (and its 1,800 toothed wheels) with his own hands. Morales calculated that, excluding holidays, Torriani must have created three of these wheels a day, a terrific achievement. The most impressive feat described by Morales is that Torriani proudly claimed that he had never made the same wheel twice. The clockmaker stated that he did not require anyone’s help, but made everything alone, thanks to a special lathe he invented that could create wheels with equal teeth.39 Torriani’s rotary file cutter is the earliest known gear-cutting machine, and it is most probably this tool that allowed for the miniaturization of the Microcosm’s impressive train of gears. Unfortunately, Torriani’s clocks have been lost,40 but, despite this, we may reconstruct the Microcosm’s characteristic uniqueness and novelty by considering the context in which the clock was created. Indeed, Emperor Charles V considered Torriani’s Microcosm a unique achievement and the first of its kind, as we can read in the imperial diploma that granted the clockmaker a lifelong pension.41 Regrettably, in the many contemporary descriptions of the object, the true innovation of the clock was not explicitly illustrated. The novelty of the Microcosm was probably so evident to contemporary spectators that it was not necessary to emphasize it and to describe it in detail. However, as soon as the end of the sixteenth century, Johannes Kepler (1571–1630), in a letter to Michael Maestlin (1550–1631) about planetary clocks, seemed to have lost the sense of excitement surrounding the Microcosm’s distinctive features: Many rumours of this kind have reached our ears. Ramus [Pierre de la Ramée, 1515–1572] says there are two [planetary clocks] in Paris, one in Sicily and others in Germany, in spite of not working altogether satisfactorily. The emperor Charles had a similar machine when he was near Ingolstadt and it is said it was the work of Francesco (sic) Turriano of Cremona.42 How is the Microcosm classified in the history of planetary clocks? What was so innovative about this machine? In order to reconstruct the technological novelty of the Microcosm when it emerged in 1550, we must look at the descriptions provided by the many contemporary accounts.43 From these accounts we learn that Torriani’s planetary clock had eight faces (one more than de’ Dondi’s Astrarium – Figure 1), that it was a good 60cm high and around 42cm wide, and that it comprised 1,500– 1,800 mechanical components driven by springs and wound by a single key. It has been suggested that the Microcosm may appear in Jan Brueghel the Elder’s (1568–

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FIGURE 1: Reconstruction of Giovanni de’ Dondi’s Astrarium by Luigi Pippa. The two strings hanging from the device are connected under the pedestal with weights that drive the machine. Source: Università degli Studi di Padova, Rettorato.

1625) painting The Sense of Hearing, in which alarm clocks from Philip II’s collection are included among several musical instruments. Indeed, descriptions of Janello Torriani’s Microcosm and Crystalline coincide with two of the clocks in the painting, but some incongruence may result from the fact that The Sense of Hearing was conceived as an allegorical painting, which had to evoke an overall sense of the royal collection rather than describing it in detail. In order to understand what technological innovation the Microcosm contributed to the field of planetary horology, I intend here to compare those medieval and Renaissance planetary clocks made before and after the Microcosm was put on display. The differences that emerge from these two groups will help us to analyse the eyewitness accounts of the Microcosm. There were several planetary clocks produced between 1350 and 1550, but, beside the Astrarium, we know of only two of them in detail: the one (Figure 2) made by Lorenzo della Volpaia (ca. 1446–1512)

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FIGURE 2: Lorenzo della Volpaia’s planetary clock with all eight astronomical dials displayed on a single plate. Reconstruction by Alberto Gorla based on della Volpaia’s drawings. Source: Museo Galileo, Florence (Photo: Franca Principe).

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FIGURE 3: The so-called planetary clock of Oronce Finé. Notice how both Giovanni de’ Dondi’s and della Volpaia’s clocks are visibly weightdriven mechanisms, whereas the weights driving Oronce Finé’s and Cardinal Albrecht’s clocks are hidden within the pedestals. Source, Paris: Bibliothèque SainteGeneviève (Photo: Oliver Dupif)

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FIGURE 4: Drawing of Archbishop Albrecht IV von Hoenzollern’s clock (ca. 1540). Source: Bayerisches Nationalmuseum, Munich, Inv. Nr. NN 1263.

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and an anonymous German one, kept in Paris in the library of Sainte Geneviève (Figure 3), henceforth referred to as the clock of Oronce Finé (1494–1555). While the clocks by Giovanni de’ Dondi and by the Florentine Lorenzo della Volpaia44 were lost, they were reconstructed in the twentieth century thanks to the accurate information provided by the still existing manuscripts produced by the clocks’ creators. Oronce Finé’s clock is the only original preserved planetary clock older than the Microcosm. In the 1550s it belonged to Cardinal de Lorraine-Guise, probably the foremost sixteenth-century French ecclesiastic prince. The clock45 is allegedly of late fifteenth-century German origin, and was renovated in 1553 by Oronce Finé, ‘the restorer of mathematical studies in France’.46 Unlike Torriani, who built his clock from scratch, Oronce Finé restored Cardinal de Lorraine-Guise’s machine by adding a single part to the mechanism (that displaying the solar hours and the astrolabe-dial). There is a fair chance that this planetary clock was the one illustrated in a set of three drawings made for Cardinal Albrecht IV Hohenzollern, Archbishop-Elector of Mainz and Bishop of Brandenburg (1490–1545). Indeed, both clocks share the same morphology (Figures 3 and 4): they both have five faces with mathematical dials (instead of the Astrarium’s seven and the Microcosm’s eight). The great difference between Oronce Finé’s clock and the illustrated one is in the style of the pedestal and especially the shape of the upper part: the drawn clock has a small table-clock pinnacle on the top, upon which stands a little sculpture. The clock from Paris has an egg-shaped cover with a large rotating celestial sphere partially emerging from its top. It has been suggested that the subject of the illustrations made for Archbishop Albrecht IV might have been the clock which was begun by Regiomontanus and later completed by the blacksmith Hans or Jacob Bülmann from Nuremberg47 in cooperation with the astronomer Johann Werner (d. 1522), Peter Helein, and the engraver and writer Johann Neudörffer. Archbishop Albrecht IV seems to have purchased that very clock in 1529 for 180 gulden.48 Since the archbishop had passed away in 1545, Charles V might have acquired this clock from his heirs. The celestial sphere could have been added under Charles V’s command, as in the case of the Microcosm. Further studies on the clock and on the drawing may shed new light on this problem. The history surrounding Oronce Finé’s clock is interwoven with that of Torriani’s Microcosm on the battlefield of Metz. Cardinal Charles de Guise-Lorraine had been Bishop of Metz since 1550 (though he had been administrating the bishopric even before that date) and was brother to François de Lorraine, Duke of Guise. The Duke of Guise was named governor of Metz after the French King Henry II took the imperial city from Charles V, thanks to an alliance with the Lutheran princes of the Kingdom of Germany. At the end of 1552, Emperor Charles V had tried to recover Metz with a siege that proved unsuccessful. It was a few months since Charles V had granted Janello Torriani his pension for the creation of his planetary clock, and the Emperor was outside the city walls of Metz when he received a letter from the clockmaker asking him to press the administration of Milan to pay his pension. The request, despite the Emperor being significantly otherwise occupied, was immediately satisfied: Charles V wrote to the governor of Milan, ordering him to satisfy Torriani’s requests. This shows the Emperor’s attachment to his marvellous

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new clock and to its creator. A few days later the Emperor was defeated. By January 1553, the Duke of Guise could celebrate his victory and Charles V had to leave his camp in such a rush that the Duke was able to plunder the imperial tents: he seized a series of precious wall-tapestries, personal belongings of the Emperor that he later gave as a gift to his brother the Cardinal.49 I wonder if the German planetary clock from Metz, restored by Finé, may have accompanied those tapestries. Indeed, when Petrus Ramus wrote in 1569 that he had seen Finé’s clock, he claimed that it was part of the war booty from the ‘germanico bello’, possibly the battle against the Imperials at Metz.50

MINIATURIZATION After the Microcosm had appeared between the years 1549 and 1554 in Milan, Augsburg, Innsbruck and Brussels, the production of planetary clocks began to flourish.51 Only four planetary clocks made after the Microcosm (1550) and before Janello Torriani’s death in 1585 are still in existence: three were made in the Kingdom of Germany, and one in Italy. Between 1554 and ca. 1559, Philip Immser of Strasburg,52 a professor at the University of Tübingen, fashioned a planetary clock (Figure 5) that would end up in the collection of Emperor Ferdinand II (today part of the collections of the Technisches Museum in Vienna).53 In the 1560s, Eberhard Baldewein (1525–1593) made three planetary clocks, of which only two still exist. These are on display in museums in Kassel (Astronomisch-Physikalisches Kabinett – Figure 6) and Dresden (Mathematisch-Physikalisches Salon – Figure 7).54 These two clocks were made for Prince William the Wise of Hesse (1532–1592) – who became William IV Landgrave of Hesse-Kassel in 1567 – a champion of the Reformation and one of the foremost patrons of astronomy. The first clock was probably started in the second half of the 1550s and was completed in 1561. The second surviving clock was made between 1563 and 1567, when William gave it as a present to his cousin, the Elector Augustus of Saxony. In the 1560s, the Duke of Urbino Guidobaldo II della Rovere commissioned Gio. Maria Barocci to make a splendid clock. This clock dates from 1570 and was meant as a present for Pope Pius V. It is a single-spring driven clock, and it is contested by scholars as to whether it should be classified as a planetary or an astronomical clock. It was stolen from the Vatican during the Napoleonic Wars and today it belongs to the Bernard collection of Paris.55 Were there any major technical differences between those clocks built before the Microcosm (the three clocks we know in detail: de’ Dondi’s, della Volpaia’s and Oronce Finé’s) and the ones crafted after 1550? The humanist and university professor Giovanni Musonio (d. 1561), a fellow countryman of Torriani, said in an encomiastic poem on Torriani’s clock that the device provoked awe in Germany.56 As we have already seen, the Microcosm, with its hundreds of components, was an example of the most refined mechanics of the time, but there was some other characteristic that made it a prototype worthy of imitation. There must have been some technical feature that differentiated Torriani’s clock from its ancestors. As Capilupi suggests in his aforementioned manuscript, the true innovation of the Microcosm had to be of a technical nature.

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FIGURE 5: Philipp Immser’s planetary clock, Strasbourg 1555–1557. Source: Technisches Museum für Industrie und Gewerbe, Wien.

The first thing we can observe is that the clocks by Giovanni de’ Dondi, Lorenzo della Volpaia, Oronce Finé, and Albrecht IV (if this was not the same one as Finé’s), were all weight-driven devices. The same can be reasonably stated for those other lost clocks crafted before 1550. They had to be rather tall to let the weight unroll for a reasonable time and the weights had to be heavy enough to provide the necessary energy to drive such a large number of rather voluminous components. Immser’s, Baldewein’s and Barocci’s planetary clocks were instead smaller and spring-driven. Torriani’s Microcosm, according to the many descriptions we have of it, was only two feet high (around 60cm) and it was also spring-driven. As the anonymous secretary to the Venetian ambassador Antonio Tiepolo wrote, the Microcosm could be taken anywhere and it was wound with a single key. With its hundreds of wheels, this clock was an impressive example of miniaturization. From this chronological standpoint, we might infer that the planetary clocks built after the Microcosm were indebted to it for their spring-driven motors.

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FIGURE 6: The so-called Wilhelmshur or Planetenlaufuhr made by Eberhard Baldewein together with his master Wilhelm IV of Hesse-Kassel, finished around 1562. Source: Orangerie, Kassel, Inv U 63, Neg. Nr. TP80177

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FIGURE 7: The ‘Dresden Planetenlaufuhr’ by Eberhard Baldewein (1563–1567) for elector Augustus of Saxony. Source: Mathematisch-Physikalischer Salon, Staatliche Kunstsammlungen, Dresden (Photo: Hans-Peter Klut).

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Needless to say, Torriani was not the inventor of the spring-driven clock, which had first been created in the fifteenth century, if not earlier, but he was most probably the first to apply its mechanisms to such a complex and heavy device. It was thanks to his special clockmaker’s lathe that he could miniaturize the components of the mechanism so that a set of springs could substitute the extremely heavy weights necessary to move voluminous clocks. Torriani’s springs had enough power to drive a mechanism made of hundreds of smaller wheels. From this perspective, Cardano’s comments in his De Subtilitate make sense: in the chapter ‘on crafts and crafty things’ (De artibus, arificiosisque rebus), he describes the universal joint made for a litter of Charles V and he attributes its invention to Torriani. Just before his description of this universal joint, and in the same paragraph, Cardano describes the invention of the spring-driven clock. It is likely that, when at the end of the paragraph he says, ‘Torriani invented those things (horum inventor est)’, he was also referring to the spring-driven clocks.57 Although springs were already known to exist, their involvement in such a complex and heavy mechanism as a planetary clock was probably considered very innovative and a great accomplishment. In later editions of De Subtilitate, Cardano would add a further paragraph on Torriani’s reconstruction of the Astrarium. The Microcosm, therefore, was the first portable table-planetary clock. The theory outlined above can also help us to answer Silvio Leydi’s question: why was the Crystalline not as famous as the Microcosm, if it was even more compact and three times more expensive to make? Indeed, immediately after Charles V employed Janello Torriani in his household, the clockmaker started work on a new planetary clock. This was a clock with a case made of rock-crystal windows framed in gilded brass. The idea was to allow the eye to steal a glimpse of the complex secrets of the clockworks. Charles V was familiar with Claudianus’ description of Archimedes’ glass-machine,58 and this source might have been the inspiration for the transparency of the case for the new clock. Although the Crystalline was finished only a few years after the Emperor’s death, Janello Torriani had continuously worked on it under imperial supervision for several years. The patron was likely very influential in designing the Crystalline, which ended up costing (to make) the enormous sum of 3,000 ducats. Nonetheless, though a remarkable and precious planetary clock, the Crystalline was not the first of its kind. The Microcosm was. And the display of this innovative instrument at the imperial court in the early 1550s must have rustled a few branches in technologically fertile central Europe. But it was probably not until after the Peace of Passau in August 1552 that Catholic and Protestant princes could conceive of spending their resources on a competitive ground other than that of the battlefield: the patronage of arts and science. The high level of craftsmanship involved in clockmaking in the cities in the Kingdom of Germany provided the right technical environment for the reproduction of the Microcosm’s innovations. The exhibition of such a clock at court had probably inspired the princes of the Empire to emulate their lord the Emperor. Members of the great houses of Hohenzollern, Wittelsbach, Wettin and Hesse were the German princes who patronized the creation of planetary clocks. Considering that Charles V’s brother Ferdinand was, as King of Bohemia, the fourth lay grand elector, we see that nearly all of the greatest feudal lords of the Holy Roman Empire were involved

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with planetary horology, and, except for Cardinal Albrecht IV Hohenzollern (whose planetary clock was older than the Microcosm), all of their projects to create planetary clocks were started shortly after Torriani’s Microcosm was displayed at court.59 Count Palatine Ottheinrich of Neuburg-Palatine (who in 1556 also became Prince Elector of the Palatinate) had his residence some 50km from Augsburg. He was the first among those lords to commission a planetary clock (made by Immser) in the style of the Microcosm. In fact, we can consider Immser’s planetary clock as the morphological link between Torriani’s, which was also spring-driven and had a rotating sphere mounted on top, and the later German examples,60 which had all a four-faces case and a rotating sphere on top. Immser’s planetary clock has a fourfaces case, and it is topped by a small octagonal tower that contains a rotating sphere. All of these planetary clocks are slightly larger than Torriani’s creations, but seem to draw on the model of the Microcosm and the Crystalline.61

INCREASING COMPLEXITY REQUIRES COLLABORATION The process of emulation was a difficult one and reveals how such complex sixteenthcentury mechanical endeavours required the collaboration of people with differing specializations, both theoretical and practical. The historian of technology Henry C. King has reconstructed the painful process of the creation of Immser’s mechanism: Immser had been pupil to Johannes Stöffler at the University of Tübingen. Later he took his post there, teaching mathematics: Immser persuaded Elector Palatine Ott Heinrich, noted for his scholarly and artistic interests, to support the project, but he soon got into difficulties. He made matters worse by extending his original plans, and in 1556, after two years’ work, had only the framework completed. In his report to the elector he requested payment of 1600 gulden, despite the terms of the original agreement, namely, payment 700 gulden on delivery of the complete mechanism and an additional 100 gulden if it performed satisfactorily for a year. The Elector refused to revise the contract and instead sent him the clockmaker Gerhard Emmoser von Rainen (d. 1584) of Heidelberg. This only made matters worse. Emmoser seems to have been capable of making and assembling the wheel-trains, but Immser resented his presence and preferred to work alone. At one stage his mistrust reached such a pitch that he dismantled the mechanism and locked the parts in a trunk. Eventually, at the end of 1557, the clock was finished, but the accuracy of the wheel-work left much to be desired, a fault which he laid at Emmoser’s door. He begged the Elector to accept the clock as it stood, for the project had assumed the proportions of a nightmare. This was done, but the astronomical indications proved so troublesome that the Elector, confined to his bed through sickness, lost patience and demanded the return of the monies paid unless the clock performed correctly. He died in the following year, 1559, to be succeeded by Elector Palatine Frederick III.62 The creation of these impressive clockworks was close to the limits of human capabilities. Indeed, although they are always remembered as the product of one

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single master, the reality was that such pieces often reflected the efforts of a whole team, with work undertaken by multiple persons with different specializations. In fact, the knowledge of both the relevant craftsmanship and theory required by such an endeavour was simply becoming too much for any one clockmaker. We have seen how Torriani claimed that he fell gravely ill upon two occasions due to the fearsome intellectual efforts involved in designing his Microcosm. Torriani, who was a master craftsman, could have never accomplished the Microcosm without the tutorship of a university-trained mathematical astrologer: the physician Giorgio Fondulo (d. 1545). Despite the fact that Torriani created all the mechanical components of his clock, Jacopo Nizzola da Trezzo worked on the rock-crystal components and in all probability also handled the gilded decorations for the Microcosm, unless Leone Leoni was responsible for these. The famous cartographer Mercator made the small painted globe that was inserted into Nizzola’s celestial sphere.63 All these additions were made under the direction of Charles V, a fact which shows how patrons could have an important role in designing new technological devices. As we have already mentioned, Charles V had an even bigger role in the making of the Crystalline. Torriani was assisted in his work on the Crystalline at the imperial retirement at the monastery of Yuste by the young Giacomo de’ Diana, who was a relative of his, and the Flemish clockmaker Joannes Vallin. Jacopo Nizzola di Trezzo once again took care of the abundant pieces of rock-crystal employed in the new clock. Immser’s and Torriani’s experiences show how courtly patronage promoted technological innovation based on both the highest craftsmanship and the best university mathematical theories. As shown by the collaboration between Torriani and Mercator (see note 63), imperial patronage was able to gather the best practical and theoretical knowledge of the Empire at court and to pull down the wall that usually divided university academics and guilds’ craftsmen. Renaissance planetary clocks are the material expression of this synergy. Let us now return to the other two aforementioned still extant German planetary clocks, which we will observe as the products of a team united under princely patronage. Eberhard Baldewein, who, according to Ramus, was, curiously enough, a tailor by training,64 made the two planetary clocks shown in Figures 6 and 7. He managed to enter the court of the Landgrave of Hesse in his role as heating and lighting supervisor at Kassel Castle. During this appointment Baldewein achieved a certain familiarity with the son of the Landgrave, Wilhelm, the future patron of the astronomer Tycho Brahe (1546–1601) and of the famous clockmaker Jost Bürgi (1552–1632). After the election of Wilhelm in 1567, the common passion for astronomy that had fuelled their friendship won Baldewein the post of chief mechanic in the castle’s workshop. But the cooperation with Wilhelm and the court astronomer Andreas Schöner (1528–1590) had begun long before the title of Landgrave was bestowed upon Wilhelm. Wilhelm was said to have constructed a machine useful for predicting planetary positions sometime before the 1560s. His machine was made of metal and moved by gear-work, and was based on Petrus Apianus’ Astronomicon Caesareum (1540). Together with his astronomer, Wilhelm had also begun to attempt a correction of the Alphonsine Tables, but, in order to do so, he needed precise scientific instruments.65 Thus, he decided to build an accurate

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planetary clock, a project which involved Wilhelm himself, his astronomer Schöner, Baldewein, two clockmakers called Hans Bucher and Christoffel Müller, and a goldsmith, provided in the form of Hermann Diepel. The clock was successfully accomplished in 1561 and afterwards, the team worked on two other similar devices, of which only the second survives.66

CONCLUSION In conclusion, thanks to the Microcosm we have been able to delve into a process of technological transfer, following the passage of knowledge from Renaissance Italy towards Northern Europe and Spain. This case study has shown which agencies promoted the development of new technologies and these innovative technologies were transferred from one place to another. Thanks to Charles V’s personal interests and his significant financial investments in them, Janello Torriani, a man of great talent, was given the chance to innovate planetary horology. The Emperor was also responsible for transporting the Microcosm to Germany, Brabant and Castile, and probably for the transportation of another planetary clock to Metz, and therefore to Paris (here I refer to Oronce Finé’s clock). After the Microcosm’s appearances in Milan, Innsbruck, Augsburg and Brussels, Immser, Baldewein and other German clockmakers applied spring-driven mechanisms to planetary clocks. In order to do so, they had to miniaturize the mechanisms and to create taskforces made of highly skilled craftsmen and university-trained mathematicians. Princely patronage, triggered by the desire to emulate their lord, and innovate, provided the funding for such endeavours. The fact that some of these patrons were Lutherans, probably gave them a further reason to compete with the Emperor, adding to a claim of a better knowledge of the metaphysical truth a physical one. The story of the Microcosm shows that Renaissance courts were very important ‘luoghi di sociabilità’ or ‘trading zones’ for innovative thought:67 the court of Charles V brought together skilled and learned people from different parts of the Empire and gave them a place to discuss exciting new projects, despite their different linguistic, social, epistemological and religious backgrounds. Moreover, princely patronage was able to sustain the synergic work of different experts on a specific project for several years, by providing funding that no individual could have ever raised alone, and has to be considered a fundamental driving force in the development of miniaturized technologies during the Renaissance.68 From a long-term perspective, the story of the Microcosm reflects a major technical trend of experimentation in sixteenth-century mechanics: beside precision (as Bruce T. Moran has emphasized), some of the most relevant technological achievements in this period were connected with the experimentation in macro and micromechanics. Torriani’s career provides the perfect representation of this trend, from the gigantic device of Toledo to the crafting of watches set in rings, and on to the amazing planetary clocks. The process of miniaturization was possible thanks to the designing of special lathes to cut small gears precisely and to grind lenses, instruments necessary to magnify (though there is no evidence of such use in Torriani’s workshop) and later to gaze at the stars.69

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NOTES 1. Johann Neudörffer, Nachrichten von Künstlern und Werkleuten (Osnabrück: Wien W. Braumüller [Nürnberg, 1547], 1970). 2. Petrus Ramus, Scholarum mathematicarum libri unus et triginta. Basileae: per Eusebium Episcopivm, et Nicolai Fratris haeredes, 1569, p. 31. 3. Gasparo Bugatto was a sixteenth-century Milanese historiographer. Bugatto does not talk about this German clock for the Sultan but he describes instead Janello Torriani’s planetary clock, the focus of the present article! Gasparo Bugati milanese, Historia Universale, in Venetia, apresso Gabriel Giolito di Ferrari 1570, pp. 1025–6. 4. Tommaso Garzoni, La piazza universale di tutte le professioni del mondo: in Venetia apresso Roberto Meietti, [1585] 1601, p. 625: ‘hoggidì portano il vanto in questa professione, venendo tutti gli horologii più belli, e più giusti dale parti loro, ove sopra tutti fu miracoloso quello, che mandò Ferdinando Imperatore (come scrive il Bugato) a Solimano Re de’ Turchi.’ 5. David Thompson, ‘Lo sviluppo dell’orologio meccanico: il contesto europeo’, in Giuseppe Brusa (ed.), La misura del tempo: L’antico splendore dell’orologeria italiana dal XV al XVIII secolo (Trento: Museo Castello Buonconsiglio, 2005), p. 112. 6. Some relevant examples can be found in the following articles: Ludovico Magistretti, ‘Geni della scienza e straordinari progressi nella misura del tempo: l’eredità di Galileo’, and Silvio A. Bedini, ‘L’Orologio notturno: un’invenzione italiana del XVII secolo’, in Brusa, La misura del tempo, pp. 189–219. 7. Camillo Capilupi, ms. Vittorio Emanuele 1009, cc. 152v–3v, and ms. Vittorio Emanuele 1062, c. 33v, Biblioteca Nazionale di Roma. Ars instrumenti horologici pro tempore sereno editum per reverendum magistrum Leonardum Cremonensem: Biblioteque National de France, Lat. 7192. 8. In the 1560 Basel edition of the De Subtilitate libri XXI, Cardano wrote that Torriani was familiar with the principle of Ctesibian pump: ‘His igitur demonstrates tanquam principiis, ratio consurgit machinae Ctesibicae, quae sic constat, ut etiam Ianellus Turrianus Cremonensis, vir magni ingenii in omnibus quae ad machinas pertinet, opere ipso expressit’: Hierolamus Cardanus, De Subtilitate libri XXI, Elio Nenci (ed.), tomo I, libri I–VII (Milan: Franco Angeli, 2004), p. 67, footnote (a). 9. In 1577, the royal cosmographer Juan López de Velasco organized a systematic scientific observation of a lunar eclipse: Juan López de Velasco and Andrés García de Céspedes observed the phenomenon from Madrid, Janello Torriani and a certain Dr Sobrino from Toledo, Rodrigo Zamorano from Sevilla, and Jaime Juan from Mexico: Carlos E. Esteve Secall, ‘Aspectos histórico – gráficos de una observación a escala intercontinental: Las Instrucciones del Cosmógrafo López de Velasco’, in XVI Congreso internacional de ingeniería gráfica (Zaragoza: Ingeograf, Studium Generale Civitatis Caesaraugustanae, 2004), online version, http://www.egrafica.unizar.es/ ingegraf/pdf/Comunicacion17110.pdf. [accessed 29 January 2013]. 10. Two first-rate astronomers, Zelandinus and Regiomontanus, are said to have challenged themselves with a restoration or reconstruction of de’ Dondi’s machine (Regiomontanus had tried to rebuild de’ Dondi’s Astrarium but never completed the

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task). Even before them, as early as 1456, the Duke of Milan Francesco I Sforza had called a certain Gulielmo de Parise to restore the Astrarium, and during the 1470s the succeeding Duke Galezzo Maria Sforza called a certain master Zanino, probably Zanino from Clusone, who was a clockmaker from the area of Bergamo, to do the same: Emmanuel Poulle, ‘L’Horloge planétaire de Regiomontanus’, in Regiomontanus: Studien (Vienna: Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 1980); Gerhard Dohrn-Van Rossum, History of Hour: Clocks and Modern Temporal Orders (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1996), p. 187; Emmanuel Poulle, ‘L’equatoire de Guillaume Gilliszoon de Wissekerke’, Physis, 3 (1961), pp. 223–51. 11. Some manuscript and printed versions of the Theorica Planetarum were circulating together with paper versions of the volvelles. These paper displays were probably inspired by texts on the astrolabe. We have examples of some of these Renaissance mathematical instruments made out of paper: for instance, Zelandinus’ and Johannes Schöner’s works on the equatorium, Petrus Apianus’ Astronomicon Caesareum and the paper-instruments in the shape of volvelles that Torriani sent to Gregory XIII for the reform of the calendar at the beginning of the 1580s. Poulle, ‘L’equatoire de Guillaume Gilliszoon’; Vicente de Cadenas y Vicent, Hacienda de Carlos V al fallecer en Yuste (Madrid: Hidalguia, 1985), p. 22; Juanelo Turriano, Breve discurso a SM el Rey Católico en torno a la reducción del año y reforma del calendario, José María Gonzáles Alboin (ed.) (Madrid: Fundación Juanelo Turriano, 1990). 12. Derek de Solla Price, ‘An Ancient Greek Computer’, American Scientific, 200/6 (1959), pp. 60–7; Michael T. Wright has made a marvellous reconstruction of the device and has supported the original theory as expounded by Price (though he later changed his mind). An illuminating virtual reconstruction by Mogi Vicentini, made after Wright’s model, can be seen at the following website: www.mogi-vice.com/ Antikythera/A-W-M.zip. 13. My translation: ‘Quindi, per tutti coloro che per alter occupazioni, o per mancanza di esperienza, o per limiti intellettivi hanno diffioltà nella soluzione di quei problemi, affinché essi, aggirate le suddette difficoltà nella ricerca dei numeri, trovino sempre l’esatta posizione dei pianeti, e possano vederla per mezzo di uno strumento pratico . . .’: Alessandro Gunella, ‘Campanus de Novara: un precursore del Dondi?’, La Voce di Hora, 4 (1998), p. 58. The historian of science Bruce T. Moran noted this very idea in the Astronomcum Caesareum by Apianus, however he did not mention Campanus’ tradition: Bruce T. Moran, ‘Princes, Machines and the Valuation of Precision in the 16th Century’, Sudhoffs Archiv, Bd. 61, H. 3 (1977) 3. QUARTAL, pp. 209–28. 14. ‘Quante medicine totalmente uguali, in un medesimo corpo parimente disposto, per essere date dagli ignari medici in diversi tempi et hore, diverse fanno l’operationi!’: from Pietro Adamo de Micheli in: Alberto Gorla, Rosa Manara Gorla and Rodolfo Signorini (eds), L’Orologio Astronomico-Astrologico di Mantova (Bozzolo: Chiribella Arti Grafiche, 1992), p. 91. 15. Eugenio Garin, Lo Zodiaco della Vita: la Polemica sull’Astrologia dal Trecento al Cinquecento (Rome–Bari: Laterza, [1976] 2007), p. 36. 16. The Parliament of Castile.

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17. David C. Goodman, Power and Penury: Government, Technology and Science in Philip II’s Spain (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988), pp. 7–9. 18. Michael H. Shank, ‘L’astronomia nel Quattrocento tra corti e università’, in Antonio Clericuzio, Germana Ernst and Maria Conforti (eds), Il Rinascimento Italiano e l’Europa. Volume Quinto. Le Scienze (Treviso–Vicenza: Angelo Colla Editore, 2007), pp. 5–7. 19. Dohrn-Van Rossum, History of Hour, p. 175. 20. White Jr states that, with the exception of Richard of Wallingford, all the scholars involved with the construction of planetary clocks during the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries were physicians: Lynn Townsend White Jr, ‘Medical Astrologers and Late Medieval Technology’, Viator, 6 (1975) pp. 295–308. 21. Poulle, ‘L’equatoire de Guillaume Gilliszoon’, p. 229. 22. Luis Montañés Fontela defines the myth of the Emperor clockmaker as ‘a pink legend’: Luis Montañés Fontela, Los Relojes del Emperador, extract from the author’s book: Relojes olvidados (Madrid: Artes graficas Faure, 1961). 23. Daniel Damler, ‘The Modern Wonder and Its Enemies: Courtly Innovations in the Spanish Renaissance’, in Claus Zittel (ed.), Philosophies of technology: Francis Bacon and his Contemporaries (Leiden: Brill, 2008), pp. 432–3. 24. William Stirling-Maxwell and Robert Guy, The Cloister Life of the Emperor Charles V (London: John W. Parker and son, West Strand, [1853] 1891: fourth edition), p. 463. 25. Manuel Fernández Álvarez, ‘La España del Emperador Carlos V (1500–1558; 1517–1556)’, in Ramón Menéndez Pidal (ed.), Historia de España, tomo xx, 3rd ed. (Madrid: Espasa Calpe, 1999), pp. 915–26. 26. ‘Instrucciones de Carlos V a Felipe II . . . tengays a don Joán Çuñaga por vuestro relox y despertador, y que seyas muy pronto a oyrle y también en creerle’: Manuel Fernández Álvarez (ed.), Corpus documental de Carlos V, vol. II (1539–1548) (Salamanca: Ediciones Universidad de Salamanca, 1975), p. 102. 27. ‘Y afirmaba Juanelo su ingeniero que tenía buen voto en esto, por saber mucha astrología, que con ser Vera de Plasencia de lo mejor de España para la habitación de los hombres, hacía el sitio de Yuste conocidas ventajas a todas las tierras vecinas’: Fray José De Sigüenza, Tercera Parte de la Historia de la Orden de San Geronimo Doctor de la Iglesia. Dirigida, Al Rey nuestro Señor Don Philippe III. Por Fray Ioseph de Siguença, de la misma Orden (Madrid, En la Imprenta Real, Año MDCV), Libro I, Capítulo XXXVII, p. 200. 28. ‘diceva, che si come la spera di Saturno, che è il più alto di tutti sette i Pianeti, è tardissima a moversi: cosi dovrebbono i Prencipi non esser frettolosi nelle deliberazioni & opere loro. E nella guisa, che’l sole è il medesimo cosi al povero, come al ricco; ne è diverso, ma eguale e comune a tutti: cosi parimente quei, che reggono, debbono mostrar benevolenza e giustizia egualmente a ciascuno. E, come lo Eclissi del Sole è le piu volte segno di gran movimenti; cosi ogni mezano errore, che commette alcun Re o Signore, apporta gran disturbo a gli huomini. Diceva anco, che, si come il Sole liquefa la cera, & indura il fango: cosi la liberalità de i Re fa divenire i buoni migliori, e i malvagi più ingrati e peggiori. Nè taceva, che, come la Luna muove

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specilmente le cose inferiori, non per essere ella più potente, ma per esser più vicina de gli altri Pianeti alla terra: cosi è di grandissima importanza ad acquetare i movimenti della Guerra, o i sollevamenti, che si fanno al tempo della pace, la vicinanza del Re’: Ludovico Dolce, Vita dell’invittissimo e gloriosissimo Imperatore Carlo Quinto, in Venegia: appresso Gabriel Giolito de’ Ferrari, 1561, cc. 92–3. 29. Alonso De Santa Cruz, Crónica del Emperador Carlos V, tomo IV publicada por acuerdo de la Real Academia de la Historia por Antonio Blázquez y Delgado-Aguilera y Ricardo Beltrán y Rózpide (Madrid: Patronato de Huérfanos de Intendencia e Intervención Militar, 1920–1925), pp. 24–5. 30. José A. Garcia Diego, Juanelo Turriano, Charles V’s Clockmaker: The Man and his Legend (Madrid: Fundación Juanelo Turriano, 1986), pp. 81–2. 31. ‘Ianellus Turrianus horologistarum vertex (qui motum octavae spherae instrumento faberrime constructo Caesari quotidie fere ostendebat) familiarissime, consuetudine Caesaris utebatur, ut qui unus esset ex xii. Caesaris ministris.”; “Sed & ad horaria, & horologia hanc numerorum curam Caesar transtulit: nunquam fere magis hilarescens, quam cum omnium concordiam, consensionemque perspiciebat, nec mirum, si numeros tanti semper fecerit’: Gulielmus Zenocarus, De republica, vita, moribus, gestis, fama, religione, sanctitate: imperatoris, Caesaris, Augusti, Quinti, Caroli, Maximi, monarchae, libri septem, ad illustres aurei velleris equites scripti, authore Gulielmo Zenocaro a Scauuuenburgo, auratae militiae equite, imperatoris Caroli maximi olim: nunc Philippi regis Hispaniae, & ce. Caroli filij, consiliario, & bibliotecario, Bincorstij Toparcha, Gandaui: excudebat Gislenus Manilius tipographus, [1559] 1562, pp. 142, 263. 32. ‘Pour ce qui est de la table, l’Empereur a toujours fait des excès . . . N’etant pas encore content de tout cela, il dit un jour à son majordome Montfalconnet, d’un ton de mauvaise humeur, qu’il ne montrait plus de jugement dans les ordres qu’il donnait aux cuisiniers, car tous les mets qu’on lui servait étaient insipides. “Je ne sais pas –lui répondit le majordome- ce que je pourrais faire de plus, pour complaire à Votre Majestè, à moins que je n’essaie pour elle d’un nouveau mets, composé de potage d’horologe.” Ces paroles firent beaucoup rire l’Emperour, et plus longtemps qu’on ne le vit jamais ; ceux de la chambre ne rient pas moins: car il n’y a chose en ce monde, comme on le sait, qui plaise autant à Sa Majesté que de s’arrêter devant des horloges.’: Louis-Prosper Gachard, Relasions des Ambassadeurs Vénitiens sur CharlesQuint et Philippe II (Brussels: M. Hayez, Imprimeur de la commission royale d’histoire, 1856), p. 23. 33. French ambassador in Brussels; Garcia-Diego, Juanelo Turriano, pp. 81–2; Fernández Álvarez, ‘La España del Emperador Carlos V’, p. 378. 34. Silvio Leydi, ‘Un Cremonese nel Cinquecento. “Aspectu informis sed ingenio clarus”: qualche precisazione per Giannello Torriani a Milano (con una nota sui suoi ritratti)’, Bollettino Storico Cremonese, 4 (1997), p. 134. 35. Ibid., p. 133. 36. It cost 500 scudi, plus an extra hundred for the decorations in gold and silver. This was a considerable amount of money, equivalent to ten years’ wage for a master mason: Ibid., p. 134.

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37. Bugati, Historia Universale, pp. 1025–6. 38. Bishop Vida was the one who suggested naming Torriani’s planetary clock the ‘Microcosm’. Marcus Hierolamus Vida, Cremonensium orationes III. adversus Papienses in controversia principatus, Cremonae, 1550. 39. ‘Tardo, como el me ha dicho en imaginarlo y fabricar con el entendimiento la Idea, veynte años enteros: y de la gran vehemencia y embeveciniento del considerar, enfermo dos vezes en aquel tiempo, y llego a punto de morir. Y aviendotardado tanto e nel imaginarlo, no tardo despues mas que tres años y medio en fabricarlo con las manos. Es mucho esto, pues tiene el relox todo mill y ochocientos ruedas, sin otras muchas cosas de hierro y de laton que entrevienen. Assi fue necessario, que (quitando las fiestas) labrasse cada dia mas de tres ruedas, sin lo demas, sindo las ruedas differentes en tamaño y en numero y forma de dientes, y en la manera de estar enexadas y travadas. Mas con ser esta presteza tan maravillosa, espanta mas un ingeniosissimo torno que invento, y lo vemos agora, para labrar ruedas de hierro con la lima, al compas y a la igual dadde dientes que fuere menester. Y con todo esto, y con entenderse que lo labro todo por sus manos, no causara asmiracion el dexir Ianelo, como dize, que ninguna rueda se hizo dos vezes, porque siempre de la primera vez salio tan al justo como era menester. Y sino precediera todo lo dicho, esto se tuviera por una estraña maravilla.’; Ambrosio De Morales, Las Antiguedades de las ciudades de España, Alcalà de Henares, en casa de Iuan Iñiguez de Lequeríca, MDLXXV, foll. 91–4. In 1570, an anonymous servant to the Venetian orator Antonio Tiepolo, ambassador at the Spanish court, probably under his master’s command, wrote a description of the Microcosm. He saw Torriani’s clock at court and in his description he mentioned the 1,800 toothed wheels; for an English translation of the testimony see: Garcia-Diego, Juanelo Turriano. 40. Perhaps, as Garcia-Diego suggested, somebody will one day be able to find it in a corner in the attic of the vast Palacio de Oriente of Madrid. Indeed, after a fire struck the royal residence in 1734, the clock was still listed in the inventory of the royal treasure (examination made by His Majesty’s sculptor Don Felipe de Castro in 1773): Garcia-Diego, Juanelo Turriano, pp. 141–2. 41. ‘We Charles V, by the Grace of Divine Mercy, August Emperor of the Romans (. . .) recognize and, by the tenor of the present letters, make manifest to those whom it may concern, that, considering the praiseworthy artistic and practical work which for us, for Our Empire and for the lieges of the Empire itself has been executed by Our dear Janellus de Turrianis, a mathematician of Cremona and, very probably, the foremost among the inventors of clocks, in constructing for Us, with admirable technique and talent, an exceptional clock and – so far as is known – never seen anywhere else up to present time, which shows not only all the hours of Sun and of the Moon, but also all the other signs of the planets and the coming, going and the reflections of the celestial motion in a true, exact and visible order with consummate ability and to Our greatest satisfaction. We have conceded, appointed and consigned to Janellus himself, and by the tenor of the present We appoint and consign an annual pension of one hundred gold escudos from all the revenues and income of the seignory of Milan, both ordinary and extraordinary, to be paid by the hands of the General Treasurer, or the other Officers of Our State of Milan on whom the aforesaid matter depends or may depend in the future,

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for as many years as the life of Janellus himself may last, from now onwards, at the rate of a fourth part each three’. The printed document is kept in the State Archive of Cremona. The English translation is taken from: Garcia-Diego, Juanelo Turriano, pp. 75–7. 42. Johannes Kepler, Gesammelte Werke (Munich: Kepler Commission, 1945), vol. XIII, p. 85. 43. The list of eyewitnesses who described the Microcosm includes: Bishop Marco Girolamo Vida and other writers from the Duchy of Milan, Cardano (and John Dee after him), Gulielmus Zenocarus (and after him Ludovico Dolce, though with some misunderstandings), Ambrosio de Morales, an anonymous secretary to the Venetian ambassador Antonio Tiepolo, the officials who wrote the imperial privilege granted to Janello Torriani in Innsbruck on 7 March 1552, Jacome de Diana and Jorge Estaurez (in charge of writing the inventory for the year 1602), Gasparo Bugati, and Camillo Capilupi. Moreover, other contemporary writers mention the Microcosm. Don Felipe de Castro made the last description in 1773; Vida, Adversus; Giovanni Musonio, Apollo Italicus a Ioanne Musonio Cremonensi nuper in lucem restitutus. His etiam emblemata accedunt, 8. Ad Iacobum Albense iuris consultiss. ode 1 Ex typis Francisci Moscheni, Ticini, 1551; Gasparo Annibal Cruceius, ‘Epigramma in Ianelli Turriani Cremonensis horologium’, in Gio. Pietro Ubaldini, Carmina poetarum nobilium Io. Pauli Vbaldini studio conquisita, presso Ubaldini, Mediolani, 1563, p. 12; Bernardus Saccus, De Italicarum rerum varietate et elegantia: libri X, Papiae: apud Hieronymum Bartholum, 1565, pp. 150–51; Stefano Breventano, Istoria della antichità nobiltà, et delle cose notabili della città di Pavia, Pavia: Appresso Hieronimo Bartholi, 1570; Alessandro Lamo, Sogno non meno piacevole, che morale, Cremona: Appresso Christoforo Draconi, 1572; Antonio Campo, Cremona fedelissima città, e colonia dei Romani, in Cremona, in casa dell’istesso autore, 1585; John Dee, Mathematicall Praeface to the Elemnts of Geometrie of Euclid of Megara, 1570; Zenocarus, De republica, pp. 203–7; Dolce, Vita, pp. 80–81; Morales, Las Antiguedades, pp. 91–4; Libreria Marciana di Venezia: Manoscritto di un servitore dell’ambasciator Antonio Tiepolo 1571 reported by Garcia-Diego, Juanelo Turriano, p. 59; Camillo Capilupi, ms. Vittorio Emanuele 1009, cc. 152v–3v, Biblioteca Nazionale di Roma: Quesito elegantísimo di Maestro Gianello a Carlo V Imperatore. For Don Felipe de Castro’s description see Garcia-Diego, Juanelo Turriano, pp. 141–2. 44. Built from the 1480s (and finished in the following century) on behalf of Lorenzo de Medici as a present to the King of Hungary and Bohemia Matthias Corvinus, but later purchased by the Republic of Florence as something too precious to be alienated. Ambrosio de Morales, praising Torriani’s planetary clock, claimed it to be superior to della Volpaia’s; Morales, Las Antiguedades, pp. 91–4. Giuseppe Brusa, ‘L’orologio dei pianeti di Lorenzo della Volpaia’, Nuncius, 9 (1994), pp. 645–69. 45. This is the theory of the genealogy of this clock presented by Poulle: Denise Hillard et Emmanuel Poulle, Oronce Fine et l’horloge planétaire de la biliothèque SainteGeneviève (Paris: Biliothèque Sainte-Geneviève, 1971), pp. 318–22. 46. Arthur Augustus Tilley, ‘Humanism under Francis I’, English Historical Review, July (1900), p. 465.

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47. Neudörffer, Nachrichten, pp. 65–6. 48. Henry C. King and John R. Millburn, Geared to the Stars: the Evolution of Planetariums, Orreries and Astronomical Clocks (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1978), pp. 65–7. 49. Guido Gerosa, Carlo V: Un sovrano per due mondi (Milan: Mondadori, [1989] 2005), p. 349. 50. ‘alteram apud Orontium mathematicum professorem regium germanico bello similiter diteptam’: Ramus, Scholarum mathematicarum, p. 31. 51. Garcia-Diego observed in the 1980s that there were only a few planetary clocks made before Janello Torriani’s, and many after it. I relay here Garcia-Diego’s list of the planetary clocks made after Torriani’s, and those which, according to the Spanish scholar, are still preserved: Brenner (1553–1556), Immser (1555), King Christian’s of Denmark (1559), Valerius (1565), Eberhard Baldewein (1565), Heiden (1574), Strasbourg (1574), Shellhorn (1574), Schissel (1579), Cuno (1579) and Kostenbader (1588). Some of these are referred to in the present article, but, for most of them, I have found no material evidence as yet, or only obscure literary records: GarciaDiego, Juanelo Turriano. 52. Alias Philippus Imserus, Imsser, Ymbser. 53. King, Geared to the Stars, pp. 68–72. 54. Emmanuel Poulle, Science et astrologie au XVI siècle: Oronce Fine et son horloge planétaire (Paris: Bibliotheque Sainte-Geneviève, 1971), pp. 15–16. 55. Enrico Morpurgo, Dizionario degli Orologiai Italiani (Milano: Tipografia Nava, [1950] 1974), and Gian Carlo del Vecchio, Addenda al Dizionario degli Orologiai Italiani. 1974 (Milan: Tipografia Nava, 1989); one can find photographs and a description of this clock in Silvio A. Bedini, ‘La Dinastia Barocci: Artigiani della scienza in Urbino 1550–1650/The Barocci Dynasty: Urbino’s Artisans of Science 1550–1650’, in Flavio Vetrano, La Scienza del Ducato di Urbino/The Science of the Dukedom of Urbino (Urbino: Accademia Raffaello, 2001), and in Antonio Lenner, ‘La Scuola di Urbino: Gli orologi rinascimentali italiani dai Barocci ai Camerini’, in Brusa, La misura del tempo, pp. 224–6. 56. Musonio, Apollo Italicus: Janiculus decus Italicum, celsaeque Cremonae, Janiculus fabrae studio celeberrimus artis, Cuius ab insigni traxit cognomina Turri, Illud miratur Caesar, Germania tota. 57. Hieronymus Cardanus, De Subtilitate Libri XXI, Parisiis: apud Iacobum Dupuys, sub insigni Samaritanae in vico D. Ioannis Lateranensis, 1551, p. 268. 58. Cardano quotes Honorato Juan of Valencia, a most dear tutor of Charles. Bishop Honorato Juan is said to have being writing about this issue: Hieronimus Cardanus, De subtilitate libri XXII (Basileae: Henric-Petri, 1664), pp. 585–6. 59. The prince-electors were three spiritual and four lay: the three spiritual were the Archbishop of Cologne, the Archbishop of Mainz, the Archbishop of Trier; the four

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lay electors were the Count Palatine of the Rhine (House of Wittelsbach), the Duke of Saxony (House of Wettin), the Margrave of Brandenburg (House of Hohenzollern) and the King of Bohemia (House of Habsburg). 60. Henry C. King had already noted in 1978 that ‘Baldewein’s clock at Kassel presents a combination of features seen on Finé’s and Immser’s clocks’: King, Geared to the Stars, p. 72. 61. For instance, Immser’s clock measured 85cm high, 37.5cm wide, and Baldewein’s (1561) was 90cm high, 37cm wide: King, Geared to the Stars, pp. 69 and 72. 62. King, Geared to the Stars, 68–9. 63. ‘From Mercator’s letter dated 23 August 1554 to Melanchthon we learn about Mercator’s audience with the Emperor Charles V in Brussels at the end of April. The emperor asked him to paint a fist-sized ball with a world map, to be inserted into a crystal sky-ball. This celestial sphere should be placed on the top of a clock with mathematical dials that represented the movements of the 7 planets and the stars, which Giovanni Torriano [sic] produced for the emperor. On this occasion, Charles recalled the devices of Mercator, which were destroyed by fire at Innsbruck, and he asked for the best way to determine the meridian line. In contrast to Torriano, who suggested the Indian circle, Mercator explained his method of observation of the asent and disent of the circumpolar star’. My translation: Ernst Zinner, Deustche und niederländische Astronomische Instrumente des 11. bis 18. Jahrhunderts (Munich: C. H. Beck, 1956), p. 443. 64. Bruce T. Moran, ‘German Prince-Practitioners: Aspects in the Development of Courtly Science, Technology, and Procedures in the Renaissance’, Technology and Culture, 22 (1981), pp. 253–374. 65. Moran, Technology and Culture, p. 257. 66. King, Geared to the Stars, pp. 68–9. 67. Franco Franceschi, ‘La bottega come spazio di sociabilità’, in Franco Franceschi and Gloria Fossi (eds), Arti Fiorentine. La grande storia dell’Artigianato, Vol. II, Il Quattrocento (Florence: Giunti, 1999), pp. 64–83; Pamela O. Long, ‘Trading Zones: Arenas of Exchange during the Late-Medieval/Early Modern Transition to the New Empirical Sciences’, History of Technology, 31 (2012). In the 1970s and 1980s, Bruce T. Moran highlighted the role of courts ‘as institutional nodes of technical activity’: Moran, ‘German Prince-Practitioners’, p. 253; Moran, ‘Princes, Machines and the Valuation of Precision’. 68. The role of artisans in technological advancement and in the making of science has been at the core of a long historiographic debate. Some of the seminal works on this topic are: Edgar Zilsel, The Social Origins of Modern Science, foreword by Joseph Needham, Diederick Raven, Wolfgang Krohn and Robert S. Cohen (eds) (Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publisher, [1942 as The Sociological Roots of Science] 2000); Paolo Rossi, I filosofi e le macchine: 1400–1700 (Milan: Feltrinelli, 1962); Paolo Galluzzi, ‘Dall’artigiano all’artista-ingegnere: Filippo Brunelleschi uomo di confine’, in Arti Fiorentine: La grande storia dell’Artigianato, vol. I, Il Medioevo (Florence: Giunti, 1998); Pamela Smith, The Body of the Artisan: Art and Experience in the Scientific

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Revolution (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004); and the collective volume: Philippe Braunstein and Luca Molà (eds.), Il Rinascimento Italiano e l’Europa. Volume Terzo. Produzione e tecniche (Treviso–Vicenza: Angelo Colla Editore, 2007). The issue of patronage and technology/science has attracted the interest of many scholars, including the few I mention here: Moran, ‘German Prince-Practitioners’, p. 253; Moran, ‘Princes, Machines and the Valuation of Precision’, Mario Biagioli, Galileo Courtier: the practice of science in the culture of absolutism (Chicago–London: Chicago University Press, 1993); Pamela O. Long, Artisan/Practitioners and the Rise of the New Sciences, 1400–1600 (Oregon State University Press 2011). 69. In this way we must reject the thesis that Copernicus’ book De revolutionibus orbium coelestium, which was published in 1543 and was known to the Emperor, may have had some influence on the long preparation of the Microcosm. Copernicus’s book was written in Latin, and even if someone translated it for Janello, the clockmaker did not agree with this ‘old-new system’, still preferring Ptolemy’s geocentric model, as was the case with the other planetary clocks produced in the sixteenth century (Leydi, ‘Un Cremonese nel Cinquecento’, p. 133). In fact, there is no evidence whatsoever to support the notion that Torriani’s deviated from the mainstream scientific cosmological theory of his times.

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Diamonds in Early Modern Venice: Technology, Products and International Competition SALVATORE CIRIACONO University of Padua

Abstract The story of diamonds in Europe is deeply set in a complex, multilayered and interconnected matrix of historical dimensions. As a typical luxury product, diamonds raise issues of technical innovation and diffusion, the structure of international markets, and changing patterns of fashion. From the late Middle Ages to the seventeenth century, the Republic of Venice played a leading role in commercial transactions and technical transformations of this product in the European scenario. Diamond processing fell within the crucial sector of the Venetian economy, that is the production of luxury goods. The essay investigates the response of the city to the growing international competition in the early modern period, the role of Venetian guilds, the resistance to innovations and the opening of the labour market to newcomers such as the Jewish merchants and entrepreneurs.

VENETIAN DIAMONDS IN THE INTERNATIONAL CONTEXT The issue of the diamond within Venice from the Middle Ages to the early modern period can be approached from various angles. On the one hand, these stones can be seen as typical luxury products, with all the questions that complex matter raises (technology, supply and demand, prices, changing fashions); on the other, they can be considered within the framework of trade and the international role that the Venetian Republic played in the last centuries of its existence. Furthermore, one can 67

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also see the processing of diamonds within Venice in relation to the city’s entire manufacturing system, which was being put under severe strain not only by international competition in a key sector of the Venetian economy (luxury goods) but also by the role and responsibilities which the city’s craft guilds were taking upon themselves. It should also be clear that there are close links between the emergence and decline of a diamond industry within Venice and the presence within the city of a substantial Jewish community – a religious minority which, throughout its history, has been markedly international in character. As precious stones, diamonds have been the object of numerous technicalscientific texts throughout the world. At the same time, they have also been the centre of folk beliefs, with the stone being credited with wonderful – even magicalreligious – properties, an extraordinary gem whose multifaceted nature reflects its quite unique character. Probably the most important aspect here is the fact that the diamond is the hardest precious stone to be found in nature, the result of a complex chemical-physical process, which will not be discussed here since it is amply covered in the relevant scientific literature. This unique and exceptional property has been put to a variety of technological uses, the hardiness of diamonds being exploited in a number of manufacturing sectors and ultimately leading to the development of artificial diamonds. Though man-made, these latter have in no way been considered less valuable than natural diamonds; indeed, their value in the manufacturing sector has exceeded that of natural diamonds. Given that industrial diamonds are used in contemporary industry and did not exist in the early modern period, the discussion here will concern the diamond as a precious stone. Within the specific socioeconomic context I am considering, the diamond was an object of desire which served as a badge of exclusive social rank and wealth – in other words, it was the classic (in fact, the non plus ultra) of luxury objects. The value of diamonds was in part the result of their rarity and very limited supply (a basic requirement for any luxury object); but it was also due to the technical skill with which the stones were worked by craftsmen in Venice and other countries. Here, therefore, one should point out that when discussing diamonds in Venice one must also consider what was happening in other areas of the world – both with regard to the yield and number of diamond mines and the techniques being used to work and finish the stones. Prior to Brazil’s massive entry into this international market, India was the country which, right up to the end of the seventeenth century, one must consider above all. Wide-ranging historical literature has demonstrated the existence of ancient traditions in diamond-working within the sub-continent, with some technological treatises on the matter dating back to the sixth century BC. Further evidence here includes statistics which show how the law of supply and demand determined the value of diamonds by weight, as well as general information on a diamond trade which was run both by corporations of merchants and by the central authorities (the Grand Moghul).1 The significance of India raises an important problem of interpretation when it comes to analysing the situation in Venice. To what extent can the techniques used by the city’s craftsmen in working the diamonds be considered ‘home-grown’ rather than derived from a subcontinent which, up to the seventeenth century, was a massive diamond producer and the key centre of the world’s diamond trade? The

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fact is that even in sectors other than diamonds and precious stones in general – think, for example, of Chinese silk or Indian cotton fabrics – the ‘technological transfer’ from Asia to Europe in the Middle Ages and early modern periods is far from having been adequately explored. With regard to diamonds, it is possible that some of the techniques used in Europe were developed locally. However, it is also possible that the know-how present in some areas was acquired and spread thanks to the existence of trading links with Asian markets, subsequently undergoing further developments that meant it eventually outstripped that which existed in its areas of origin. As evidence of this one might cite the fact that, in the mid-seventeenth century, a Venetian diamond-cutter was working at the court of the Grand Moghul, a matter to which I will return later. One other factor complicates historical analysis of the production techniques specific to India, Venice or any other place: the fact that, in the fourteenth century, diamond-cutters were already active in a number of different European cities. This phenomenon has resulted in different places (or individuals) being credited with developing specific techniques of diamond-cutting and polishing, and creating the ever more complex designs to be seen in finished stones. Thus it has been argued that, even before the city of Antwerp, it was Bruges which – as early as the fourteenth century – had developed the first techniques for cutting diamonds, using another diamond or diamond dust to scrape the surface of the stone being cut. Furthermore, there is the claim that, in the same century, a guild of diamond-cutters already existed in the city of Nuremberg, which would mean that Venice enjoyed no monopoly in the working and sale of diamonds. However, in his excellent comparative history of the diamond-working techniques used throughout the world, Godehard Lenzen uses the available historical source material to show that the first trace in Europe of various innovative techniques in diamond-cutting and polishing is to be found in Italy, and in Venice in particular. Nevertheless, it still remains to be seen whether these innovations were entirely independent of India, a place whose age-old mastery of the craft of diamond-working was an unfailing source of wonder to each and every European traveller to the sub-continent. Here, it is useful to point out that the ‘point cut’ (a term that was being used in Europe as early as the thirteenth century) marked a very important technological advance, thus its presence or absence enables one to determine whether diamond-cutting techniques were more advanced in India, Flanders, Germany, Venice or some other Italian city. The creation of such ‘point cut’ diamonds depended upon the ability to use another diamond, diamond dust or an abrasive such as emery to cut a stone to a different shape.2 Initially, this cut shape reflected that which was normally found in nature (a classic octahedron), but would then be developed to the ‘table cut’, in which there was a flat surface opposite the culet of the diamond; thereafter, cutters developed the ability to polish the other faces of a diamond in accordance with a rigid yet very complex schema which is largely a mystery to the layman. It has been proven that ‘point cut’ diamonds are to be found in Venice as early as the thirteenth century; though it cannot be ruled out that the technique travelled from that city to others in Europe. Furthermore, there is another point to take into consideration here: the fact that the hardness of a diamond varies at different places within its structure. Thus in any process of cutting, the different parts of an individual

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stone must be worked with scrupulous care. An essential contribution to such precision will have come from a knowledge of geometry and mathematics – sciences in whose development during the fifteenth and sixteenth century Italy played an outstanding role.3 The extent of Venetian trade in this sector is well illustrated by an exact description in a text by Bartolomeo de Pasi, which enables one to say with certainty that ‘point cut’ diamonds were sent from Venice to Lisbon and Paris towards the end of the fifteenth century,4 while ‘diamonds’ of unfinished cut were sent to Antwerp. This information automatically leads one to make two observations. The first concerns the important role Venice must have played in the international trade in precious stones; importing and re-exporting this luxury product from India and the Middle East, the city clearly controlled the commerce in such stones. The second observation regards the cutting of these stones, the final stages of which Venice at the time could still share with other cities; in this case, Antwerp, which from the sixteenth century onwards would become an international centre for the sale and working of diamonds. Lisbon and Paris, on the other hand, which perhaps at the time did not possess the same skilled know-how as the Flemish city, received stones which had already been cut by Venetian craftsmen.5 Over the coming centuries, the issue raise two questions. Who controlled the trade in and supplies of these precious stones? And who had the technical skill to work them to the highest level of perfection? The latter question is one of no little importance, given the development in supply and demand from the Renaissance onwards. Prior to the ‘boom’ in conspicuous consumption in sixteenth-century Italy – indeed, in all the main cities of Europe – diamonds retained their symbolic, religious and political associations (the latter demonstrated by the use of these precious stones in the various symbols of power: crowns, diadems, the corno of the Venetian doge, etc.). Subsequently, however, diamonds were a form of investment, influenced by matters of fashion, social ostentation and a demand that was no longer restricted to the sphere of political/religious power. The direct consequence of this was a greater focus on craft skills in the working of the stones; the finished products had now to meet a social demand – and respond to variations in fashion – that ranged beyond the urban confines within which the working of diamonds had previously been restricted. The various names used for the different stones are clear evidence of extensive variations in methods of working the stones. However, the historical literature is often of little help here as it is frequently concerned with lauding a specific urban tradition, ignoring the possibility that know-how might have come from other areas (know-how whose course of progress from one place to another is, admittedly, very difficult to chart).6 What is beyond question is that, thanks to its presence in the Mediterranean and the Middle East, sixteenth-century Venice controlled the diamond trade; Aleppo and Alessandria were major commercial emporia. It is equally clear that its craftsmen had, by this time, achieved high levels of technical skill in cutting the stones: there were hundreds of them working in this sector and in the creation of jewels. However, one cannot deny that the city’s supremacy was being challenged by other centres of production, whose diamonds were slowly establishing a reputation for themselves. One must, therefore, conclude that Venice’s economic and commercial fortunes did

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not rest upon ‘brand supremacy’ in the diamond market – a supremacy which was of key importance in such sectors as Venetian glass making, silk production and international maritime trade. Perhaps the clearest example of the undoubted international competition the city faced in the diamond market was the Flemish – later Dutch – ‘rosette’ cut; not only did this become widespread throughout Europe, it was also adopted by Venetian craftsmen themselves, as is clear from numerous documents in the Venetian archives.7 Over subsequent decades, the range of cut diamonds available within Europe continued to increase, as various other competitors – Holland, France, England, Switzerland (Geneva) and the Habsburg Empire (Vienna) – entered the market. Each one of these produced their own refined cuts, which went by such names as the marquise (or navette), the briolette, the baguette, the Halbmond, the Dreieck and the Sternschliff, all of them constantly increasing the number of facets and thus enhancing the complex play of light and colour within the stone. Nevertheless, a diamond’s purity – significantly described in terms of ‘water’ – remained the quality most sought after, the stones of highest value being those ‘of the first water’.

THE ROLE OF ANTWERP Flemish diamonds – and, in particular, the Antwerp diamond industry – brings us back to the dual issue of production and commerce, in the sense that those cities which managed to get their hands on a ready supply of stones inevitably reinforced their position as producers of cut diamonds. What one sees in Antwerp was the result of the advantages deriving from the geographical explorations of the time. Not only had the Portuguese sailed to India around the Cape of Good Hope – and then chosen Antwerp as the main port for their Asia–Europe trade – but there was also Portuguese trade with South America; admittedly, the latter was rather limited at the beginning of the sixteenth century, but thereafter it would increase steadily (here the main nations of interest are Peru and, of increasing dominance during the eighteenth century, Brazil). Inevitably, the presence of Portuguese merchants in the Flemish city led to the arrival there of diamonds from India, with Antwerp becoming a main centre for the trade in the stones. And the result of this was that, during the second half of the sixteenth century, the city’s trading houses looked much more to Portugal and Spain than they did to Venice for their supplies,8 subsequently exporting their cut diamonds to France (Paris became a very lucrative market), England, Germany (Frankfurt) and the cities of Italy itself.9 However, there is also evidence which supports the claim that the Portuguese themselves hindered – both passively and actively – the establishment of a diamondcutters guild within Antwerp, arguing that import–export of the uncut stones was more profitable for the city than the production of finished diamonds. It has been pointed out that there were direct links between Portuguese diamond merchants and diamond-cutters belonging to the same national community10 – an association of interests which inevitably delayed the establishment of an independent Flemish guild. What is true is that from the end of the fifteenth to the end of the sixteenth century there were only around thirty diamond-cutters active in Antwerp, and that a guild of these craftsmen would not be founded until 1582 (when Venice had

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already had such a corporation for a number of years). But once productive capacity had been increased, the city’s diamond industry would develop substantially, with Venetian jewels and stones accounting for a lower percentage of the international market. True, it is impossible to give a quantitative assessment of this phenomenon, just as it is difficult to evaluate the relation between production and domestic consumption within the Flemish market. However, there is no denying the fact that the Flemish diamond industry did flourish around this time, even if some historical accounts might err on the side of over-emphasis: the Nation is blooming from the moment [its diamond industry] is established and Antwerp obtains great fame through diamond processing in the beginning of the 17th century. Masters out of all parts of Europe come and learn the polishing here. The diamond trade has made such great fame in all cities that a lot of foreign masters from Amsterdam, Frankfurt and Hamburg, from London and even Paris have come to live in this city. In their turn masters trained in Antwerp swarm out over the whole of Europe.11 Viewing the diamond industry in the context of global history, one factor that should be emphasized is that the trade in diamonds at the end of the sixteenth/beginning of the seventeenth century hinged on a number of centres. In effect, it involved cities, such as Antwerp and Venice, whose interests one might have thought would diverge. Perhaps the most emblematic case here is that of the powerful Helman (or Hellemans) family from Flanders, whose main branch was represented by Willem Helman in Venice but whose interests and operations spread throughout the main markets of Europe and even the East; Willem’s six brothers – Anton, Frans, Karel, Jan Baptist, Arnold and Pieter – had their trading centres in Seville, Constantinople, Paris and, obviously, Antwerp itself.12 In Venice, Willem may have traded in wool and finished fabrics, but his greatest profits came from dealing in pearls and precious stones imported from the East. Furthermore, the family not only traded alongside Venetian merchants,13 but also with merchants from Lucca and Portugal – connections which extended the Helmans’ interests to Aleppo, Persia and, above all, Goa in India.14 According to notarial documents, this latter city marked the extreme limit of the eastern markets within which the Helmans operated – a limit beyond which, in the later sixteenth and early seventeenth century, they seem to have had no desire to push.15 This self-imposed ‘restriction’ does not alter the fact that the Indian city would, in the early years of the seventeenth century, become the preferred centre for the diamond trade (a trade which was essentially maritime in nature, given the dangers at the time in transporting such a precious commodity by land).16 While perhaps the most striking example, the Helmans were not alone. And it would be a mistake to see these networks of commercial activity as defined by an exclusive sense of national identity.17 An important example that contradicts such a view is the figure of Jacques de Coutre, a merchant from Bruges who worked for the Portuguese in Goa. Working in that city, he developed a flourishing trade in diamonds and other precious stones, not only with the Helmans but also with the Venetian Bernardo Narvoni – a connection which continued until at least as late as 1616.18 And as the centre of trade shifted slowly but inexorably towards North Sea ports, one still finds Flemish-Dutch interests forming alliances with Italian merchants when

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setting up new trading companies in Amsterdam or Rotterdam, for which the Italians were an important source of investment capital.19 But there is no denying that, by the end of the sixteenth century, the Venetian position within the international diamond trade was showing signs of uncertainty. For example, in 1587 the Helmans were unable to sell some diamonds they were trying to trade in Venice and so dispatched them for sale in Constantinople.20 As for the Antwerp diamond trade, it can be said to have peaked in the seventeenth century – thanks both to the city’s close commercial links with Lisbon and its own development of a varied trade in luxury items.21 Clearly, the establishment of its own guild of diamond-cutters strengthened manufacturing facilities within Antwerp, but the city benefited even more from the flow of diamonds reaching it from India (and especially Goa) via Lisbon. In fact, all the most important Antwerp trading-houses had establishments in Lisbon, from where they regularly exported diamonds; the journey north by sea took forty-five days, with the stones then being worked and finished in Antwerp before being re-exported to markets throughout Europe. Nevertheless, competition from Amsterdam was soon making itself felt, bringing Antwerp close to the sort of relative decline that Venice would experience. However, historical research still leaves some margin of doubt with regard to the exact date when the Dutch city overtook the Flemish; the second half of the seventh century, therefore, seems to be that crucial period when the respective strengths of Venice, Antwerp and Amsterdam within the European market were decided. The Dutch entered the diamond trade thanks to the VOC (Verrenigde Ostindische Compagnie), which imported the stones from India and also Borneo, a place whose role in the supply of diamond tends to be undervalued, though there is no doubt that its stones were fewer and of inferior quality than those from India. This new competitor would soon threaten the monopoly which the Portuguese exercised over Indian diamonds, a shift which – from around the middle of the century – would have its effect upon the quantities of diamonds arriving in Antwerp from Lisbon. It would seem to be the case that the guild structures which, after their late establishment, had become a consolidated part of Antwerp’s manufacturing sector went through a period of some difficulty. The numbers of those involved in the various phases of working diamonds (from cutting to polishing, all operations that required high levels of professional expertise) began to fall, while some craftsman abandoned the profession altogether. And at the same time there was an increase in the number of those who limited themselves to buying and selling diamonds – the so-called kooplieden who formed an autonomous branch of the diamond guild. Nevertheless, it would be incorrect in the case of Antwerp – or of Venice – to speak of a rapid decline in the fortunes of this manufacturing-commercial sector. It may be true that ‘the craft of the Antwerp diamond cutters declined because of the excessive number of the practitioners’, but ‘the diamond trade in the seventeenth century was quite healthy’.22 Furthermore, to quote K. Hofmeester, the shift from Antwerp to Amsterdam was not a total relocation but rather a shift of the main centre. Part of the diamond trade remained in Antwerp, with seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Flemish firms such as Wallis and du Jon, Forchondt, Boon, De Pret and James Dormer buying their rough stones in

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Amsterdam and London. As only the smaller and low-quality rough stones reached Antwerp, its remaining cutters and polishers specialized in making the most of these stones; this required a maximum of skills that were transferred from one generation to another. What cannot be denied, however, was that, given the strength of its commercial sector, Amsterdam’s advance in this area seemed irresistible. The number of that city’s diamond-cutters in 1742 has been calculated at 120, while in 1748 this had already risen to something like 300, and ‘around 1750, some 600 families were dependent upon the industry. By this point the Amsterdam finishing industry had clearly overtaken Antwerp’s, both in terms of volume and the quality of stones processed’.23 Still, competition between the two cities remained an open matter, not resolved to the advantage of one contender alone. In part, this was due to the arrival of other competitors on the scene: Brazilian diamonds made their presence felt from the beginning of the eighteenth century, and even before that London had established its reputation as part of what has been called ‘the constellation of European centres of the diamond trade’.24 As early as the first decades of the seventeenth century, the main centre supplying the world’s diamond trade had been the region of Golkonda, whose wealth was the stuff of legend. Then, during the course of the eighteenth century, Britain established its political and commercial dominance over India, thus controlling the sale of precious Indian diamonds; henceforth, these were released onto the market by the authorities and then traded by the various powerful bania. This increasing British power in India resulted in Portuguese Goa losing a significant part of its market share to Madras, the hub of the British diamond trade in the East. That trade overall was run by the Jewish community of London, who would take advantage of a strategic alliance with the Jewish merchants of Lisbon. However, stiff competition had to be overcome before the British East India Company could establish its supremacy over the Dutch: ‘in April 1632 the English agents reported to London that the Dutch had established themselves near the diamond mines . . . so the English did not even know the prices of diamonds at the mines.’25 Still, by the end of this process ‘the Anglo-Jewish diamond merchants established a virtual monopoly of European diamond import from India and made London the chief centre of the trade’.26 In effect, the Venetians were at a substantial disadvantage in the Indian market because they did not enjoy the protection which the Casa de India provided for the Portuguese, and the various national trading companies provided for the Dutch, French and British. In each of those nations, the strength of the monarchy played an essential role, even if it is difficult to decide how much the policies followed were the fruit of predominantly private interests and how much they responded to ‘higher’ institutional needs. What is beyond doubt is that Venetian merchants and craftsmen were forced to operate independently, without any of the protection supplied by those companies which were being formed in the strongest nations of Europe. Such nations would continue to defend the substantial profits to be enjoyed from this lucrative trade, maintaining for many years to come their position in an ever more crowded market.

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THE INDIAN MARKET In discussing this topic, one must also look at the developing equilibrium within the Indian sub-continent between diamond production and commercial interests. Godehard Lenzen perceptively points out that, setting aside religious scruples, the Indian traders of Gujarat and the Banian probably looked exclusively to Goa as the commercial outlet for their uncut diamonds bound for Lisbon. On the contrary, the authorities of the Narsinghar region preferred the diamonds to be worked and cut before sale to the Venetians or Portuguese; the latter were probably the preferred clients as they were less interested than the Venetians in working and cutting the diamonds themselves. But in talking of this maritime route, one should not overlook the fact that the trade routes via Ormuz, Syria and, particularly, Aleppo would long remain under Venetian control, and were unquestionably used for the diamond and precious stone trade.27 If this were not the case, one could not understand how accounts of the vicissitudes of a Venetian craftsman in India could become part of the international literature on the subcontinent’s diamond trade. Various sources refer to this Hortensio Borgis, an Italian expatriate who, after being commissioned by the Moghul emperor to cut a diamond, made such a bad job of it that an excessive amount of the diamond was lost during the working and cutting. Such losses were taken into account by all diamond-cutters of the day and might even be envisaged as resulting in the waste of 50 per cent of the original carats.28 Still, in Borgis’ case the wastage was such that the diamond-cutter was severely punished and his property confiscated.29 Setting aside this episode, the flourishing market in Indian diamonds reveals two aspects that no comparative history of diamonds should overlook. The first of these is the fact that it was possible to buy diamonds direct in the regions of Golkonda and Bijapur – both sources for the stones which throughout the course of the seventeenth century were the highest prized internationally. However, in spite of this relative openness, the Moghul emperors did keep the largest and best diamonds for themselves, allowing the sale only of those considered of lesser quality. The second aspect is related to the first and yet was more specifically technological in its effects: the relative abundance of Indian diamonds meant that the loss of carats in producing the final diamond was not considered of essential importance. Despite the deductions one might draw from what happened to Borgis, acceptance of this loss was such that diamonds were frequently split into smaller parts for working, rather than all efforts being made (as they were in Europe) to keep the original form of the stone. JeanBaptiste Tavernier, a traveller and merchant in the service of Louis XIV and a man who was fascinated by everything he saw in India, has left an account of Indian technology which leads one to conclude that the techniques Indian craftsmen used in working diamonds were different to those used in Europe – if not, indeed, more traditional and less innovative (a conclusion borne out by the written accounts of other European observers, such as John Fryer).30 Tavernier, for example, notes that, when cutting the diamond faces, Indian craftsmen used large quantities of oil, emery and diamond dust (all in plentiful supply locally). However, the mill wheels they used were different to those found in Europe, being smaller in diameter and made of wood (rather than iron); given that it was this mill which powered the steel wheel that actually cut the diamond, these two factors meant that the cutting process was

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slower: ‘ils ne peuvent donner aux pierres le poliment si vif que nous leur donnont en Europe ; et je crois que cela vient de ce que leur roue ne coürt pas si plat que les nostres.’ 31 Similar conclusions were drawn by Fryer himself; and with regard to this technological divide one might cite another important gemmologist of the period, Anselmus Boetius de Boot, who would hint at the fact that in Europe attempts were being made to cut a number of diamonds at the same time using complex machines (however we do not know how far these attempts progressed).32 Still, regardless of what he says about the technology used, Tavernier’s description of the finished stones seems to reveal diamonds of much more refined and original cut than those being produced in Europe. Think, for example, of the legendary Koh-i-Nor, a 787-carat diamond which, after a long history associated with the Moghul empire, would pass into the hands of the Queen of England.33 A source of technological advances which should not be overlooked was the development of new forms of cut diamonds. For example, there was the ‘Mazarin cut’; developed for Cardinal Mazarin in the first half of the seventeenth century, this involved the crown of the stone being worked with a total of twelve facets. And, as proof of the continuing vitality of Italian craft skill in this area, one might cite the ‘Peruzzi or Brilliant Cut’. First produced in 1680 by the Florentine – though some sources say, Venetian – Vincenzo Peruzzi, this comprised a total of fifty-seven facets: thirty-three in the crown of the stone and twenty-four in the pavilion (the lower part).34 With regard to Peruzzi’s city of origin, evidence that he was Venetian might be deduced from the fact that this type of ‘brilliant cut’ was soon being produced in Venice, by the end of the century. In fact, a ruling of 1693 recorded in the Venetian Mariegola degli Orafi (Regulations of the Guild of Goldsmiths) lays down that the ‘masterpiece’ which enabled a craftsman to be recognized as a master diamondcutter should be one diamond ‘with a table cut and one with a brilliant cut (front and back) in accordance with the recent method discovered by Peruzzi’.35

THE DEVELOPMENT OF VENICE’S DIAMOND INDUSTRY: RESISTANCE AND DECLINE There is, therefore, credible evidence that there was no rapid decline in the diamondworking industry in Venice, despite ever tougher competition both from abroad (Antwerp, Amsterdam, Paris, Frankfurt and Istanbul) and from within Italy (Florence, Mantua). One sign of this is that Venetian diamenteri (diamond-cutters) survived to the fall of the Republic and even beyond (into the first decades of the nineteenth century). However, it is undeniable that the Venetian industry suffered serious difficulties and reversals from the first decades of the seventeenth century onwards – both in terms of the number of jobs it provided and the opportunities for the sale of its products (that is, its ability to hold on to its market share). Here, some general points should also be taken into account. The first of these is that, during the centuries we are considering, the technology used in the various phases of working diamonds did not undergo the sort of accelerated development that could radically change the framework of competition as it already existed. The proof of this is that the innovations due to the use of steam power and increasing mechanization would only be seen at the beginning of the nineteenth century. Hence,

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it seems legitimate to argue that one should not be looking at this factor for an explanation of what happened (even if it is true that there were small-scale inventions and attempts to make significant improvements to diamond-polishing techniques within the Dutch and Flemish industries). In Venice itself, it seems that attention should focus on two aspects. The first of these has already been mentioned: the fact that Venetian merchants – indeed, Italian merchants in general – found themselves marginalized within Middle-Eastern markets because, unlike their foreign rivals, they did not enjoy the protection provided by robust trading companies. In highlighting this, I am in no way denying that such merchant networks might act independently of state or national interest, or that family/religious bonds might sometimes prove stronger than membership of a specific trading company or state body. True, the above-mentioned Jean-Baptiste Tavernier was in India to purchase diamonds for his national monarch, Louis XIV; but it is also true that religious or ethnic minorities such as the Jews and the Armenians provide significant examples of how complex this issue of minority networks might become, demonstrating that they are matters which require full, in-depth study. Furthermore, in talking about trading companies putting Venetian merchants at a disadvantage, it should not be overlooked that it was Venetian merchants themselves – admittedly in another historical-economic context such as China – who in previous centuries had prepared the ground for the establishment of such commercial-entrepreneurial institutions. In fact, the type of treatise which dated back to Marco Polo – comprising travel accounts and descriptions – would be resurrected in the seventeenth century by the Venetian merchant Minucci and the Venetian nobleman Ambrogio Bembo.36 The second, no less important, factor to be considered here is the growing weakness of Venice’s manufacturing sector and the increasing conflict between the craft guilds and the labour force that did not belong to such guilds, as was the case, for example, with the Jews. For a whole series of reasons, these latter would, from as early as the beginning of the seventeenth century, appear to be a very dynamic factor in both the commercial and manufacturing sectors. The first reason for the slow but inexorable penetration of the old and rigid Venetian system of craft manufacture by the Jews was the fact that the community in the city had religious and family links with the wider Jewish community throughout Europe and beyond. For example, in 1629 Abraham Camis and his son Isach were reported to the Inquisitori alle Arti (responsible for enforcing guild regulations and protecting guild privileges) for having flouted the regulations of the Mariegola by working rubies, emeralds, diamonds and a large number of pearls. In their house were discovered forty-nine uncut diamonds of 7–8 carats each, three uncut diamonds of 2 grains each (1 grain = 0.25 carat) and a number of other uncut diamonds that may have weighed around one and a half carats in total (thus an amount that was not entirely irrelevant). Even more importantly, the search also revealed the presence of instruments used in cutting diamonds – in particular, a mill and a tagliadura [hard cutter], which were the most common and essential tools required for such work. The Camis’ defence was that they considered themselves to be merchants belonging to the Jewish community of Amsterdam, where they worked and traded in diamonds and other precious stones. Indeed, while it may have been true that Isach’s brother Giacobbe sold diamonds in Padua, he actually worked them in Amsterdam. Finally,

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they said that they considered themselves to be members of a community which had for centuries been permitted to bring uncut diamonds and precious stones into Venice, adding – who knows how sincerely – that they had such stones worked exclusively by Venetian guild craftsmen.37 It is true that there had always been encouragement for those bringing precious stones and precious metals such as silver and gold into the city: these were the raw materials necessary for the work of the guild of goldsmiths and the guild of diamondcutters, hence an essential premise for the success of Venice’s manufacturing sector. For the reasons already mentioned, the importing of diamonds – and then of gold – became more problematic during the first decades of the seventeenth century. With regard to gold, one can see the metal getting progressively rarer and more expensive: a price fixed at 112 lira per ounce in 1632 would in 1638 already leap up to 120 lira and six years later pass to 128 lira. This increase in cost and decrease in supply caused great disgruntlement within the guild of goldsmiths, and the crisis in that sector inevitably had its effect upon the work of the diamond-cutters.38 No less unhelpful was the tax burden on the guilds as a whole, with craftsmen complaining in 1617 that they had never been subjected before to such a heavy tansa (a tax that was however borne by merchants); furthermore, the guild was also obliged to provide oarsmen for the small and large galleys of the Venetian Navy. All in all, it was a situation that provoked great dissatisfaction among those working in the sector.39 At this critical juncture, the Venetian authorities and guilds pursued precisely the wrong strategy: instead of introducing measures that would have harnessed all the city’s commercial and financial energies, they penalized and excluded some groups from activities to which they could have made a clear contribution. Jews, for example, had long been prevented from becoming full members of any guild;40 yet they had been allowed to import diamonds and other precious stones into the city. However, even in that sector there was a fear that their activity might damage the senseri (brokers) and middlemen operating within the city. As early as 1522 the Jews had been forbidden to have shops or to trade in the heart of the city – that is, on Ruga Rialto which led up to the Rialto Bridge – though even the authorities themselves recorded that the measure was largely ignored and, anyway, flew in the face of commercial logic.41 In spite of this recognition that the legislation was both ineffective and nonsensical, a century later this ban on Jewish brokers working on ruga degli orefici (Goldsmiths’ Row) was reiterated, due to the excessive profits Jewish merchants were said to be making: the case cited involved a diamond owned by a certain Salomon Barcelo, who had bought it for 600 ducats and sold it for 800, making a clear profit of a good 200 ducats.42 Later, however, the Senate seems to have relaxed the ban: Jews were allowed to trade ‘entro le rughe’ [within the streets leading up to the Rialto] and to do business with the Goldsmiths’ and Jewellers’ guilds, but only with them (my emphasis). Naturally, there was a reiteration of the ban on Jews cutting diamonds or possessing the equipment (that is, the mills) necessary to do such work.43 The truth was that developments were inexorably thwarting the intention behind this restrictive Venetian legislation: not only was the best business done by Jewish merchants, but the Jewish presence within the city’s guilds grew and grew. And this is without considering the Armenians, another minority community in Venice whose

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role in the city’s commercial sector still presents numerous aspects that have yet to be studied in depth:44 for example, it is recorded that in 1670 a Venetian diamanter, Domenico Zuanne Monte, bought diamonds from an Armenian merchant to a value of 1,500 ducats, a far from negligible sum.45 But if the Armenians were doing well, the Jewish merchants were doing even better: in that same year, Monte (a figure whose name appears frequently in the city’s archives) bought diamonds to a value of a good 4,000 ducats from the Jew Daniele Grespin,46 while a few years earlier (in 1654) Josef Aboaf had been able to conclude a deal involving diamonds to a value of 3,000 (or perhaps 4,000) ducats.47 However, it was Jewish expansion into the actual working of diamonds – a fundamental prerogative of the established diamond-cutters’ guild – which the authorities saw as particularly harmful. In their view, this arte dei diamanteri was being ‘destroyed and annihilated by the forgeries of these infidels’; the comment was directed against Moisé Camis, who in 1642 was found guilty of cutting rosette diamonds and making rings which he then sold publicly in the Rughe ‘to the great hurt of the poor Arte degli Orefici [Guild of Goldsmiths]’.48 An even more severe denunciation of this phenomenon came from the Venetian diamanter Lazaro Martinelli, even though he himself had worked precious stones which he had acquired from that same Camis. While doing business with the Jew, Martinelli also informed the authorities that Camis had, for around ten years, been using diamond dust to cut diamonds to a value of around 2,000 ducats (brought in from Aleppo), upon which he made substantial profits of around 100 to 200 ducats. Furthermore, the Venetian complained, in this business Camis had been able to exploit a network that comprised not only of other Jewish merchants (Caim de Lion) but also Flemish merchants (buying, for example, a 2,000-ducat lot of diamonds from a certain ‘Giacomo Striclo’).49 All in all, it seems that, in spite of the severe laws intended to safeguard the Venetian guilds, forms of collusion and ‘overlapping’ cannot have been infrequent. For example, it appears that the Venetian diamanter Bastia Dal Toso had not only Jewish but also Greek, German and Flemish craftsmen within his workshop.50 For his part, the Jew Moisé Ergas worked with Leon Armeno in a workshop at Ponte del Paradiso which also employed other foreign craftsmen (for example Christian Todesco).51 Still, given the severity of the restrictions placed upon the trade in/ working of diamonds and the making of jewellery in general, it is easy to understand the frustration of those who were excluded – and of the Jews in particular. The Camis, for example, openly declared that they intended to move to Leghorn and Flanders, certain as they were that they would never be accepted by the guilds, nor by the authorities who passed legislation on their behalf. There is no doubt that the Jewish community had long been considered useful for Venetian trade, hence Jews had been welcome – even encouraged – to move to Venice and the rest of the Venetian state; there were numerous Jewish merchants in Padua, for instance. And given that the diamond trade was highly profitable, and the stones were worked within homes or small workshops, it obviously became more and more difficult to stop those who dealt in the uncut stones also engaging in the working and polishing of the finished product (upon which profits are known, in one extreme case, to have reached levels of 400 per cent).52 However, excessive protection of their own privileges by guild members ignored the needs of the very manufacturing sector

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in which they worked, which required both innovation and a ready circulation of know-how. True, those who argue for the positive role which the guilds played in these crucial centuries claim that these needs were met by these bodies themselves; however, their interpretations of the facts are not always convincing.53 It is in the first decades of the seventeenth century that one sees the first signs of the growing difficulties faced by Venetian diamond-cutters; perhaps, indeed, this period marks a veritable turning-point in the fortunes of this component of the city’s manufacturing sector. In 1636 the Senate itself became aware of the serious decline in the number of diamond mills operating in the city, being informed that the number had dropped from the 300 of just a few decades before to a mere 30, with another 100 mills being used in the making of jewellery.54 The crisis then got even worse, for only two years later there were only 22 diamond mills in operation – though it was pointed out that that previous figure of 300 had been an overestimate, and that the number of such mills once in operation had really totalled 186. There had also been a substantial drop in the size of the workforce, which no longer totalled 492 but solely 47. However, one of the causes that had triggered this was identified as being the low volume of gold and silver arriving in the city, a shortage which would obviously have had a knock-on effect upon the diamond sector. Still, it was clearly stated that the diamonds which had once arrived in the city from India and Syria now went to ‘the West’ or to Istanbul, Vienna and Geneva.55 However, it would be wrong to speak of a complete collapse in this sector, even though this was a period of substantial difficulties – largely due to ever more relentless competition, against which the traditional means available to Venetian trade were powerless. On the one hand, one must set the huge drop in the number of actual guild members against the fact that various others, Jews and non-Jews, were operating in the sector without being formerly enrolled as craftsmen; after all, as the authorities themselves complained, this illegal activity was encouraged by the fact that such membership exposed an individual to far from negligible taxes (including the above-mentioned tansa).56 The resultant confluence of interests meant that ‘informal’ agreements between Jews and Venetian craftsmen became ever more frequent – a development over which it was difficult to exercise official control. As an example here one might cite Giacomo Erges, an upstanding Jewish merchant, who not only exported jewellery and diamonds to Germany, Constantinople and all the major cities of Italy, but also had diamonds worked by numerous Venetian craftsmen (G. B. Carpi, Pietro Vanoi, Paolo Alter and Pietro Manzoni) and then sold them in the Ghetto.57 This breakdown of a consolidated guild framework into a situation characterized by the activity of a number of individual craftsmen – perhaps operating without any substantial capital – would become an irreversible process in the later seventeenth century and then continue throughout the eighteenth. The second process to be noted here is the increasing spread of diamonds and jewellery among the Venetian aristocracy and the city’s wealthier consumers. The cost of these luxury goods could vary enormously, with consumers taking advantage of the overall drop in prices and of the availability of diamonds and precious stones from new sources (Brazil would become increasingly important during the course of the eighteenth century).58 For this reason, the detailed statistics compiled by the Venetian authorities in the 1770s, as a result of renewed interest in the fate of Venice’s manufacturing sector and the possibility of breathing new life into it,59 had to take

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into account an economic reality which was rather more complex than it appeared on paper, where the decline in the sector since the sixteenth century was clear. One set of the figures drawn up shows that, in 1773, the city’s diamanteri da duro (master diamond-cutters) totalled no more than 16, who were divided between 8 workshops and assisted by 6 workers and 4 apprentices; the diamanteri da tenero, master cutters of other (softer) precious stones such as sapphires and rubies etc.,60 totalled 20, together with 15 workers and 6 apprentices, and there were only three shops specialising in the sale of diamonds. Another contemporary note gives even lower figures for the diamanteri da duro (only 10), but does list 11 workers and 3 apprentices. This very discrepancy might be explainable by the fact that it was becoming ever more difficult to distinguish between the roles of the various levels of craftsmen – a situation reflected by the frequent conflicts which arose between master craftsmen, workers and even the apprentices themselves. Though the authorities recognized the need to resolve the complexities of this situation, they proved incapable of introducing the improvements necessary if this manufacturing sector was to withstand the strong competition from European diamonds.61 The situation, therefore, was one of undoubted decline, which continued even after the fall of the Republic, with Venetian diamond-workers incapable of regaining their international position. True, ‘in 1825 there were still some diamondcutters in Venice’, but by 1860 the city had just one diamantero left – a blind indigent living in a public hospice.62 Thus came to an end a manufacturing sector which, over the centuries, had managed to stimulate substantial flows of both capital and technological know-how. It was a sector in whose development the Venetian Republic had undoubtedly played a key role, and yet whose international growth would result in the city’s diamond industry becoming of ever more marginal importance. In spite of the dramatic history of the late Republic, one might have hoped for a rather better end to this glorious tradition. But then economic history is full of such stories of growth and decline, of development fading into failure.

NOTES 1. Godeheard Lenzen, The History of Diamond Production and the Diamond Trade (New York: Praeger Publisher, 1970), pp. 15–115. 2. Point-cut diamonds, observes Lenzen, ‘are the result of one of the early methods of finishing (type of cut) the natural octahedron with the artificially polished (cut) natural crystal planes’ (Lenzen, The History of Diamond Production, p. 61). Within the diamond, the flat upper surface of the top part of the stone (the ‘crown’) was called a ‘table’, and this should never be more than half as big as the ‘girdle’, the boundary between the crown and the lower part of the stone (the ‘pavilion’); if it was, this undermined the balance in the other facets of the diamond. In some cuts, the pavilion was left flat, as was the case with the Flemish rose or rosette: in effect, a crown without a pavilion. 3. It is no coincidence that contemporary diamond-cutters calculate the size and form of the facets of the diamond itself with great precision, and thence carefully finish each

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face. Each mistake here not only results in a loss of weight (clearly to be avoided) but also diminishes the amount of light the stone reflects. As Lenzen pointed out, ‘the cut of the brilliant is intended to bring out the best of the light effect; its mathematical deduction is therefore based on the refractive index of the mineral diamond, a physical constant expressed by a numerical value. If the proportions and the angular accuracy of the facets of the cut stone diverge from the mathematically established values, the brilliant will appear lifeless: luster, brilliance, dispersion – none of them will show its full effect’ (Lenzen, The History of Diamond Production, p. 71). Within the rich literature on the subject, one should look at the material on the development of jewellery-making in Italy, in particular in Valenza Po, a town which – together with Vicenza and Arezzo – has established a world reputation for itself in the working and finishing of precious stones. More detailed research here is required to chart the gradual emergence of such centres, whose complex timescale clearly reflects changes in domestic and international markets. On Valenza Po and how it developed, see Dario Gaggio, In Gold we Trust: Social Capital and Economic Change in the Italian Jewelry Towns (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2007); Dario Gaggio, Il ciclo orafo: il caso dell’area attrezzata di Valenza Po (Milan: Franco Angeli, 1979). 4. Bartolomeo de Pasi, Tariffa dei pesi e misure, corrispondenti dal Levante al Ponente, e da una terra a l’altra, e a tutte le parti del mondo, con la noticia delle robe che se trazeno da uno paese per l’altro. Novamente con diligentia ristampata (Venice: Paolo Gherardo, 1557); see also Lenzen, The History of Diamond Production, p. 61. 5. It is no coincidence that Lisbon should have attracted Flemish craftsmen; see Eddy Stols, ‘The Discoveries and the Flemish Jewel Trade’, in Iris Kockelberg, Eddy Vleeschdrager and Jan Walgrave (eds), The Brilliant Story of Antwerp Diamonds (Antwerp: Ortelius, 1992), p. 98. 6. For example, at the Burgundy court in 1388 a diamond was produced, at great expense, in which all the eight points of the octahedron had been cut. And alongside the traditional table cut, a ‘cushion-form’ diamond was introduced. Furthermore, in the course of the fifteenth century careful work upon the sides of the octahedron produced diamonds of lozenge form or even heart-shaped and ‘donkey-backed’ (see The Brilliant Story of Antwerp Diamonds, p. 58). 7. ‘From the 16th century onwards, it appears from the inventories that the pyramidal diamonds abandon the field to faceted stones with a flat undersurface and methodically polished facets, resting on a round girdle. These faceted stones are commonly called roses. The rose cut boomed particularly in Amsterdam and Antwerp. Gradually, different shapes have evolved from there . . . Typical for Antwerp is “the rose à la mode”, the most refined and valuable, with a high back and many facets, as shown on many preserved 18th century jewels’ (The Brilliant Story of Antwerp Diamonds). 8. Roland Baetens, De Nazomer van Antwerpens welvaart: de diaspora en het handelshuis De Groote tijdens de eerste helft der 17de eeuw (Brussels: Gemeentekrediet van Belgie, 1976), vol. I, p. 69. Hans Pohl mentions that diamonds and pearls were among the luxury goods imported from the Spanish and Portuguese colonies that the Portuguese traded in Antwerp; Die Portugiesen in Antwerpen (1567–1648). Zur Geschichte einer Minderheit (Wiesbaden: F. Steiner, 1977), p. 212.

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9. Baetens, De Nazomer van Antwerpens welvaart, pp. 200–3. 10. Baetens, De Nazomer van Antwerpens welvaart, p. 199. 11. The Brilliant Story of Antwerp Diamonds, p. 61. 12. Winfried Brulez, ‘De diaspora der antwerpse kooplui op het einde van de 16e eeuw’, Bijdragen voor de Geschiedenis der Nederlanden, 15 (1960), p. 303. There was a similar network involving Portuguese merchants living in Lisbon and elsewhere and Portuguese or non-Portuguese agents working in Goa: Pohl, Die Portugiesen in Antwerpen, p. 198. 13. The Helmans placed great trust in the Balbi, investing with them 12,500 ducats in the trade, and the Balbi themselves carried on with the ‘East Indies’; Winfried Brulez, Marchands flamands à Venise, I (1586–1605) (Brussels–Rome: Academia Belgica, 1965), p. 89. In 1600 the Flemish trading house would entrust the management of its affairs in India for the next two years to Giovanni Battista de Luca, Angelo de Federici and Giacomo Fava. The first two received a salary of 250 piastre, whilst Fava would stay a total of three years on an annual salary of 600 ducats (Brulez, Marchands flamands à Venise, p. 342). 14. In 1586 Guglielmo Helman would entrust the Portuguese Gabriel de Sousa with precious jewels; he was to travel on the galley of Niccolò Balbi bound for Costantinople. The jewels would be delivered to Karel Helman (Brulez, Marchands flamands à Venise, p. 52). In 1598 it would be Karel Helman who entrusted merchants from Lucca with jewels that they would then take to Syria and the ‘East Indies’ (Brulez, Marchands flamands à Venise, p. 273). 15. In 1603 Domenico Pantaleo was to sell jewels in India for Karel Helman. He was allowed to sell the merchandise in Aleppo and Hormuz but not go beyond Goa. The proceeds from the sale of the precious stones were to be used to buy such merchandise as Pantaleo saw fit (Brulez, Marchands flamands à Venise, p. 471). 16. Sea transport, too, had its risks: shipwreck, theft and other losses. Along with variations in price, speculation and fakes, such factors played their role in making this trade highly ‘sensitive’ (Pohl, Die Portugiesen in Antwerpen), p. 204. 17. There is now substantial literature on the subject; see especially Federica Ruspio, La nazione portoghese. Ebrei ponentini e nuovi cristiani a Venezia (Torino: S. Zamorani, 2007); Eric Dursteler, Venetians in Constantinople: Nation, Identity, and Coexistence in the Early Modern Mediterranean (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2006); Maartje van Gelder, Trading Places: the Netherlandish Merchants in Early Modern Venice (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2009); Francescsa Trivellato, The Familiarity of Strangers. The Sephardic Diaspora, Livorno, and Cross-Cultural Trade in the Early Modern Period (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2009). 18. Stols, The Discoveries and the Flemish Jewel Trade, p. 99. On de Coutre’s trading activities in India, see the recent work by Karin Hofmeester, kindly pointed out to me by the author herself: ‘Working for Diamonds from the 16th century to the 20th century’, in Marcel van Linden and Leo Lucassen (eds), Working for Labor. Essays in Honor of Jan Lucassen (Leiden: Brill, 2012), pp. 19–46, especially pp. 25–6. 19. In 1598 a Rotterdam trading company of five ships was founded, with 50 per cent of the capital coming from Italians; Brulez, Marchands flamands à Venise, p. 284.

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20. Brulez, Marchands flamands à Venise, p. 64. 21. ‘Trading numerous other luxury articles was also extremely popular: painting, valuable furniture and inlaid cabinets in rosewood, ebony and tortoise-shell, musical instruments, metalwork, and Venetian glass’ (cf. The Brilliant Story of Antwerp Diamonds, p. 99). 22. Lenzen, The History of Diamond Production, pp. 89–90. Lenzen offers the interpretation that both Paris and Frankfurt would already have undergone a sharper decline in the first half of the seventeeth century: ‘Paris diamond cutters had sunk to insignificance’ whilst in Frankfurt, ‘after the maximum of fifty-one diamond cutters in 1613, only three remained there in 1660’. 23. It is no coincidence that in recent years Antwerp has re-asserted its dominance over Amsterdam, at least in the working of diamonds – in part because of lower production costs, in part because of a wide territorial network of small workshops. On these conclusions, see Karin Hofmeester, ‘Shifting Trajectories of Diamond Processing: from India to Europe and Back, Fifteenth to Twentieth Centuries’, forthcoming in the Journal of Global History, kindly lent by the author. 24. Lenzen, The History of Diamond Production, p. 90. 25. Gedalia Yogev, Diamonds and Coral. Anglo-Dutch Jews and Eighteenth-Century Trade (Leicester: Holmes & Meier, 1978), pp. 81–2. 26. Yogev, Diamonds and Coral, p. 20. 27. Lenzen, The History of Diamond Production, p. 86. 28. Lenzen, The History of Diamond Production, p. 77. 1 carat = 0.20 grams. 29. Hubert Bari, Michele Bimbenet-Privat, Bernard Morel, ‘I diamanti dell’India arrivano in Europa’, in Hubert Bari, Caterina Cardona and Gian Carlo Parodi (eds), Diamanti: arte, storia, scienza, Exhibition Catalogue (Rome: De Luca, 2002), p. 98. 30. On Fryer, see Karin Hofmeester, Shifting Trajectories of Diamond Processing. 31. See what Jean-Baptiste Tavernier has to say in his Six voyages de Jean Baptiste Tavernier . . . en Turquie, en Perse, aux Indes . . ., part II (Paris: Gervais Clouzier, 1686), pp. 293–6. 32. See Anselmus Boetius de Boot in Gemmarum et lapidum historia . . . (Lugdunum Batavorum: Ioannis Maire, 1647), pp. 75–85. It is, however, difficult to understand his account of this machine. 33. Amina Okada, ‘I diamanti dei Mogul e dei Maharaja’, in Diamanti, pp. 69–80. 34. In fact, Lenzen talks of the crown having 32 facets, but does not take the table itself into account. In specialist terminology, the Peruzzi cut is cited as a ‘triple stone’ in opposition to the ‘double stone’ of the Mazarin cut: ‘the triple stone, too, has its “inventor”. It is ascribed to the Florentine diamond cutter Vincenzo Peruzzi who, about 1680, during cutting experiments with colored stones is said to have evolved that modification of the old thick stone whose top has thirty-two and whose base has twenty-four geometrically arranged facets. This constitutes the basis of the modern brilliant’ (Lenzen, The History of Diamond Production, p. 108).

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35. Venice, Museo Correr, Mariegola degli orafi, quoted by Piero Pazzi, I diamanti nel commercio, nell’arte e nelle vicende storiche di Venezia (Venice: Tipografia di San Lazzaro degli Armeni, 1986), p. 20. 36. See Piero Falchetta (ed.), Niccolò Minucci, Storia del Mogol (Milan: Franco Maria Ricci, 1986), even if little attention is paid to this specific topic. Ambrogio Bembo wrote Viaggio e giornale per parte dell’Asia di quattro anni incirca fatto da me Ambrosio Bembo nobile veneto, Antonio Invernizzi (ed.) (Turin: Abaco, 2005). See also the English edition: The Travels and Journal of Ambrosio Bembo, translated from the Italian by Clara Bargellini; edited and annotated and with an introduction by Anthony Welch; with original illustrations by G. J. Grélot (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2007). 37. Archivio di Stato di Venezia (henceforth A.S.V.), Arti, b. 422, 9 May 1629. 38. A.S.V., Senato Terra, filza 417, decree of 22 May 1632 (copy) and 22 January 1638; filza 479, decree of 12 March 1644. 39. A.S.V., Arti, b. 423, 21 April 1617. 40. The Inquistori alle Arti (Inquisitors on Crafts) pointed out that in Chapter 33 of the Statute there was a prohibition upon the teaching of the trade of goldsmith, jeweller or margheriteri (maker of Venetian glass beads) to any Jew or converted Jew. Any Jew learning the profession faced a 100-ducat fine (A.S.V., Arti, b. 423). 41. A.S.V., Arti, b. 424, 30 October 1552. 42. A.S.V., Arti, b. 424, 1622. 43. A.S.V., Arti, Senate Decree (copy) of 28 November 1636. 44. On the establishment of New Julfa in Safavid Persia – where the Armenians would be recorded as exporting silk and jewels – see Sebouh David Aslanian, From the Indian Ocean to the Mediterranean: The Global Trade Networks of Armenian Merchants from New Julfa (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2010). 45. A.S.V., Arti, b. 424, 12 June 1670. 46. A.S.V., Arti, 8 June 1670. Grespin himself sold diamonds of different prices and weight – total value: 400 ducats – to Giacobbe Mezza (8 June 1670). 47. A.S.V., Arti, 10 September 1654. 48. A.S.V., Arti, b. 422, 2 February 1642. 49. A.S.V., Arti, 3 March 1643. 50. A.S.V., Arti, 30 June 1629. 51. A.S.V., Arti, 1658. 52. In 1658 (1 July) a diamond purchased for 200 reali was, after cutting and polishing, sold for 1,000 reali (A.S.V., Arti, b. 424). 53. See Jan Lucassen, Tine De Moor and Jan Luiten van Zanden (eds), The Return of the Guilds, Supplement 16 of the International Review of Social History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), particularly the Introduction by Maarten Prak. His argument that guilds in the early modern era had a positive economic effect is a clear revision of the usual historical interpretation, which sees them as having hindered economic development.

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54. A.S.V., Senato Terra, filza 391, 8 July 1636. 55. A.S.V., Senato Terra, filza 409, 18 May 1638. 56. A.S.V., Arti, b. 421, 11 April 1687. 57. A.S.V., Arti, b. 422, memorials of 5 October 1638 and 20 August 1654. 58. Pazzi, I diamanti nel commercio, pp. 29 ff. 59. A.S.V., Arti, b. 64, 5 May 1773. 60. The diamanteri were a branch of the larger Arte degli Orefici. This also comprised the branch of goldsmiths and jewellers, which was still very large: 210 master craftsmen, 90 workers and 116 apprentices. There were also the so-called ‘fake jewellers’, who worked with precious stones of little value. Even these were more numerous than the diamanteri, in 1773 numbering 56 master craftsmen, 10 workers and 20 apprentices. 61. A.S.V., Arti, b. 64, statistics of 5 May 1773. Also see Agostino Sagredo, Sulle consorterie delle arti edificative in Venezia (Venice: P. Naratovich, 1866). 62. Pazzi, I diamanti nel commercio, p. 17.

A Global Supremacy: The Worldwide Hegemony of the Piedmontese Reeling Technologies, 1720s–1830s ROBERTO DAVINI Independent Scholar

Abstract In the early eighteenth century the commercialization of raw silks operated within a long-established, highly competitive, and fast-expanding market, linking scores of specialized production areas spread across the entire world. Competition was very active at all levels of the world market. The small Kingdom of Savoy, in northern Italy, was acknowledged for the perfection of its reeling technologies and its silks dominated the world market from the late seventeenth to the early nineteenth century. Governments often adopted political economies similar to the ones of the Kingdom of Savoy in order to upgrade their productions and compete in the world market. Technological transfers and the emigration of experts and artisans from the Kingdom of Savoy to the other production areas of the Euro-Asian and American continents became frequent in the late eighteenth century. This chapter deals with these technological transfers, emigrations and imported politics and with the impact they had on the pre-existing local producers’ economies.

INTRODUCTION: PIEDMONT’S TECHNOLOGICAL SUPREMACY The small Kingdom of Savoy, in north-western Italy, was renowned for the perfection of its silk thread in European markets. The products of Piedmont, the region of the kingdom where silk making took place, dominated all the European silk-textile centres from the late seventeenth to the early nineteenth century. The Kingdom of Savoy became a model for silk experts by focusing on two specific phases of the 87

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silk-production cycle: reeling (winding the cocoon filaments off to form a silk thread called raw silk) and throwing (twisting one or more raw silk threads into a stronger thread to be employed in textile making).1 Piedmontese reeling technology was very demanding in terms of standardization of procedures. Quality raw material was essential for producing a uniform thread. So, before starting the reeling operations the cocoons had to be selected, and double and ‘bad cocoons’ removed; cocoons with overly thin filaments also had to be discarded, because their filaments could not withstand the tension of the reeling and broke more often than the ‘good’ ones. As for the raw silk reeling, two women with different and complementary functions had to operate the reeling machine: the spinner (the filera), who sat behind the basin filled with water, in which the cocoons were boiled to soften the fibre, and the reeler (the virera), who had to turn the reel and stop the operation whenever a break in the thread occurred. Contrary to old methods, according to which four, six and even more threads could be worked at the same time, in Piedmont spinners worked only two threads simultaneously, each originating from a separate batch composed of the same number of cocoons, and made them cross each other, so as to squeeze the water from the threads, remove impurities, and render them more cohesive and rounded. These innovations, however, required much more attention and slowed down the working rhythms, diminishing the productivity of spinners and reelers. They were incompatible with previous systems of retribution on a piecework basis, which induced workers to focus on quantity instead of quality. Therefore, since the 1660s the Savoy authorities decreed that spinners and reelers would be paid on an hourly basis.2 As for the reeling machine, the basins were smaller than the ones used previously; that meant saving wood and easier water changes. The movement of the ‘to and fro’ device – a device to distribute the thread uniformly on the reel – was transmitted by a four cog-wheel mechanism.3

WOMEN, KNOWLEDGE AND PRACTICES Except for minor technical modifications, Piedmontese reeling machines remained essentially the same throughout the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Raw silk reeling, however, was a manual operation, in which the dexterity of the labour force was a key factor in producing fine silk thread.4 Indeed, the hegemony of Piedmontese reeling technology was not simply due to an upgrading of the reeling machine but also to the enhancement of the spinners’ and reelers’ knowledge and practices. The manual and intellectual dexterity of spinners and reelers steadily improved during the course of the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, enabling them to produce thinner and more uniform silk threads. Giuseppe Chicco has analysed the Lettere Patenti, the governmental regulations promulgated between the 1660s and the 1720s, and has clearly shown the results of this upgrading process. The Regulations of 1667 stated that fine raw silk threads had to be made from a maximum of 10/12 cocoon filaments. In 1720, a raw silk thread of 10/12 cocoon filaments would have been considered third rate. Indeed, in those years, extra fine raw silks were produced using only 3/4 cocoon filaments.5 Raw silk reeling was literally in ‘women’s hands’. Spinners were older and got higher wages than reelers, who were often their daughters, younger sisters or nieces.

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It took years to train an expert spinner, who was usually chosen from the reelers’ ranks. Rules, patterns of gestures and all the manual automatisms that comprised the art of reeling were gradually transmitted from spinners to reelers during a long period of low-paid apprenticeship; it was a craft completely controlled by women.6 The expertise of the Piedmontese spinners was also acknowledged in eighteenthcentury Europe. To have them work in their filatures, European entrepreneurs were ready to pay expert female spinners from the Piedmont more than male artisans.7 Indeed, when the Georgia Trustees planned the transfer of Piedmontese raw silk reeling technologies to the American colony in the 1730s, they were perfectly aware that in Piedmont silk reeling was an all-female skill. So, in the team of Piedmontese experts sent to Georgia women were requested in equal ratios to men.8 Organization was also an important factor. The Piedmontese method yielded good results only if the work was organized under the same roof in the filature, so that spinners and reelers could be continuously supervised. From the late seventeenth century onward, the enhancement of the expertise of spinners and reelers went hand in hand with a process of spatial concentration of the reeling operations in the filatures. An official survey from 1782 found that 94.6 per cent of raw silk production took place in large industrial filatures, while the rest was still produced on a domestic basis. The productive capacity of these large filatures ranged from 20 to 100 reeling machines.9 In Piedmont only the best cocoons went to the filatures, which in turn supplied raw silk to the hydraulic-powered mills.

TRANSFERS OF TECHNOLOGY Contemporaries attributed to Piedmontese technology a universal capacity to upgrade local production; therefore, attempts to refine local raw silk productions were constantly pursued, and transfers of Piedmontese machinery and experts became commonplace between the 1720s and the 1830s. I have already mentioned the experiment attempted by the Georgia Trustees in North America in the 1730s. As I will show, in 1769 the East India Company decided to introduce Piedmontese reeling technology to Bengal. Members of an important dynasty of Piedmontese silk merchants, the Arnauds, were contacted in the 1770s by the Portuguese ambassador in Turin, and moved to the town of Chasim, in northern Portugal, where until the 1830s they attempted (with scarce success) to introduce modern Piedmontese sericulture practices and reeling technology.10 In the 1780s, Tipu Sultan, the main opponent to the East India Company’s expansion into the Indian subcontinent, attempted to introduce Piedmontese silk reeling technology to Mysore, although in this instance the plan was carried out with the mediation of French silk experts.11 For their part, the French authorities embarked upon a long and costly programme of supporting the Manufactures Royales in Midi France in order to spread silk production methods and technology as close as possible to those of Piedmont.12 Similar strategies were also followed in the Duchy of Parma, in Calabria, Valencia, Budapest, on the Austrian side of Friuli in north-eastern Italy and in Egypt. The disappointing outcomes of all these experiments and the enduring Piedmontese dominance in the field, broken only in the 1830s, point to the high degree of relevance the locally, historically determined context of production in

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Piedmont had upon the technological supremacy of the Savoy Kingdom. In this article I will deal only with the transfer of Piedmontese reeling technology to Georgia and Bengal. Besides representing attempts aimed at solving the crucial problem Great Britain had in procuring raw materials for her silk industry, they are part of a common historical process, as they are deeply intertwined with the British imperial and colonial projects of the eighteenth century. They are two acts of the same drama. Yet, as I intend to show, they also represent two quite opposite instances, due to the very different social and economic features of the two colonial contexts.

RAW SILK AND THE BRITISH EMPIRE: THE DERBY EXPERIMENT AND THE ESTABLISHMENT OF THE GEORGIA COLONY During Robert Walpole’s tenure as Prime Minister (1721–1742), the British Government and the Royal Crown restructured the previous mercantile policies regarding the colonies, shifting from the earlier focus on the state’s fiscal profits from international trade (as in the various Navigation Acts of the seventeenth century) to a new emphasis on the British colonies as suppliers of raw materials for domestic industries.13 In the European silk market, Great Britain was the only producer of silk textiles that did not produce raw silk. The climate was an insurmountable barrier to the cultivation of mulberry trees, and the development of its textile industry had to rely entirely on costly imports, especially from Piedmont, for the finest silk thread. So the colonies were perceived as strategic for the development of the silk industry, and raw silk production overseas was regarded as a key element in the imperial plans of early eighteenth-century Britain. Since the Lombe brothers took the initiative of circumventing Piedmont’s monopoly and built a Piedmontese style silk-throwing mill in Derby in the early 1720s, the fortunes of the domestic silk industry and the colonies became inextricably entwined.14 Disturbed by the Derby experiment, in 1722 Savoy prohibited the exporting of raw silk from the kingdom, in order to reinforce its monopolistic position in silk throwing.15 The problem of finding a valid substitute for Piedmontese raw silk was so critical that Thomas Lombe declared in 1732 that had he known that the King of Savoy would prohibit the exportation of raw silk he would not have built his mill in Derby.16 In the same year the Georgia Trustees – a group of influential philanthropists in London – received a charter from the King to establish a colony in North America. The Trustees, aware that the Georgia experiment had to appeal to Parliament and the British public for funding and support, showed in their promotional literature that they were keen to advance the production of raw silk in colony, in order to supply the British silk industry. Benjamin Martyn, the Secretary of the Trustees, in a pamphlet entitled Reasons for Establishing the Colony of Georgia, argued optimistically that the development of sericulture and raw silk reeling in the colony ‘will provide employment for at least twenty thousand people in Georgia, . . . and at least twenty thousand more . . . . here, . . . in working the raw silk’.17 The Trustees, probably through the intermediation of Thomas Lombe, who enthusiastically supported their colonial project, contacted the brothers Paolo and

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Nicola Amatis, members of one of the most important families of silk merchants in Turin, and persuaded them to travel to the colony and teach the settlers the Piedmontese method of reeling.18 The Amatis arrived in Georgia in 1733, together with Giacomo Camosso, a silk expert from Piedmont, and his family. They soon started a mulberry plantation in the Trustees’ Garden in Savannah and built a small pilot filature to teach the colonists the new method.19 On their part, the Trustees made the cultivation of mulberry trees compulsory in colonial legislature, and landowners were also required to have at least one female member of their family instructed in the art of reeling silk.20

AN OVERARCHING PROBLEM: THE SCARCITY OF SKILLED LABOUR It is worth noting that the first raw silks produced in Georgia under the Amatis brothers’ supervision were processed in Lombe’s mill in Derby and met with the approval of British silk experts.21 However, the quantities of raw silk shipped to England from the 1730s to the 1770s were always insignificant. Martyn argued that ‘in a country such as Georgia, a sufficient quantity of silk might soon be raised to supply all Europe, if there were hands enough properly instructed to carry on the work’.22 In this passage he was underlining the key problem the Trustees were facing in carrying on the plan: namely, the making and training of a large class of mulberry cultivators, silk worm rearers, spinners and reelers able to capitalize fully on the natural treasures of Georgia. Although the Trustees offered a great deal of financial, technological and educational support, by recruiting Piedmontese silk experts, procuring Piedmontese machinery and specialist literature, granting high salaries, bounties, and bonuses and institutionalizing apprenticeships, they recognized that these measures would be futile if the labour force was not well trained and inclined to carefully follow the Piedmontese methods. But in Georgia, like in other British colonies in North America, settlers lived in an economy in which there was a great abundance of fertile, unoccupied land and a scarcity of human resources. This particular proportion of the production factors (very different from the European one) complicated the relationships between employers and workers, making the latter rebellious and independently-minded.23 In 1741 the same Martyn noted that many settlers arrived in Georgia with the idea that they could find there ‘the conveniences and pleasures of life without any labour or toil’. He further remarked that in the colony it was hard ‘to form [the settlers] into society, and reduce them to a proper obedience to the laws’.24 Furthermore, if overly burdened by too many rules and checks, the settlers could choose to leave the country in search of better opportunities in other territories, unoccupied land being extremely abundant. In 1752 a fairly exact census turned up just 2,400 of the more than 5,000 men, women and children who had gone to Georgia in the previous two decades. Three out of every five settlers had moved away or died and had not been replaced by newcomers.25 A further natural consequence of the scarcity of skilled labour was its high cost. Wages were usually very high in the colony. But if high wages were granted to silk workers, the resulting higher price of the raw silk would make it less competitive on the English market. Indeed, in 1761 Lieutenant Governor

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William Bull ascribed the failure of silk to develop into a profitable staple of the colony to this very factor.26 The colony, therefore, was a quite a complicated context in which to introduce a new industry that required an extended period of poorly paid apprenticeship, strict standardization of working procedures and close daily supervision of a welldisciplined labour force in the workplace. As Ben Marsh has shown, the unfavourable labour conditions in the colony and their relevance to the outcomes of the Trustees’ experiments in the production of raw silk are highlighted in the turbulent story of Marie Camosso, the wife of Giacomo Camosso, the expert who arrived with the Amatis brothers in Georgia in 1732. Her story can be taken as an example of how the colonial context worked against the development of a class of skilled and well trained silk workers. The death of Paolo Amatis in 1736 and the departure of his brother Nicola had left Giacomo Camosso and his wife with a virtual monopoly on silk knowledge in those early years in Georgia. While the professional activity of Giacomo left few traces, his wife’s career is amply reported in colonial chronicles. Marie’s difficulties with the colonial authorities began when she was entrusted with the task of teaching silk reeling to a group of young women. Marie, who was afraid of losing her privileged status and weakening her contractual power, fiercely defended her technical know-how from potential competitors and did not want apprentices to observe her finger movements during the reeling operations. She regularly and effectively used her knowledge of silk reeling to her own advantage. When the colonial authorities offered her a salary of £60 per annum and the assurance of a pension, Camosso stated the Trustees in London had allowed her £100. Ultimately, her salary was suspended in 1747 and she moved to Charles Town (or to Purysburg) in South Carolina with her daughter and son, where she died in 1749.27

BENGAL AND GEORGIA: A COMPARISON The Georgia experiment ended in complete failure. The coup de grace for the project of diffusing raw silk reeling was inflicted by the introduction of the plantation economy and slavery in the colony in the 1750s. Although investments in the silk project continued, we can say that by the early 1760s landowners were finding it far more profitable to cultivate staple crops (especially rice and indigo) on their lands by exploiting unskilled slave labour.28 Although raw silk as fine as the Piedmontese one could indeed be produced in the colony, Georgia had no possibility of providing the great quantities of raw silk needed to supply the home throwing industry because of the lack of skilled labour. A new opportunity to solve the problem of finding a colonial supplier for the English industry materialized in the late 1760s, when the East India Company became the dominant political power in eastern India and decided to introduce Piedmontese silk reeling methods in their newly acquired territories. Unlike in Georgia, in eighteenth-century Bengal the wealth of nature was supported by an impressive abundance of skilled labour. In both cases the higher machinations of the eighteenthcentury British politicians and economists who shaped trade policy depended enormously on the willingness of a sufficient number of artisans to apply themselves to sericulture and raw silk reeling. But in Georgia the problem was convincing people

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who had no previous training to take up the cultivation of mulberry trees and silkworm rearing and learn raw silk reeling techniques while striving to establish their families and homes in the New World, a social context without pre-existing artisan traditions and market institutions. On the contrary, sericulture and raw silk reeling were already established in mid-eighteenth-century Bengal. In Bengal the pre-existing habits, practices and procedures of the primary producers, the pre-existing marketing infrastructures and demand for traditional silks represented the context for the implementation of the new and alien Piedmontese technology.

BENGALI SILK REELING Domesticated sericulture and commercial raw silk reeling were introduced to Bengal in the first half of the sixteenth century, at the time of the last sultans of the Husain Shai dynasty. Raw silk and silk textiles became part of the trade of Asian merchants operating in Mughal India in the early seventeenth century. Also, Dutch and British Companies established outposts in Bengal in order to trade in silk products when they discovered the productive potential of eastern India in the mid-seventeenth century. Raw silk production rapidly accelerated in Bengal over the course of the eighteenth century under Mughal and Nawabite rule.29 Bengalis used simple tools to reel cocoons. Unlike in Piedmont, where two artisans worked at the reeling machine, in Bengal the same artisan took care of the cocoons in the basin and turned the reel. Having immersed a handful of cocoons in an earthenware basin full of hot water, the spinner gently stirred them to remove their gummy coating, drew out the ends of the cocoon filament, formed a thread, stuck it onto a bamboo reel and wound off the raw silk (putney). Bengali spinners did not check that the number of cocoons that made up a thread was always the same for the entire reeling process. So it was common to find threads of different title in the same skein, and export merchants had to rewind it on larger reels, and separate its threads by their different quality. Although the tools were simple, spinners could produce several varieties of putney. Each silk textile centre had its own weaving techniques and Bengali raw silk spinners had to take into account their requirements.30 Regarding the degree of fineness of Bengali raw silks, there is a further observation to be made. Unlike eighteenth-century European consumers, who appreciated the lightness and uniformity of silk clothes (features which heavily depended on technically upgraded reeling and throwing operations),31 Indian consumers did not take these into account when evaluating a silk cloth. In Indian societies the tight, dense weave of silk fabrics was not prized for its aesthetic refinement, lightness and uniformity of texture, but because it protected the wearer more effectively against moral or social pollution; different standards were applied to evaluate a silk cloth, such as the sacredness of the place where it was woven or the symbolic significance of the colours used.32 Raw silk threads formed out of many and irregular filaments, considered inferior in Europe, were easily traded in Indian markets. A proof of this is given by the testimony of Mr Bayley and Mr Rutherford, two Commissioners of the East India Company’s Board of Trade, who, reporting on the promising status of the trade relationships between Punjab and Bengal in 1819, noted that ‘The raw silk of letters [qualities] too coarse for the

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European market together with the Chassum [waste silk products] and refuse silk, the produce of the Hon’ble Company’s filatures, might perhaps be beneficially appropriated to this channel’.33 The Company, however did not take advantage of its position in Bengal to sell its coarser raw silks in India in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.

THE EAST INDIA COMPANY’S TRANSFER OF PIEDMONTESE TECHNOLOGIES Despite the low quality of its raw silks, Bengal’s marketing organization was successful in supplying Indian and European merchants with increasing quantities of raw silk for the entire first half of the eighteenth century.34 By the mid-eighteenth century, however, the English East India Company had discovered that the finishing necessary to make Bengali raw silk marketable in London made it too expensive. Furthermore, the Company’s experts became aware that Bengali raw silk was also unfit to be worked in Piedmontese hydraulic silk-throwing mills, such as the one in Derby; lack of standardization and tensile strength caused many interruptions, which slowed down the throwing operations, decreased the quality of the final product and increased production costs.35 Thus, the Company realized that it had to upgrade traditional Bengali reeling technology if it wanted to increase sales of its raw silk on the London market. When the Company finally gained political control of the province in the late 1760s, its Court of Directors took the radical step of introducing the most advanced Piedmontese methods and techniques in their newly acquired territories. In 1769 the Court appointed three managers who were well acquainted with the use of the Piedmontese reeling machines and the management of filatures: James Wiss, an Italian, Aubert, a Frenchman, and Pickering Robinson, an Englishman.36 Wiss personally recruited seven Piedmontese spinners from Novi Ligure and Aubert headed up another group of three spinners and one mechanic from Nîmes, in Languedoc. Aubert, however, died in Madras on the way to Calcutta, and the group of French artisans started working under Wiss once they arrived in Bengal.37 It was also part of the East India Company’s plans to build the reeling machines. James Wiss took along a reeling machine from Piedmont, to be used as a model for producing others in loco, together with reels and various equipment.38 Pickering Robinson, who had gone to Georgia as a silk expert in the 1750s, brought with him a reeling machine he had built when he was in the American colony.39 The reeling machines in use in the Company’s filatures were similar to the Piedmontese ones. The spinner worked only two threads at a time and made them cross each other, and as in Piedmont the machines had a four cogwheel device to transmit the movement to the ‘to and fro’ mechanism. The Company was able to produce huge quantities of ‘filature’ raw silk from the 1770s to the 1830s, and the productive capacity of the East India Company increased over the period. In 1773 the Company had only four filatures with a total production capacity of 520 reeling machines. In 1832, a year before its Charter went back to the Royal Crown, the Company owned or directly controlled more than ninety filatures, with a total productive capacity of 15,723 reeling machines.40

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Despite these numbers, the Company’s upgrading process was only partially successful, as the quality of its silk products never matched the high standards of Piedmontese raw silks. From the late 1760s to the 1830s, Bengali filature raw silk improved to the point that it could compete successfully with low quality raw silk, like that produced in Calabria and Spain.41 There are a number of reasons for this partial success, all of them related to the pre-existing conditions of production and marketing of raw silk, with which the Company’s upgrading plans had to come to terms in attempting to implement the Piedmontese technologies.

BENGALI PEASANTS AND THE RAW SILK MARKET One reason for the Company’s incomplete success was the low quality of the cocoons worked in its filatures. In the Piedmontese method the quality of the cocoons was an important factor in producing raw silks of the finest sort. With the new and unfamiliar system introduced by the Company in the 1770s, peasants were expected to deliver their best cocoons to the Company’s filatures. But they were always reluctant to send all their cocoons to the Company. Also, Asian merchants continued to buy up the finest parts of the peasants’ cocoon harvests. The resistance of the peasants is explained by the fact that in Bengal reeling had traditionally been under their control. Peasants would reel their cocoons at home (women’s work), or could have them worked into putney (raw silk) by the itinerant spinners who set up shop in the village markets during the harvest season.42 This gave the peasants complete control over the quality that they wanted to achieve.43 In 1772 Thomas Pattle, the Resident of the Boalia factory, argued that the peasants’ reluctance to sell cocoons was in all likelihood due to the fear of losing control of their technology and the production process, because ‘whilst the worm remains in the pod . . . [they] cannot judge with exactness [the] weight or value of the silk, whereas by reeling it in their own houses into putney, its produce becomes ascertained with the utmost precision’.44 The knowledge of Indian raw silk market trends made peasants unhappy about discarding their technological know-how and altering their cycle of silk production. Since the early 1770s, with so many Indian competitors interested in putney silks, Bengali peasants showed remarkable acumen in matching the price of their cocoons to the fluctuations in the price their putney fetched in the rural markets.45 Where the Indian merchants’ demand was high, as in the area around Kasimbazar in the early nineteenth century, the Company’s Commercial Residents had to take the price of putney into consideration in bargaining with peasants over the price of cocoons. In March 1817 the Commercial Resident of the Kasimbazar factory explained to the Board of Trade that he could not impose his cocoon price because it ‘invariably fluctuates according . . . to the degree of competition encountered from the contending interests of rival traders’.46 This was typical of most filatures that the Company operated in western Bengal. In those years the Gonatea filature was the Company’s biggest, and the Resident used to fix the cocoon price according to the price putney fetched in the rural markets of Kasimbazar.47 When successful, the Company’s Commercial Residents could only purchase the majority of cocoons of each harvest by bidding higher than all the other competitors.48 But they could not control the quality or the price, and often had the impression that peasants used their

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best cocoons to produce putney for Indian merchants. This represented a real structural limit to the Company’s ability to produce raw silk of the finest quality.

THE COMPANY’S FILATURES So far, I have shown how the peasants could choose to sell the inferior portions of their cocoon crops to the Company’s officials while marketing their best qualities reeled as putney to the Indian merchants. But the Company’s officials also had many practical problems in operating the filatures; problems which had an immediate bearing on the quality of the raw silk they produced. By inquiring into the details of these practical problems, we discover that many of the original characteristic techniques and procedures which were common in a Piedmontese filature of the eighteenth century did not take root in Bengal. Essential features, considered vital in Piedmont for producing raw silk of the finest sorts, in Bengal appear to be adapted to and integrated into the local, pre-existing ecosystems, habits, rules and practices. All these adaptations and integrations brought about a general reduction in the quality of the raw silk produced in Bengal between the 1760s and the 1830s. As for the building of the filatures in Piedmont, there was no ideal architectural type. Filatures were often simple and rational brick buildings: a tiled roof, a paved floor with gullies; walls with wide arches to allow an easy dispersion of the smoke from the fires. They had a rectangular floor plan and the reeling machines were laid out in two parallel rows, along the longer side of the building, and separated by a corridor to facilitate the movements of spinners and reelers and the supervision of overseers.49 But in Bengal there were few brick buildings in the countryside, occupied by the big landowners, and the rural brick industry was quite underdeveloped. Therefore, the Company’s officials faced many problems in procuring bricks. The issue was worsened by the effects of the monsoon, with its four months of heavy rains, which meant that brick buildings needed thorough maintenance every year, a task that the Company’s officials were often unable to carry out with regularity. In fact, more often than not, the Company’s filatures were simple huts made of mud, straw and wood. These building materials were unsuitable for a filature, which required the frequent presence of many fires to heat the water in the basins, and the risk of fire was always very high. Furthermore, in summer the sun is particularly scorching in Bengal, so that all the filatures had small windows to prevent its rays from penetrating. This meant that the workplace was full of smoke, which had detrimental effects not only on the health of the workers, but also on the quality of silk (because the smoke and soot stuck to skeins and deteriorated the raw silks). The problem was solved by adding chimneys to the reeling machines of the principal Company filatures in the 1780s. The Company’s smaller filatures did not adopt this solution, however, and the problem of the ‘dirty raw silk’ was always a motive for complaint in London. The Company’s officials also faced many problems in the maintenance of the reeling machines in the 1770s and 1780s, especially with respect to their mechanical components. For instance, the irregularities of the motion caused by the cogwheel device’s being out of order led to silk throwers being able to work the Company’s raw silk only with ‘very considerable waste at the mills’ in Great Britain.50 In 1782

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the Court of Directors sent an expert to Bengal: Joseph Baumgartner, a mechanic, was to substitute the old wooden cogwheels with brass ones.51 The brass cogwheel movement, however, was soon abandoned, probably because it excessively lengthened the working times in the filatures, and the problem of the wearing out of the mechanical parts of the reeling machines remained unsolved.52 A filature needed great quantities of seasoned firewood for heating the soaking basins, which Company officials were not always able to procure cheaply and in great quantities. This was particularly true for those filatures located in the alluvial plains, where the only trees at their disposal were tamarinds and mangoes, which the peasants cultivated for their fruits and, as the Commercial Resident of Boalia noted in 1789, did not want to sell as wood ‘but from motives of necessity and at all times with visible reluctance’.53 Also, keeping a reservoir of clean water was sometime an insurmountable problem, especially during the rainy season, when almost all the water available was particularly muddy. All these problems certainly contributed to the debasement of the quality of the final output of the Company’s filatures.

THE COMPANY’S SPINNERS AND REELERS Above all, the Company had problems with spinners and reelers who worked in its filatures. It is important to underline that the manual skills and the learning abilities of the Bengali silk workers were never seen as a problem by the Commercial Residents, and Bengali artisans quickly learned the new reeling techniques.54 Bengali silk workers, however, often owned small plots of land, and dedicated part of the year to cultivating them. Moreover, the Company’s filatures often did not work at full capacity for the whole year. During those months in which the Company’s filature was closed, or when it worked at a slower pace, the silk workers turned to other occupations – such as porters in one of the many river ports or manufacturing indigo or sugar in one of the many rural manufacturing centres.55 All these alternative activities meant that the Company’s spinners and reelers found it difficult to retain the necessary manual dexterity. As remarked by the Resident of Rangamatty in 1789, when they came back to the Company’s filatures ‘their fingers hardened by manual labour’ were ‘totally insusceptible to the touch of a fine thread’.56 In 1817 the Resident of Kasimbazar argued that it was just this lack of specialization which differentiated a Bengali from an Italian silk worker. He remarked that a Bengali silk worker ‘depending less on the trade for his daily subsistence, will always operate to paralyse the attainment of full success in Bengal silk’, while the Italian silk workers ‘perform no other task, are literally professional men, and depend exclusively on this branch of commerce for the weekly support of their families’.57 A radical solution to this problem could be to follow the Piedmont’s example, and have only women work in the Company’s filatures. Women, whose manual dexterity was better than the men’s, could be dispensed from hard work in the fields during the reeling season and specialize in the Piedmontese procedures. Indeed, Bengali women were traditionally involved in domestic thread production. Cotton spinning was traditionally women’s work, and peasant women reeled cocoons into putney.58 In the official correspondence between the Commercial Residents and the Board of Trade in Calcutta, however, there is no mention of attempts to hire Bengali

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women to work in the Company’s filatures. Perhaps peasant householders were extremely reluctant to let their women work for the Company, for both religious and economic reasons. On the other hand, Company officials were always leery of encroaching on the cultural habits and values of their Bengali subjects.

THE NATIVE FILATURES The increase in the demand for raw silk in Great Britain was such that the Company’s officials in Bengal could not rely only on their filatures to fill the orders from home, and this also had a fundamental bearing on the quality of their raw silk. Since the 1770s the wealthier members of Bengali rural society who came into contact with the Company’s silk factories, such as wealthy peasants and local landowners, exploited the new opportunities to employ their capital and resources in the silk business by familiarising themselves with the new features of silk production introduced by the Company and building rudimentary filatures in their villages. In the context of the war between France and England in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, these native filatures played a crucial role in meeting the rising demand of the English market for Bengali silk. The role these native entrepreneurs played in the spreading of the Piedmontese technologies was considerable, and they showed remarkable entrepreneurial capacities.59 Of course, it is also true that the rural entrepreneurs did not scrupulously observe the canons of the Piedmontese method and that their machinery were quite rudimentary. Furthermore, these private filatures were usually placed in the countryside, at some distance from the Company factories, and thus the Residents could not directly control and supervise them. Ultimately, the raw silk the rural entrepreneurs produced was always of inferior quality. A further problem, directly related to the role played by the rural entrepreneurs in disseminating the Piedmontese technology, regards silk spinners and reelers who worked in the Company filatures. Company officials were often unable to convince them not to leave and go to work in the native filatures once they had learnt the new Italian techniques. In June 1778 the Resident of Boalia wrote that his silk reelers, ‘who have been long trained here under my Italians’, were habitually deserting him, preferring to work in the native filatures. He bitterly concluded that ‘it consequently falls to my lot to be continually teaching new hands, which operates much to the prejudice of the silk produced at this factory’.60 In 1789 the Resident of Kasimbazar noted that the silk spinners and reelers who found employment in the native filatures became gradually accustomed ‘to a hasty and inattentive mode of feeding the reels’, adding quite significantly that ‘the object of the native merchants being quantity rather than quality’.61

CONCLUSIONS Behind the technological supremacy of Piedmontese silk there was a complex and specialized socioeconomic context, the final outcome of a long process of economic development, to which many had contributed. The government had made it compulsory to standardize working procedures and upgrade machinery in 1667, by

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royal decree. Furthermore, spinners and reelers had to be approved by official experts, and they had to be enrolled in a public register. Agents appointed by the central authorities or the local communities controlled the professional skills of silk workers by regularly visiting filatures and hydraulic mills. Finally, a group of merchants, financiers and aristocratic landowners, supported by the government, exercised control over all elements of the system, from the production and marketing of cocoons to the production and export of silk thread. These institutionalized features gradually took root in Piedmontese society from the late seventeenth to the mid-eighteenth centuries. The institutional imposition of reeling the cocoons in a certain way, employing specific methods and procedures and using standardized machinery in workplaces where the discipline was strict, contributed to the formation of a labour force composed of professional women workers with specific sensibilities for well-defined tasks. Also, all this contributed to the acquisition and transmission – from woman to woman – of tacit practical knowledge and manual dexterity over the course of time. As the two case studies of transfer of technology analysed in this article clearly show, Piedmontese reeling technology could only have yielded returns equivalent to those it delivered at home if a similar socio-cultural context had existed or had been purposely created. It was not only upgraded machinery that should have been transferred to the colonies, but also the knowledge, institutions and practices which had been so crucial to the making of Piedmontese hegemony.62

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to thank Kirti Chaudhuri, Claudio Zanier, Angelo Moioli, Gautam Bhadra, Benoy Chaudhri and Luca Molà for their useful comments and suggestions to earlier draft versions. Of course, all errors are my sole responsibility.

NOTES 1. Claudio Zanier, ‘L’evoluzione delle tecniche di trattura e di torcitura della seta in Europa nei secoli XVII e XVIII: modello cinese o modello sabaudo?,’ in Simonetta Cavaciocchi (ed.), La seta in Europa: Sec. XIII–XX (Florence: Olschki, 1993), pp. 363–6. 2. Giuseppe Chicco, La seta in Piemonte 1650-1800: un sistema industriale d’ancien régime (Milan: Franco Angeli, 1995), p. 43. 3. Chicco, La seta in Piemonte, pp. 41–2. In the old machines, the ‘to and fro’ device was moved by a bell drive, which was far less precise than the cog-wheel device. 4. Claudio Zanier, ‘Le donne e il ciclo di seta’, in Alessandra Martinelli and Laura Savelli (eds), Percorsi di lavoro e progetti di vita femminili (Pisa: Felici Editore, 2010), p. 27. 5. Chicco, La seta in Piemonte, p. 93; Carlo Poni, ‘Misura contro misura: come il filo di seta divenne sottile e rotondo’, Quaderni Storici, 47 (1981), pp. 385–423. 6. Zanier, ‘Le donne’, pp. 28–9, 34. 7. Zanier, ‘Le donne’, p. 28. 8. Ben Marsh, Georgia’s Frontier Women: Female Fortunes in a Southern Colony (Athens and London: The University of Georgia Press, 2007), pp. 57–8.

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9. Ciccho, La seta in Piemonte, pp. 158 and 178. 10. José M. Lopes Cordeiro, ‘The Royal Silk Twisting Mill of Chacim (Portugal)’, Textile History, 23 (1992), pp. 177–98; Fernando de Sousa, ‘The Silk Industry in Trás-OsMontes during the Ancient Regime’, Journal of Portuguese History, 3 (2005), pp. 1–14. 11. M.P. Sridharan, ‘Tipu’s Drive towards Modernization: French Evidence from the 1780s’, in Irfan Habib (ed.), Resistance and Modernization under the Haidar Alì & Tipu Sultan (New Delhi: Tulika, 1999), pp. 143–7; Iftikhar A. Khan, ‘The Regulations of Tipu Sultan for his State Trading Enterprise’, in Habib, Resistance and Modernization, pp. 148–64. 12. Documentary material from Claudio Zanier’s seminar, ‘Indirizzi politici e realtà economica: la produzione serica francese di fronte al modello sabaudo nel XVIIIo secolo’ (Political trends and economic reality: French silk production and the Savoy model in the 18th century), Department of History, University of Pisa, January 1994. 13. John J. McCusker, ‘British Mercantilist Policies and the American Colonies’, in S.L. Engerman and R.E. Gallman (eds), The Cambridge Economic History of the United States. Vol. 1. The Colonial Era (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), p. 358. 14. Anthony Calladine, ‘Lombe’s Mill: an Exercise in Reconstruction’, Industrial Archaeology Review, 1 (1993), pp. 82–99. 15. Giuseppe Chicco, La seta in Piemonte, p. 79. 16. Journal of the House of Commons, 1732, XXII, p. 985. Quoted in Calladine, ‘Lombe’s Mill’, p. 98. 17. Benjamin Martyn, Reasons for Establishing the Colony of Georgia, with regard to the Trade of Great Britain, &c; with some Account of the Country and the Design of the Trustees (London, 1733), in Collections of the Georgia Historical Society, Vol. 1 (Savannah, 1840), p. 210. 18. Letter from Thomas Lombe to the Trustees for establishing the colony of Georgia, 31 January 1732, in Benjamin Martyn, Reasons for Establishing, p. 206; Chicco, La seta in Piemonte, pp. 88–9. 19. James W. Holland, ‘The Beginning of Public Agricultural Experimentation in America: The Trustees Garden in Georgia’, Agricultural History, 12 (1938), pp. 271–98. 20. James C. Bonner, A History of Georgia Agriculture, 1732–1860 (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1964), p. 14. 21. Ben Marsh, Georgia’s Frontier Women, p. 53. 22. Benjamin Martyin, Reasons for Establishing, p. 210. 23. David W. Galenson, ‘The Settlement and Growth of the Colonies: Population, Labour, and Economic Development’, in Engeman and Gallman, The Cambridge Economic History. Vol. 1, p. 137. 24. Benjamin Martyn, An Impartial Inquiry into the State and Utility of the Province of Georgia (London, 1741), in Collections of the Georgia Historical Society, Vol. 1 (Savannah, 1840), p. 156.

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25. Willard Range, ‘The Agricultural Revolution in royal Georgia – 1752–1775’, Agricultural History, 21 (1947), p. 250. 26. C. Robert Haywood, ‘Mercantilism and Colonial Slave Labor, 1700–1763’, The Journal of Southern History, 23 (1957), p. 456; M.T. McKinstry, ‘Silk Culture in the Colony of Georgia’, The Georgia Historical Quarterly, 14 (1930), p. 230. 27. Marsh, Georgia’s Frontier Women, pp. 58–9. 28. Marsh, Georgia’s Frontier Women, pp. 60–1. 29. Sushil Chaudhury, Trade and Commercial Organization in Bengal 1650–1720 (Calcutta: Firma KLM, 1975); Tapankumar Raychaudhuri, Bengal under Akbar and Jahangir. An Introductory Study in Social History (Calcutta: AMC, 1953); K.N.Chaudhuri, The Trading World of Asia and the East India Company 1660–1769 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1978), ch. 15 and p. 533; Om Prakash, The Dutch East India Company and the Economy of Bengal 1630–1720 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1985), pp. 54–7 and 113–17; Rila Mukherjee, Merchants and Companies in Bengal. Kasimbazar and Judgia in the Eighteenth Century (New Delhi: Pragati Publications, 2006), p. xii. 30. Alì Yusuf, A Monograph on Silk Fabrics Produced in the North-Western Provinces and Oudh (Allahabad: Government Press, 1900), p. 37. 31. Poni, ‘Misura contro misura’. As for the role of fashion on technological innovation in silk production in eighteenth century Europe see: Id., ‘Moda e innovazione: le strategie dei mercanti di seta di Lione nel secolo XVIII’, in Cavaciocchi, La seta in Europa, pp. 17–55. 32. C.A. Bayly, ‘The Origins of Swadeshi (Home Industry): Cloth and Indian Society 1700–1930’, in Arjun Appadurai (ed.), The Social Life of Things. Commodities in Cultural Perspective (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986), p. 286. 33. West Bengal State Archives (WBSA), Board of Trade (BoT), Commercial Proceedings, 23 October 1819. Letter from Bayley and Rutherford, 20 August 1819. 34. Sushil Chaudhury, ‘International Trade in Bengal Silk and the Comparative Role of Asians and Europeans, circa 1700–1757’, Modern Asian Studies, 29 (1995), pp. 373–86. 35. Reports and Documents Connected with the Proceedings of the East India Company in regard to the Culture and Manufacture of Cotton-wool, Raw-Silk and Indigo in India. Printed in London by the Order of the East India Company 21 December 1836 (London, 1836), pp. iii–iv; J. Geoghegan, Some Account of Silk in India, especially of the Various Attempts to Encourage and Extend Sericulture in that Country (Calcutta: Office of the Superintendent of Government Printing, 1880), pp. 2–3; S. R. H. Jones, ‘Technology, Transaction Costs, and the Transition in Factory Production in the British Silk Industry, 1700–1870’, The Journal of Economic History, 47 (1987), pp. 71–96; Chicco, La seta in Piemonte, pp. 75–80. 36. Reports and Documents, pp. x–xvii. 37. British Library, India Office Records, B/85, Minutes of East India Company’s Directors and Proprietors, 4–5 January 1770 and 22 February 1770; E/4, Correspondence with India, 3 May 1771; Reports and Documents, pp. i–xii.

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38. Reports and Documents, p. xii; WBSA, Committee of Circuit at Cosimbazar (CCK), Appendix, vol. 9 from 7 July to 17 September 1772, General Account of Building the Piedmontese Filature and an Account of Charges for Utensils. 39. Georgia Historical Society Records Collections, Vol. 20, Letter from James Habersham to Earl of Hillsborough Secretary of State, Savannah Georgia, 12 August 1772, p. 201. 40. WBSA, Controlling Committee of Commerce (CCC), Prcds 20th November 1773, Letter from Cossimbazar 2 November 1773; Reports and Documents, App. M, ‘Statement of the Several Silk Factories in India, the Property of the East India Company, as they stood in March 1832’, pp. 215–18. 41. Reports and Documents, p. xxiv. 42. George Williamson, Address to the Court of Directors, together with his Proposals to Them for Improving the Manufacture of Silk in Bengal, so as to Preclude the Necessity of Importing Raw Silk into England, from Italy, Turkey, etc., Being the Result of Close Application, Accurate Observations, and Repeated Experiments made upon the Spot, during his Residence in Bengal for Fifteen Years, from 1756 to 1771 (London, 1775), pp. 15–18; Nitya Gopal Mukerji, A Monograph on the Silk Fabrics of Bengal (Calcutta: Bengal Secretariat Press, 1903), p. 23; Geoghegan, Some Account, pp. 2–3 and 21. 43. Williamson, Address to the Court, pp. 15–18; WBSA, Committee of Circuit at Cossimbazar (CCK) Proceedings 25 August 1772. Letter from Pattle to Committee of Circuit, 25 July 1772. 44. WBSA, CCK Proceedings 25 August 1772. Letter from Pattle to Committee of Circuit, 25th July 1772. 45. WBSA, CCC Vol. 2, Proceedings 18 November 1772. 46. WBSA, BoT, Commercial Proceedings 21 March 1817. Letter from Cossimbazar, 11 March 1817. 47. WBSA, BoT, Commercial Proceedings 11 September 1821. Letter from Soonamooky, 30 August 1821. 48. British Parliamentary Papers, House of Commons, Vol. 6, Report from the Select Committee of the House of Lords on the present State of the Affairs of the East India Company. Sessions from 5th February to 23rd July 1830 (London, 1830), p. 222. 49. Chicco, La seta in Piemonte, pp. 147–8. 50. WBSA, BoT, Commercial Proceedings 7 March 1783 Letter from the Court of Directors, 12 July 1782. 51. See note 50. 52. WBSA, BoT, Commercial Proceedings 24 September 1782, Letter from Board of Trade to Baumgartner. Baumgartner introduced also a device called ‘double-crossing’, which allowed a better control of the number of crossings. But also this innovation was discarded, because the thread did not resist to the tension of the device and broke more often. See WBSA BoT, Commercial Proceedings 7 March 1783 Letter from the Court of Directors, dated 12 July 1782. 53. WBSA, BoT, Commercial Proceedings 9 October 1789, Letter from Bauleah, 2 October 1789.

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54. WBSA, CCC, vol., Proceedings 31 May 1771. 55. WBSA, BoT, Commercial Proceedings 6 November 1818, Letter from Jungypore, 22 October 1818. 56. WBSA, BoT, Commercial Proceedings 6th February 1789, Letter from Rangamatty, 26 January 1789. 57. WBSA, BoT, Commercial Proceedings 20th June 1817, Letter from Cossimbuzar, 10 June 1817. 58. British Library, India Office Record, Home Miscellaneous Series, Vol. 456F, ‘Account of the fine cotton thread and fabrics produced in the Dacca province and of the ability of the Dacca Aurungs in regard to the amount of goods which can be annually provide at them’, signed John Taylor, Dacca, 30 November 1800; Hameda Hossain Hameeda, The Company Weavers of Bengal. The East India Company and the Organization of Textile Production in Bengal. 1750–1813 (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1988), p. 38. 59. Gautam Bhadra ‘The Role of Pykars in the Silk Industry of Bengal (c. 1765–1830)’, part 1, Studies in History, 3 (1987), pp. 155–85, especially pp. 178–80. 60. WBSA, BoT, Commercial Proceedings 23 June 1778, Letter from Bauelah to Cossimbazar, 18 May 1778, enclosed in Letter from Cossimbazar to BoT, 12 June 1778. 61. WBSA, BoT, Commercial Proceedings 10 February 1789, Letter from Cossimbuzar, 7 February 1789. 62. Claudio Zanier, ‘Pre-Modern European Silk Technology and East Asia: Who Imported What?’ in Debin Ma (ed.), Textiles in the Pacific, 1500–1900 (Aldershot: Ashgate Variorum, 2005), pp. 105–89.

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Object Innovation: Ceramics

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Raw Materials, Transmission of Know-how and Ceramic Techniques in Early Modern Italy: A Mediterranean Perspective MARTA CAROSCIO The Medici Archive Project

Abstract If features such as decorative patterns and forms can be imitated, a technique should be learnt. The transmission of know-how is a complex process; diverse factors that could either favour or discourage this process should be taken into account. Fashion and the demands of the market are triggers that stimulate production: certainly, products that circulated widely and were regarded as fashionable during a certain time, played a role in encouraging the learning of new techniques in pottery making. This was possible either through prolonged contact with skilled craftsmen or by a process of experimentation, but access to the relevant raw materials is always essential. Moreover, the objects made for the domestic market often differ from those to be exported, as the demand is related as well to local habits, tradition and taste. Thus, differentiating features according to the final destination of a product minimizes its rejection. Different case studies will be discussed, in order to analyse the major features that marked the passage between the late Middle Ages and the early modern period in pottery making in Italy with reference to the context of the western Mediterranean.

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INTRODUCTION A production activity like pottery making is related, on the one hand, to a specific space in terms of the workshop where the objects are made, and on the other hand, to a space in terms of the area within which finished products and raw materials circulated. For raw materials like clay and wood, potters relied on local supplies due to the large quantities needed. For other materials, especially mineral pigments and metals (used for glazes and for making colours), long distance trade was necessary because these goods were not always available locally, and it was possible because small quantities were needed.1 This supply suggests the existence of international networks involving the Mediterranean area, as well as northern and central Europe.2 The use of new pigments, such as cobalt blue, together with the diffusion of tin as an opacifier in glazed pottery, are certainly relevant innovations and highlight the major changes that occurred in pottery making between the thirteenth and the fifteenth centuries. These two innovations marked the shift between the medieval tradition of pottery making and the early modern productions, both in terms of taste and of labour organisation in the workshops. Moreover, the use of certain pigments and minerals points to the presence of trading networks beyond a local scale, as well as to investments. Further innovations occurred between the late fifteenth and throughout the sixteenth century, at a time when Islamic pottery was no longer the model it had been over several centuries, and commodities started to circulate on a global basis even though objects such as Chinese porcelain were still a luxury good. Concerning pottery making, the transmission of new techniques generally follows three phases: at first, imported models circulate, then the technique is transmitted within a certain area, and finally there is a widespread production involving an increasing number of centres. The technical advancement in pottery making that took place during the fifteenth century made possible experiments, the most remarkable of which is the Medici Porcelain. The lack of direct contacts with craftsmen working in far-away lands, as well as the lack of access to raw materials – in this case kaolin – was overcome by inventing a substitute. Four case studies will be presented in this chapter. The first one will illustrate the relationship between tin availability and the increasing number of production centres for manufacturing tin-glazed pottery within the western Mediterranean in the late Middle Ages. The availability of this material in larger quantities from the late fourteenth century onwards – when tin from Cornwall was widely exported – certainly marked a difference. As a second case study, the use of cobalt blue for decorating tin-glazed pottery in central and northern Italy during the transition between the late Middle Ages and the early modern period will be addressed. Blue certainly became a fashionable pigment. The third case study to be analysed is lusterware production in Renaissance Italy. The transmission of know-how from the Iberian Peninsula and the possible causes that marked the difference between shortand long-lasting productions will be addressed. Finally, following the second case study, the role of Chinese porcelain as a model will be analysed: from luxury good mainly related to gift-exchange and collection, to global-traded commodity, even

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though accessible at certain social levels only. A further aspect to be considered is the patronage and the experiments carried out by Francesco I in Florence to produce what is known as the Medici porcelain. These four case studies have been selected to address a broader question in a long-term perspective: What determined the transmission of know-how in pottery making and how relevant was demand in driving diffusion? To what extent were fashion and demand a trigger in determining patronage and investments in certain craft activities, and/or in conveying the role of status-symbol to certain objects? How important was the accessibility to raw materials in guaranteeing the success of transfer and dissemination? Material evidence and written sources will be analysed in a comparative way, taking into account iconographic evidence as well. Focus will be on the shift between imitating formal features and decorative patterns, and the complex processes of assimilating and learning a new technique.

ACCESS TO RAW MATERIALS AND DIFFUSION OF KNOW-HOW: TIN-GLAZED POTTERY IN THE WESTERN MEDITERRANEAN The first case study addresses the access to raw materials as a key for determining the diffusion of a technique, in this case the use of tin, to obtain a white and opaque surface in glazed pottery. This technique spread along the shores of the Mediterranean during the Middle Ages and tin was used throughout the modern time, as it is still used nowadays, as an opacifier. Reconstructing this process is central to achieving a better understanding of the transmission of know-how in pottery making during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, as major innovations occurred in workshops producing tin-glazed pottery. Why is tin so relevant as a raw material? Tin is a relatively rare metal, not easily accessible within the Mediterranean area, but once smelted it can easily be transported and small quantities are needed for preparing the opaque glaze used on pottery. Identifying its sources means to reconstruct a complex trading network that implies contacts with different regions. Some of the earliest tin-glazed production centres, in fact, were not close to the major tin ores.3 When it comes to the transmission of technologies, the Christian areas of the Mediterranean are indebted to the Muslim regions, where tin started to be added to pottery glazes as early as the eighth century AD. Lead glazes were used to make pottery vessels impermeable, and tin was added to obtain a white and opaque surface:4 an ideal one for coloured decoration that facilitated the imitation of the appearance of porcelain.5 The turning point in tin-glazed pottery making in Italy, both in terms of a wider circulation of ceramics at diverse social levels and in terms of the dissemination of production centres, should be traced back to the second half of the thirteenth century, when several centres started to produce tin-glazed tableware.6 I suggest that there is a correspondence between the wider availability of tin on the market, and its use for craft productions such as pottery making.7 In this respect, the trade of tin from Cornwall to the Mediterranean area seems to play a central role.

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Locating Tin Ores It is quite difficult to map tin supply because it is not easy to interpret archaeological evidence in the mining context, as more recent mining activity tends to delete older evidence.8 There are scant written records referring to tin mining and trade between the ninth and the twelfth centuries. According to Arabic sources, tin was not available in the Middle East but was either imported from Asia or from central Europe.9 In 1301 Abu’l Qasim refers to Farangistân, which could generally mean Europe, as well as to the Far East and the Volga region as possible sources for tin.10 Earlier Islamic records, mentioned Kalah, which could be Burma or Malaysia, as an important source for the tin that was imported through the Persian Gulf.11 Similarly, texts by Arab geographers make reference to the Far East when talking about available tin sources. In Arabic texts Farangistân refers generically to central Europe, but it has been suggested that it might be identified with Freiburg and the Erzgebirge mining district. For this reason, the fact that tin was not used for glazing pottery in Egypt and Syria after the early twelfth century, while it continued to be used in Iran and in al-Andalus, might underlie, among other causes, a shortage of this raw material, possibly because of the difficulties in getting supplies during the crusading period, when supply from Europe stopped and tin from the Far East or from the Volga region was not accessible for the Islamic regions.12 Another possible source for tin were the ores in the Taurus region, an area under the control of the Byzantine Empire that later on fall under the Ottoman control. Ores were actually in use in there, although perhaps at different times, between the late seventh and the mid-fourteenth century.13 Radiocarbon dating and the recovery of Byzantine pottery were conclusive in dating different mining sites. These data offer new perspectives on the possibilities of tin supplies, specifically for what concerns the trading activities of Venetian and Genoese merchants operating in the Byzantine territories. Among the major sites present in Europe (Erzgebirge, Devon and Cornwall, the Iberian Peninsula, Turkey) and a few minor ones (Brittany and southern Tuscany), during the Middle Ages and the modern period there is clear evidence of exploitation only for German and British mines. Tin ores in Southern Tuscany (Monte Valerio) and Germany had been known about since Antiquity. Therefore, it is likely (but not certain) that the superficial ore in Monte Valerio was exploited not only in Antiquity, but also during the Middle Ages.14 Concerning Germany, tin mining began in the Erzgebirge in around the 1240s and exports increased in the 1340s, while works extended to Saxony in the early sixteenth century, when extraction was mainly linked to the production of tin plates.15 Actually, as noted by Mattheus Parisiensis, new mines were discovered in 1241;16 thus, the price of the raw material decreased abruptly, until a crisis in production occurred in Bohemia (1295–1325), leading to a new increase in the exploitation of the Cornish mines.17 In relation to the Iberian Peninsula, written and archaeological evidence seems to suggest importation of raw materials rather than the exploitation of local mines during the early Middle Ages. Written documents show that the mines known in the North and worked during the Roman period, may not have been exploited during the Middle Ages; unfortunately, archaeological evidence is lacking.18 As underlined in a recent study, it is not easy to interpret Islamic texts referring to mining and metal resources in al-Andalus, because the focus is always on the major ores controlled by

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the central power, and these mines were mainly related to coinage.19 While another study on the mines along the route from Córdoba to Batalyaws underlines the actual presence – in this area – of tin together with lead, and of lead and copper mines worked during the Roman period, there is no conclusive evidence that tin ores were exploited between the ninth and the eleventh centuries.20 Ongoing research on archive records dating between the late fifteenth and the early sixteenth century, suggests the confirmation or assignation of working privileges on lead and tin mines in different areas of the Peninsula.21 British mines were probably the best known for importance and volume of trade over several centuries. At that time, the tin trade was largely controlled by Flemish merchants and the use of tin for glazing pottery is mentioned in mid-sixteenth century treatises: both Biringuccio and Piccolpasso refer to Flemish tin (stagnio fiandresco).22 Biringuccio points out how difficult it was to procure tin in Southern Europe;23 for instance, travellers writing reports on England between the late fifteenth and sixteenth century praised the quality of English minerals.24 When the two treatises were written, Flemish merchants had established a trade route for shipping this metal from Cornwall, but previously, in the mid-fourteenth century, tin trade was an Italian monopoly, in the hands of the Bardi and Peruzzi families.25 Tin, together with other widely traded products reached Genoa, Pisa, Florence, Naples and Venice through Majorca, then the most important shipping centre of the Mediterranean.26 There is no doubt that the most important tin source during the Middle Ages was the ore in Cornwall and, at the time Carew was writing (1602), tin from Cornwall and Devon was present on the European market in large quantities.27 The production in flourished between 1295 and 1365, after a temporary crisis in the 1240s, when mines in central Germany (Erzgebirge district) were intensively worked.28 Even though tin exploitation in Cornwall was related in the first instance to coinage – and the regulations concerning tin export were extremely strict – the growing commercial interests led to an increasing volume in trade towards Europe;29 a trade that became extremely significant by the mid-fourteenth century, and up to the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, when tin was exported both as raw material in bars30 or as pewter and bronze vessels.31 In conclusion, there was a widespread trade of Cornish tin to Europe from the mid-thirteenth century onwards and it increased considerably throughout the following century. Even though possibly in smaller quantities, this trade is documented from at least the mid-twelfth century. British tin was still well known in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, but by then large quantities of metals reached the European market from the New World: by the late sixteenth century Spanish sovereigns were controlling metal supplies through the concession of privileges on the exploitation of mines in Central America.32

Access to Tin Ores as a Path for the Dissemination of Tin-glazed Pottery Production The earliest evidence of tin added to lead to make glazes opaque is in Iraq (Basra) and dates to the first half of the eighth century AD, followed by Persia and Egypt between the eighth and ninth centuries.33 This range of time coincides with the

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period Islamic written sources date back to. As discussed by Gómez and then underlined in further studies, archaeological evidence and archaeometrical analysis have shown that glazes containing tin were used on pottery produced in different sites within the Iberian Peninsula, like Madinat al-Zahara, Alcalá la Vieha and Mértola, as early as the beginning of the tenth century.34 Tin glazed shards dating to the tenth century have been identified on more sites: Madinat Ilbira, Zaragoza and in the Caliphate of Córdoba, including production in the Valencian area.35 Tin glazed pottery produced in these sites was exported, for instance, to Pisa between the late tenth and the beginning of the eleventh century, where a local production started in the early thirteenth century.36 Local production in Barcelona also dates to the thirteenth century, showing the spread of know-how in the Iberian Peninsula.37 In al-Andalus access to tin sources in the Far East was possible thanks to the well-known trade route of the Persian Gulf – which is mentioned in ninth to eleventh-century Islamic sources – and which was part of the Silk Road. Archaeological evidence has shown that Chinese pottery, and specifically Celadon, was present in centres of political importance, i.e. at the court of the Caliph. The low percentage of shards recovered in archaeological assemblages, and the extremely high-quality standard of this production, suggest the possible role of these objects as gifts. Nevertheless, this is a clear sign that the western Mediterranean market could access the Gulf trade, the Iberian Peninsula providing a privileged context for the circulation of these finished products during the caliphate period. So far archaeometrical analyses on tin glazes have not been able to trace back from which mine tin was extracted, but they have demonstrated that tin was present in low percentages in the early opaque glazes made in the Iberian Peninsula.38 The number of written sources about the tin trade increased considerably from the fourteenth century onwards; at that time documents referred to tin imported through the Balearic Islands from Flanders by Venetian merchants.39 The involvement of Spanish merchants in the tin supply from England to the Iberian Peninsula is recorded from the late fifteenth century.40 Flemish galleys shipped tin in rods and pewter platters to Venice and by the sixteenth century the Venetian traded tin through Flemish ports.41 To sum up, there is no conclusive evidence for the use of tin ores in al-Andalus during the Middle Ages. Tin was used in pottery glazes in the western Mediterranean as early as the tenth century, but it is only from the thirteenth century onwards that tin-glaze pottery was produced on a wider basis. Apart from the considerations about the spread of the technical expertise for making it, the diffusion of these products coincides with the wider availability on the market of tin traded from Cornwall. Concerning Italy, certainly, the use of tin as an opacifier for glazed pottery in various Italian centres from the thirteenth century onwards highlights continuing and regular contacts with centres where this technique was known already and specifically with al-Andalus.42 These contacts implied, not only, the circulation of finished products and of raw materials, but also of potters.43 So far archaeological evidence and written sources have shown that tin-glazed pottery production on a large scale, and the diffusion of know-how for making it, coincides with a wider availability of tin on the market.44 A comparative analysis of the possible production costs for making sgraffito lead-glazed pottery and tin-glazed pottery in Renaissance

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Italy proved that not only raw materials contributed to the final cost of an object but labour also: an aspect that has usually been underestimated.45 It is not easy to calculate the actual cost of tin needed to glaze a certain amount of vessels, but the range of time elapsing between different purchases in a sixteenth-century workshop and the amount of mineral present in glazes according to archeometrical analysis show that minimal quantities were needed, implying that the use of recycled objects could actually be an option.46 In conclusion: the actual demand on the market for tin for diverse uses might have stimulated the exploitation of ores resulting in the easier accessibility of this material for craftsmen like potters too. Sources of tin for pottery glazes changed over time and depended on the production areas. It is likely that the earliest production sites in the Middle East (ninth/tenth century) accessed tin from the Far East through the Gulf trade route. The source for tin might be unchanging for early production in the Iberian Peninsula, but from the late eleventh century onwards, and especially after the second half of the thirteenth century, the tin used in Italy and in the western Mediterranean was most likely shipped from Cornwall and Devon and sometimes from Germany; from the fifteenth century onwards the British Isles were the major source for tin. Tin use was involved in major changes in tableware during the late Middle Ages and early modern period. If it is certainly true that tin-glazed pottery was a feature of the Renaissance table in Italy, and that it was used at different social levels, it was not the only material on the table, as it consistently replaced wood and pewter from the early seventeenth century onwards: later than commonly assumed.

COBALT BLUE: FASHION AND MODELS, TECHNIQUE AND SUPPLY The second case study analyses the introduction and use of a new pigment, cobalt blue, in tin-glazed pottery decoration. After discussing the importance of a mineral such as tin used for glazing pottery, I wish now to draw attention to a pigment. Is decoration related mainly to taste and fashion, rather than to the transmission of technical know-how? To a certain extent, the former is the case, but when it comes to the use and preparation of a pigment technical knowledge is always involved. Moreover, the introduction of blue both in the Iberian and the Italian Peninsulas is paralleled by a different way of preparing the clay used for the fabric. Even more significantly, the diffusion of the technique in different areas of the western Mediterranean does not imply a direct contact between the two shores. Archaeological evidence and written sources, in fact, have shown two different paths of diffusion of this technique within the two peninsulas.

Cobalt Blue as an Innovation in Relation to Tin-glazed Pottery The introduction of cobalt blue in decorating tin-glazed pottery represents a major innovation, and it actually occurred at the same time when tin started to be used as an opacifier for glazes. Cobalt blue has been employed in the Near East since antiquity, especially in glass making, but its use on ceramics, unlike on glass, does not seem to

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be continuous.47 The large interruption in use between the first centuries BC and the Abbasid period implies the lack of a direct transmission of this technique, as well as different supplies for raw materials.48 The earliest use of cobalt blue on ceramics during the Middle Ages is related to the introduction of tin oxide to make opacified glazes. Despite the fact that the connection between the earliest tin-opacified glazes in the Middle East and the intent to imitate imported Chinese white-wares has been questioned, this hypothesis is definitely based on sound evidence.49 It is highly likely, in fact, that ninth-century early Abbasid production of blueand-white ware using cobalt blue on a tin-opacified glaze was influenced by imports of Chinese Tang blue-and-white porcelain. Even though not identified, the source of cobalt proved to be different for the two productions.50 From the twelfth century onwards Saxony seems to be the major source of cobalt for production in the Middle East, even though the mineral extracted from the Persian area was traded within the Mediterranean and also to China.51 A recent work has shown that the cobalt blue used in early production during the Ming period (Sumali blue) was different from that employed from the fifteenth century onwards and possibly imported from the Middle East.52

The Iberian and Italian Peninsulas: Parallel Productions with Cobalt Blue in the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Centuries Concerning the western Mediterranean the question of the existence or not of technical exchanges between the Iberian and the Italian Peninsula is especially important. It is not clear when cobalt was first used in the Iberian Peninsula. However, the earliest archaeological evidence of tin-glazed pottery decorated in blue are mudéjar ceramics from the Valencian area, meaning that these objects were produced after the expansion of the Christian kingdoms and date to the beginning of the fourteenth century. Mudéjar kilns inherited the Islamic tradition of tin-glazed pottery production, integrating innovations introduced after the Christian expansion; the first written document referring to cobalt (çafra), in fact, dates to 1333.53 The increasing demand of these objects was certainly relevant in favouring the transmission of know-how. So far, both kiln waste and archaeometrical analysis have shown that cobalt blue decoration was under-glaze painted.54 Nevertheless, under-glaze and over-glaze technique were used in the Valencian area.55 The results achieved so far are of great interest, but a comprehensive sampling of shards from different workshops and referring to different phases of the production has not been undertaken yet. Even though well known, it is not clear on the basis of archaeological contexts when the earliest production of blue decorated Nasrid pottery started in Malaga (between the late thirteenth and the fifteenth centuries). The first Italian cobalt blue painted ceramics with tin-opacified glaze date to the same period as the early production from the Iberian Peninsula, but a direct transmission of the technique is doubtful, as there is no evidence of ceramic production decorated with cobalt blue on the Tyrrhenian shores. Archaeological evidence, in fact, seems to point to an earlier use of cobalt blue along the Adriatic coast.56 Furthermore, two different productions coexisted, implying the use of two techniques: blue relief and blue decorations on blue archaic maiolica. The first one consists of a layer of lead

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glaze coloured with cobalt oxides and applied over a tin-opacified glaze. In this case, cobalt is not used to paint either under- or over-glaze, or to colour the opacified glaze: the lead glaze coloured with cobalt covers the tin glaze, creating a decoration in some areas.57 Conversely, blue archaic maiolica is painted over-glaze. So far, there is no archaeological evidence showing that it was painted under-glaze, but no systematic research has been carried out on this production. An earlier Italian production dating to the late twelfth and thirteenth centuries known as proto-maiolica shows bluish decoration that might be the result of copper oxidised pigments covered with an alkali-lead glaze. While mudéjar (1238–1505) and moriscos (1505–1609) potters might have used cobalt ores available in the Iberian Peninsula, the major source for Italian potters was possibly Germany (Erzgebirge), as the analyses so far undertaken on glasses have shown and written sources have confirmed.58 It is certainly relevant that the same area was a possible source for tin supply. Finally, the later production should be considered for the possible change in sources of supply. For example, the presence of arsenic in glass and glazes from the sixteenth century onwards – which seems to be a general trend in Europe – might be related to a different cobalt ore or to the use of a different technology, especially in the way of processing the raw material.59 It has been suggested that there might be a close relationship between the features of the pigments and the procedure used when decorating the objects.60 Furthermore, imitation of Chinese pottery continued to play a key role during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries in different areas: not only in the Italian and Iberian Peninsulas, but also in Egyptian and Syrian productions.61 Once again, the use of a raw material, in this case cobalt blue, and the transmission of know-how related to its use, can shed new light on the complex network existing between different areas of Europe and within the Mediterranean basin between the thirteenth and the sixteenth centuries, including the exchange system between the Orient and the Near East through the Persian Gulf from the ninth century onwards.

FROM THE IBERIAN TO THE ITALIAN PENINSULA: THE TECHNIQUE OF LUSTERWARE Imported lusterwares from Spain were regarded as models and as far as the late fourteenth century as luxury items. Thus, they were imitated in terms of decorative patterns by Italian production centres. At the same time, as kiln wastes have shown, workshops invested and made experiments in order to learn the technique. The imitation process proceeded at two different levels: the reproduction of formal patterns and the learning of technical skills. Lusterware making has been chosen as an example because it is a complex process involving three firings, thus it can be learnt only by the means of direct transmission. As a consequence, the rise of different production centres has been explained as the result of potters moving around.62 Recipes were usually collected decades after the actual know-how was assimilated, crystallising somehow a process that relies mainly on oral transmission between different generations within the workshop. In other words, recipes were noted down either by potters when the production was not lasting any longer, or by connoisseurs.

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Technique and Transmission: The Islamic Tradition of the Iberian Peninsula It seems important to summarise how lusterware was made: this cannot be regarded as a result connected with the use of colours in the way that painted decorations are. Lusterware derives from the application of metallic salts (usually silver and copper) mixed with other elements in order to allow the required reactions before receiving the third firing at a relatively low temperature. By this process the oxides became a permanent part of the tin glaze. Just before the end of the third firing, broom was introduced into the kiln to produce smoke, so that a reducing atmosphere was created and the metals did become oxidised. The kiln used for the third firing was smaller than those employed for ordinary firing; Piccolpasso emphasises that only three colours could be obtained: gold, silver and red. If the potter wished to have an outline drawing he should have it painted before the second firing.63 As the kiln waste at Cafaggiolo has shown, this practice was quite common. In Italy lusterware production started only in the Renaissance and it was regarded as a secret for a long time; yet objects had been traded from the Mediterranean area for several centuries. In Tuscany the first imports arrived in Pisa from Egypt between the late tenth and the early eleventh century, as is the case for the basins inserted on the facades of several churches in Pisa and in the inlands. Lusterware imported from al-Andalus circulated only from the twelfth century onwards;64 the first products that reached Tuscany were manufactured in the area around Murcia.65 About a century later Malaga lusterware travelled all around the Mediterranean. It has commonly been thought that – as a consequence of the process of reconquista – technical skills were transmitted to potters working in Valencia and Manises, dating the first objects manufactured in that area towards the end of the fourteenth century. Archive sources and archaeological evidence have proved that lusterware was already produced in Manises and Paterna since at least the 1320–30s, shipped to Majorca and from there to Italy.66 Certainly, these objects were regarded as models. On the one hand, the decoration was imitated; on the other hand the new technique was learned. Despite its origin (Egypt and the Middle East), lusterware became known in western Europe through the Islamic production in al-Andalus. Objects made in Malaga travelled all around the Mediterranean and were imported to Pisa. Islamic sources show that the production centres in the Kingdom of Granada were well known by the beginning of the fourteenth century. Even though Valencia and Manises grew in importance as production centres, written documents kept referring to these artefacts as obra de malequa (Malaga products), but there is no archaeological evidence of any production in Malaga after the late fourteenth century, at a time when the Valencian area was already one of the most important manufacturing districts. Confusion might have arisen from a misunderstanding of the Spanish obra de malequa by Italians; in fact, the way in which the word is spelt in Italian documents suggests that the writers were meaning the island of Majorca rather than Malaga.67 Pottery imported from the Iberian Peninsula became quite common in northern and central Italy from the late fourteenth century. As shown by the assemblages excavated during the last two decades, it was probably more widespread than once thought. The products from the Valencian area started to circulate on a broader scale

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during the fourteenth century.68 The earliest examples known in Tuscany date to the second half of the same century and became widespread during the second half of the fifteenth century, as proved by several assemblages. The recent excavations undertaken in central Florence show the presence of some shards (six vessels) known as mature Valencian lusterware, dating to the first half of the fifteenth century. This type was widely spread in northern and central Italy, on both the western and eastern coasts.69 Even though regarded as out of the ordinary, these objects circulated not only in Florence, but also in the nearby fortified settlements, and were probably accessible to a wider part of the population than once assumed.70 In Florence, the quantity of imports reached its maximum during the second half of the fifteenth century, before starting to decline at the beginning of the following century. Even though the pottery trade can be regarded as of minor importance compared to the totality of exchanges within the Mediterranean area, the circulation of these goods was extraordinarily important, as they were first studied and then imitated by local workshops.71 Similarities between Tuscany and Liguria have been pointed out: during the second half of the fifteenth century there is a significant and generalised increase of pottery imported from the Iberian Peninsula in settlement of all ranks, both on the coast and in the inland. In this phase Valencian artefacts are the majority of nonlocal shards, while in the previous century the imports from the Kingdom of Granada were the most relevant ones.72 The number of Spanish artefacts traded to Italy slowly decreased during the sixteenth century, at a time when the local production increased not only in quantity, but more importantly, in quality.73

Italian Renaissance Lusterware Local production in Italy started only in the late fifteenth century and the technique was regarded as a secret in local workshops. In some cases trials and experiments were made but the production died out quite quickly; in other centres it lasted and became one of the major productions. The most remarkable feature is the circulation of the same reference models within different areas. Were these models regarded as fashionable? Do they prove the presence of itinerant craftsmen? A complete account of lusterware production in Italy is still lacking, but some works have tried to show the connections between different manufacturing areas.74 Studies so far published on Deruta, Gubbio and Perugia, have focused mainly on the workshop of Maestro Giorgio Andreoli. According to the new evidence, lustred pottery was first produced in Deruta, then in Gubbio and finally in Perugia. These places became famous for their artefacts only after some members of the Masci family moved there from Deruta. It has been suggested that Maestro Giorgio was skilful in terzo fuoco before moving to Gubbio and that he had already worked on lustre-making in northern Italy, but there is no evidence to prove this.75 Moreover, the workshop of Giacomo di Paoluccio, with whom the potter and his brother started a society for producing maiolica in 1489, proves to have been a place where several apprentices learned the art of glazing pottery. There are some similarities between the production in Gubbio and Deruta: three potters from Deruta stayed in Gubbio in 1524 because of the turmoil happening in Perugia and its surroundings. Moreover, Maestro Giorgio attracted to his workshop artisans not only from Duruta, but also from the nearby Casteldurante and

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Urbino. Unfortunately, no stratigraphic excavations have been carried out either in Deruta or in Gubbio involving archaeological assemblages dating from the Renaissance. Concerning Tuscany, Cafaggiolo, Montelupo, Firenze and Siena will be considered. As discussed in Guasti and Cora, the potters Stefano and Piero di Dimitri Schiavon moved from Montelupo to Cafaggiolo in 1498.76 The edition of Marmi’s handbook (a potter recipe book) has shown that recipes for making lusterware were known in Montelupo as well. While lusterware production did not last in Montelupo, the excavations at Cafaggiolo show that it went on for at least a couple of decades. The production dating to the sixteenth century (1520–1560) proves the influence of both the forms and the decorative patterns used in Deruta. It is worth noting that a significant number of tablewares – mainly dishes – with decorative patterns painted in yellow and imitating those commonly associated with lusterware, were manufactured in Montelupo, proving an extensive circulation of models and their consequent imitation. Why did the production of lusterware not last in Montelupo? Rather than to a lack of success in experimenting with the technique, a different marketing choice should be taken into account. In order to understand how the technical know-how of lusterware making was transmitted, it would be vital to reconstruct the links between potters at work in the Iberian and in the Italian Peninsula. Links have been traced back only for Sicily and Naples; connections between Naples and the kingdom of Spain becoming more frequent after 1442 for dynastic reasons. The lack of written evidence makes it more difficult to prove that some Spanish potters might have worked in central Italy. As for Siena, there are no specific studies on lusterware production. Allusions in Sigismundo Tizio’s Historiae can still be regarded as the best-known evidence on the subject.77 Even though the story of Galgano’s journey to Spain might have been somewhat sensationalized it should be regarded as proof that, at the beginning of the sixteenth century, it was not impossible for Italian potters to travel to Spain in order to gain technical skills: ‘Galganus de Belforte Senensis figulus olim a Hyronimo/ Scintilla scolastico Hispano Valentiam perductus, atque ibidem/ a Baptista Bulgarino mercatore senensi adiutus vili habitu/ delitescens, et veluti minister opificio figulino ibidem intendens/ auratorum vasorum colorem furtim percipiens, et animadvertens/ penibus Senam mense hoc martio reversus est.’78 Apparently, Galgano made his journey in 1514. This document also contains the supplica (request) addressed by Fedele to the Signoria (town council) to be granted a monopoly to dorare et argentare a fuoco for three years. In centres such as Siena, historic sources seem to confirm the presence of a local manufacture. The recent systematic excavations carried out at the Hospital of Santa Maria della Scala show evidence of a possible local production. The amount of lusterware imported from the Valencian area, proved – once again – to be significant, but there are also a few shards showing decorative patterns in the Deruta-style with a fabric resembling those of the coeval local artefacts. It would be of great importance to reconsider the distribution of products traditionally attributed to Deruta. The rescue excavations carried out in Grosseto, in southern Tuscany, during the last two decades recovered lusterware resembling objects made in Deruta. Turning to northern Italy, so far Faenza is the only lusterware production centre known in the area. Despite the lack of systematic archaeological research, some

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fragments of shards have been found in the town centre: some are finished products, others are trials and there are also imitations of lusterware painted in light and deep yellow. Both trials and finished products show a clear resemblance to those made in Cafaggiolo, but in Faenza the production seems to have died out quite quickly. There are shallow bowls with lusterware trials, dishes decorated alla porcellana with lustred elements, and a dish with trials and a woman’s profile painted in the centre. The shards from the kiln waste recovered at Cafaggiolo show similarities both in decorative patterns and in forms. The diffusion of objects decorated in the Derutastyle proves the circulation of communal models within diverse regional areas. Coming to a conclusion, during the expansion of the Christian Kingdoms in the Iberian Peninsula (1212–1609) it might have been possible for Italian potters to attract specialised artisans to their workshops, but it is also likely that some Italian potters could have travelled to Valencia, as Galgano’s story suggests. So much for the written evidence; the archaeological data show that there are close connections between lusterware production in Cafaggiolo and Faenza, at a time when archive sources highlight the fact that potters were travelling from Deruta to Gubbio and then to Perugia, where they started a new workshop. Thus, by the end of the fifteenth century, certain skilled artisans might have started travelling around, working in workshops already producing tin-glazed pottery. Evidence proving that potters were travelling from one workshop to the next does exist, even though it is scarce. A document regarding the Masci family, for example, states that they had travelled not only in the region, but also all over the country. These journeys are comparable to the travel of a merchant, rather than to relocation and to settling down somewhere else. As most documents referring to the movement of craftsmen are statements of tax payments, we found consistent records only in the town where they paid tax revenues. Books of recipes were written once the technique was no longer regarded as a secret. Concerning Galgano’s journey to Spain it has been suggested that he might have had to go to Valencia instead of travelling to Deruta, because the potters working in there did not want to teach their secrets.79 Contracts seem to mention either the monopoly on certain kinds of production or the fines to be paid in case these agreements were not respected.80 When we consider how high the technical skills needed for terzo fuoco were, it is not surprising that in its early stages lusterware production was regarded as a secret. Piccolpasso, in fact, not being a potter himself, might have not been informed exhaustively.81

CHINESE PORCELAIN AND LOCAL IMITATIONS: FROM LUXURY GOOD TO GLOBAL COMMODITY During the fifteenth century Chinese porcelain in Florence was a luxury good mainly related to gift exchange and collection. Only from the late sixteenth century onwards, it become a global-traded commodity, even though accessible at certain social levels only. Once again, imitation happened at two different levels: blue-onwhite decoration was imitated as a pattern by local manufacturers producing objects of varying quality but generally affordable by the vast majority of the population (trickle-down effect); under the patronage of Francesco I, experiments took place in Florence in order to imitate the technique. Spallanzani’s works on the Guardaroba

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disclosed the content of the Medici collections;82 recently some of these objects – nowadays on display at the Museo degli Argenti – have been precisely identified.83 Blue-on-white decorated porcelain influenced the flourishing production of sixteenth-century Italy, which in turn was a model for later European productions. Firstly inspired by Islamic imports, which were looking up to Chinese models themselves, pottery with blue-on-white decoration became the most requested during the sixteenth century, not only in the Italian Peninsula. Ceramics imitating Chinese patterns, in fact, started to be produced broadly: from the Iberian Peninsula to the Netherlands.

The Role of Models Concerning the role of imports in the process of imitation, it should be stressed that, up to the first half of the sixteenth century, exported Chinese porcelain was not specifically manufactured for the European market. During this period it was mainly for display, even though used on certain occasions as early as the first half of the sixteenth century. For example, Eleonora di Toledo, when Giovanni was born (29 September 1543) asked to get from Florence to Poggio a Caiano: ‘per cavallaro expresso due di quelle tazze mezzanotte di porcellana in le quali S. Ex.a suole mangiare le zuppe et dua di quelle scodelle nelle quali mangia le minestra del parto.’84 Thus, these objects were really in use and, thinking about their function, we can assume they were quite similar to those manufactured for the domestic market in China. Only from the second half of the sixteenth century, a specific production known as Kraak, made specifically for the western market, started to be imported. Did models circulate in both directions? In this respect the correspondence between Bernardo Baroncelli, and Francesco I and Cosimo I is extremely relevant to cast new light on the circulation of models. In 1565, while waiting to buy two boxes full of porcelain that had just arrived in Livorno, Baroncelli suggested that it would be possible to buy ceramics directly from Alessandria, in Egypt, and without waiting any further: ‘mandare una cassetta di piatti, e schotelle di terra, di ogni sorta e scrivere in su questa foggia vogliamo le porcellane e per aviso di Vostra Eccellenza Illustrissima ve ne sono delle bianche tutte e delle verde tutte e delle altre poi azurre e bianche.’85 The reference to celadon, white porcelain and blue-on-white porcelain (the most popular in Europe at that time) is quite clear. It would be worth investigating if those who acquired porcelain on the European market were always able to distinguish between genuine products and imitations made in the Middle East. When it became clear that it was not possible to get those porcelains from Livorno to Florence, Bernardo Baroncelli suggested further possibilities: si può scrivere in Alexandria alla casa de’ Capponi, e Biffoli, e alli amici mia del Cairo che sieno avertiti, subito che arriveranno le carovane che venghon del Indie di pigliare quella sorte di porcellane che parranno a proposito a Vostra Eccellenza Illustrissima. E a causa che e’ sappino di che qualità fa di bisognio si potrà mandar loro una cassetta di piatti e schodelle grosse che si faranno fare aposta a Montelupo o dove meglio paressi a quella e son certo che non mancherà per la prima carovana da servirsi. E se e’ non havessino di tutte quelle sorte, che piacessin a Vostra

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Eccellenza Illustrissima si potrà dare la cassetta delle stoviglie a quelli mercanti che si partono con le carovane del India e quali al loro ritorno le porteranno fedelmente.86 Thus, the functional aspect, not uniquely fashion, played an important role when it came to buying imported objects. Apart from the fact that Francesco I was possibly willing to invest quite a lot of money to acquire the porcelains he wanted, it shows that it was possible to send models as far as China thanks to middle-men operating in Cairo and Alessandria. Even though still a luxury product, porcelain was no longer accessible to the courts only: from the second half of the sixteenth century onwards, larger quantities of tableware reached and conquered the European market along the Manila–Acapulco route.87

The Medici Porcelain Once again, imitation happened at two different levels: reproduction of decorative patterns and acquisition of the technique. Ceramics with decorations imitating porcelain circulated all around Tuscany and were manufactured in various centres, remarkably in Montelupo, where raw materials locally available were used. This is known as trickle-down effect: luxury objects are imitated by cheaper artefacts made with less care or using cheaper materials. Also in this case, fashion was the main trigger for imitation. Concerning the technique, the experiments carried out by Francesco I de’ Medici at the Casino di San Marco are very well known. The Medici porcelain (a soft-paste porcelain) became a luxury product, much more precious than Chinese imports, and was used as a diplomatic gift. Guglielmo I Gonzaga writing to Francesco I de’ Medici (17 June 1584) stated: ‘V.A. mi ha fatto molta grazia co’l mandarmi li cristalli et procellane [porcellane], . . . essendomi stati gratissimi così per la bellezza loro, come per venirmi dalla funderia.’88 In this case, of course, there were not direct contacts between potters (i.e. China–Europe), but there was certainly a strong interest in getting information about the process of porcelain making and the raw materials employed. In Florence, this was known since the early seventeenth century, when Francesco Carletti wrote to Ferdinando I de’ Medici that porcelain was made of local clay available in China, and that what was commonly thought in Europe was totally nonsense.89 Just a few decades earlier Francesco was carrying on his experiments at the Casino di San Marco, at the time when Filippo Sassetti, copying from a Portuguese manuscript, was reporting in a private letter to Baccio Valori that porcelain was made of a white crushed stone, describing a technique that somehow resembled crushing quartz for making fritware.90

CONCLUSIONS The transmission of a technique, regardless of time and space, underlies continuous contacts between different groups that can imply either direct interchanges in terms of movement of craftsmen, or the trade of raw materials within a common network and/ or a process of experimentation implying investments.91 Socio-economic conditions can allow or even encourage the movement of specialised craftsmen.92 Therefore, the

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transmission of a technique should not be regarded as a mere process of imitation. Each step of the manufacturing process (starting with raw material extraction from the ore and ending with the final firing) plays an equally important role. As the case studies presented above have shown, the introduction of cobalt blue in Italian tin-glazed pottery production during the late Middle Ages, implies a retrieval of knowledge that had not been directly used in pottery making for a few centuries. Tin as an opacifier in glazes is a major technical advancement that paralleled in part the diffusion of cobalt blue. Thanks to a comparative use of written sources and archaeological records, it has been possible to reconstruct the major steps in the diffusion and transmission of the technical know-how related to the use of tin and cobalt in central Italy, and with reference to the Mediterranean context. Both techniques are somehow linked to the process of imitation of Chinese porcelain within the Islamic areas of the Mediterranean. In this respect, the tradition of lusterware making in Renaissance Italy is deeply indebted to the transmission of technical knowhow from Muslim to Christian potters in the Iberian Peninsula during the process of expansion of the Christian Kingdoms. Finally, the role of Chinese porcelain as a model, and later on as a global commodity in the early modern context, is an example of how objects, which have long been regarded as luxury goods and as models, represent the trigger for both experimenting in techniques and imitating decorative patterns. At the same time, there was a production targeted for the foreign market, so to meet its taste and requests. Fashion can be a trigger for imitation, but this process went on at two different levels: transmission of techniques, implying either direct contact between craftsmen and/or experimentation; imitation of patterns that underlie the existence of reference models, but not gaining technical skills. The economic background and the demand should be considered and the lasting/success of a certain production is related to production and market strategies, not uniquely to acquiring the appropriate knowhow. We have considered skills transmitted on a private basis, even though local councils tried to attract craftsmen (like is the case for Deruta and Gubbio). When it comes to porcelain at the Medici court, even though Francesco I was personally involved into the experimenting process, we are still considering secrets held by the court-workshop, and not the promotion of local manufactures on a regional scale.

ARCHIVE RECORDS AGS = Archivo General de Simancas, Valladolid, Cancilleria. Registro del Sello de Corte. AHN = Archivo Historico Nacional, Madrid, Nobleza, Archivo de los Duques de Osuna. ASFI = Archivio di Stato di Firenze, Mediceo del Principato Biblioteca Comunale di Siena, Mss., B.III.12

NOTES 1. For ceramics glazes and for glass mineral pigments only were used; differently, for colouring clothes, colours prepared using plants were employed. Mary P. Merrifield,

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Original treaties: dating from the XIIth to XVIIIth centuries on the arts of painting, in oil, miniature, mosaic, and on glass; of gilding, dyeing, and the preparation of colours and artificial gems (London: Murray, 1849). 2. This subject – apart from economic historians, such as Abulafia and Ashtor – has widely been investigated by scholars in a variety of disciplines. See David Abulafia, The Western Mediterranean Kingdoms 1200–1500. The Struggle for Domination (London and New York: Longman, 1997); Eliyahu Ashtor, East–West Trade in the Medieval Mediterranean (London: Variorum Reprints, 1986); Simonetta Cavaciocchi (ed.), Relazioni economiche tra Europa e mondo islamico. Secc. XIII–XV. Atti della XXXVIII Settimana di Studi (2006) (Florence: Le Monnier, 2007). Moreover, the price and local availability of a certain product was not the sole relevant element for its success. Different factors, such as features and quality, played an equally important role. See David P. S. Peacock, Pottery in the Roman World: An Ethnoarchaeological Approach (London and New York: Longman, 1982), p. 31; Marta Caroscio, La maiolica in Toscana tra Medioevo e Rinascimento. Il rapporto tra centri di produzione e di consumo nel periodo di transizione (Florence: All’Insegna del Giglio, 2009), pp. 48–50. 3. Sauro Gelichi, ‘L’introduzione di nuove tecniche nelle ceramiche italiane tra XII e XIII secolo’, in Juan J. Alvárez (ed.) Cerámicas islámicas y cristianas a finales de la Edad Media. Influencias e intercambios (Ceuta: Consejería, 2003), pp. 53–82, esp. 57. 4. Graziella Berti and Sauro Gelichi, ‘Trasmissioni di Tecnologie nel Medioevo. Tendenze e linee di ricerca attuali’, Albisola, 32 (1999/2001), pp. 23–42, esp. 26. 5. Robert B. Mason and Michael S. Tite, ‘The Beginning of Tin-Opacification of Pottery Glazes’, Archaeometry, 39/1 (1997), pp. 41–58. 6. Berti and Gelichi, ‘Trasmissioni di Tecnologie’. 7. The use and supply of tin before then is discussed in Marta Caroscio ‘Si cava in Inghilterra, et anche in certi luochi de la Fiandra: tin trade and technical changes in pottery making’, in Sauro Gelichi (ed.), Proceedings of the 9th AICM2 (2009) (Florence: All’Insegna del Giglio, 2012), pp. 64–7. 8. Sandy Gerrard, The Early British Tin Industry (Stroud: Tempus Publishing, 2000), p. 10. 9. John E. Dayton, ‘The Problem of Tin in the Ancient World’, World Archaeology, 5/1 (1973), pp. 49–70. 10. John W. Allan, Abu’l Qasim’s Treatise on Ceramics (Oxford: Ashmolean, 1975). 11. For the imports from Malaysa cfr. David Whitehouse, ‘L’uso dello stagno nella produzione medio-orientale dal IX al XII secolo’, Albisola, 14 (1981/1984), pp. 7–14. The role and importance of the Persian Gulf as a trading point connecting the Far East, including China, with the Middle East and therefore Europe has recently been underlined in John Guy et al. (eds), Chine-Méditerranée. Routes et échanges de la céramique avant le XVIe siècle, Taoci 4 (2005). Concerning specifically tin trade, the Persian Gulf seems to have played an important role since the Bronze Age, as discussed in Lloyd R. Weeks, Early Metallurgy of the Persian Gulf: Technology, Trade, and the Bronze Age World (Boston: Brill Academic Publishers, 2004).

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12. Mason and Tite, ‘The Beginning of Tin-Opacification’, p. 56. 13. Brigitte Pitarakis, ‘Mines Anatoliennes exploitées par les Byzantins: recherches récentes’, Revue Numismatique, 153 (1998), pp. 141–85. 14. For the possible exploitation of this ore see François Blanchard, ‘Sulla scoperta della Cassiterite a Campiglia Marittima’, Bollettino del R. Comitato Geologico d’Italia, 7 (1876), pp. 52–4; Gabor Dessau (ed.), ‘La miniera di stagno di Monte Valerio e i giacimenti del campigliese nel quadro della catena metallifera toscana: memoria di Augusto Stella’, Bollettino della Società Geologica Italiana, 74 (1955), pp. 115–218, esp. 141–5. For the use of this ore in Antiquity see: Roberto G. Valera and Paolo G. Valera, ‘Tin in the Mediterranean Area: History and Geology’, in Alessandra Giumlia Mair and Fulvia Lo Schiavo (eds), Le problème de l’étain à l’origine de la métallurgie/ The Problem of Early Tin (Oxford: Archaeopress, BAR S1199, 2003), pp. 3–14; Marco Benvenuti et al., ‘The “Etruscan Tin”: A Prelimary Contribution from Researches at Monte Valerio and Baratti-Populonia (Southern Tuscany, Italy)’, in Mair and Lo Schiavo (eds), Le problème de l’étain à l’origine de la métallurgie, pp. 55–67. The possible ancient working at Monte Valerio cannot be dated precisely: see Craig Merideth, An Archaeometallurgical Survey for Ancient Tin Mines and Smelting Sites in Spain and Portugal. Mid-Central Western Iberian Geographical Region 1990–1995 (Oxford: Archaeopress. BAR International. Ser. 714, 1998), p. 33. A relationship between a probable exploitation of tin on this site and the production of archaic maiolica in Pisa has recently been suggested, even though its arguments are not conclusive. 15. Walter E. Minchinton, The British Tin Plate Industry: A History (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1957), pp. 1–2. 16. Henri R. Luard (ed.), Matthei Parisiensis Monachi Sancti Albani: Chromica Majora, Vol. 5 (London: Longman, 1872–83), p. 151. 17. Ian Blanchard, Mining, Metallurgy and Minting in the Middle Ages, Vol. 3, Continuing Afro-European Supremacy, 1250–1425 (Stuttgart: Steiner, 2005), p. 1550; Caroscio, La maiolica in Toscana, p. 42. 18. See Merideth, An Archaeometallurgical Survey, p. 31. A work has recently been published on this topic, but the evidence discussed is not conclusive about the exploitation of tin mines in the Iberian Peninsula during the early Middle Ages; cf. Anna McSweeney, ‘Tin and the Medieval Mudejar Ceramics from Paterna’, Medieval Ceramics, 30 (2006–2008/2009), pp. 95–102. The written sources referring to the Valencian area have been previously published in works that are regarded as milestones on pottery production in the Iberian Peninsula and will be referred to in their original publication and context, with special reference to: Guillermo J. de Osma, Los maestros alfareros de Manises, Paterna y Valencia. Contratos y ordenanzas de los siglos XIV, XV y XVI (Madrid: Hernández, 1908); Idem, Adiciones á los textos y documentos valencianos N° II: maestros alfareros de Manises, Paterna y Valencia (Madrid: Fortanet, 1911); Pedro López, Los orígenes de la cerámica de Manises y de Paterna (1285–1335) (Valencia: Domenech, 1984). The theme of the transmission of techniques in tin glazed pottery-making from Muslim to Mudejar pottery has masterfully been discussed and summarized in Jaume Coll, La Cerámica Valenciana. Apuntes para una síntesis (Valencia: Avec Gremio, 2009).

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19. André Bazzana and Norbert Trauth, ‘Minéralurgie et Métallurgir à Saltés et dans son arrière-pays (Huelva): les technologies médiévales à la lumière des fouilles de la ville islamique’, in Alberto Canto Garcia et al. (eds), Minas y metalurgia en al-Andalus y Magreb occidental: explotación y poblamiento (Madrid: Casa de Velázquez, 2008), pp. 209–44. 20. Ignacio Quintana, ‘Minería y territorio durante el Califato de Córdoba, y la ruta de Côrduva a Batalyaws’, Boletín Geológico y Minero, 117 (2006), pp. 567–69. 21. AHN, Nobleza, Archivo de los Duques de Osuna. 22. Giovanni Conti (ed.), Li tre libri dell’arte del vasaio di Cipriano Piccolpasso [1558], (Florence: All’Insegna del Giglio, 1976), p. 116. 23. Adriano Carugo (ed.), De la Pirotechnia [1540] (Milan: Il Polifilo, 1977), fol. 15v. 24. An anonymous Italian traveller wrote in 1497: ‘This island produces a quantity of iron and silver and an infinity of lead and tin, the latter which is of the purest quality’ (John Hatcher, English Tin Production and Trade Before 1550 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1973), p. 3). 25. Hatcher, English Tin Production and Trade Before 1550, pp. 93–101. 26. The Arabic geographer Ibn Sa’id gave an account of tin traded from France to the Mediterranean area. The existence of three routes has been suggested: one directly to Flanders, from where tin was re-shipped towards various destinations; a second one to eastern Europe and another one to the Mediterranean and the Middle East (Hatcher, English Tin Production and Trade Before 1550, pp. 21–4). See also Marta Caroscio, ‘La transizione fra Medioevo e Rinascimento e l’impiego del blu nelle smaltate basso medievali italiane. Materie prime e luoghi di approvvigionamento: fonti scritte e analisi archeometriche a confronto’, Albisola, 40 (2007/2008), p. 193; Blanchard, Mining, Metallurgy and Minting, pp. 1551–7. 27. Baron de Dustanville, Carew’s Survey of Cornwall [1602] (London: Bensley, 1811). 28. Minchinton, The British Tin Plate Industry, pp. 1–2. 29. George R. Lewis, ‘Tin Mining’, in W. Page (ed.), The Victoria History of the County of Cornwall (F.S.A., London: Constable, 1906), Vol. I., pp. 537–8; Herbert P. R. Finberg, Tavistock Abbey: A Study in Social and Economic History of Devon (Cambridge: University Press, 1951), pp. 174–5. 30. Francesco Balducci Pegolotti between 1335 and 1343 noted: ‘istagnio quando viene di Cornovaglia d’Inghilterra viene in grandi pezze quadre lunghette’ (Allan Evans (ed.), Francesco Balducci Pegolotti: la Pratica della Mercatura (Cambridge, MA: The Medieval Academy of America, 1936), p. 381). 31. The great majority of traded goods between the British Isles and the Mediterranean area consisted of wool and woollen clothes (Federigo Melis, ‘Werner Sombard e i problemi della navigazione nel medio evo’, Economia e Storia, 8 (1964), pp. 87–149). Tin travelled with wool, clothes and other goods (Norman S.B. Gras, The Early English Customs System: A Documentary Study of the Institutional and Economic History of the Customs from the Thirteenth to the Sixteenth Century (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1918), p. 87). In Cornwall, tin is often mentioned in customs records. In 1439–1440, for example, 24,600 libbre of tin were exported from

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Southampton and 1612 libbre from Sandwich by merchants from Liguria; in the same year 8,010 libbre of pewter vessels were traded from Southampton to Liguria (Angelo Nicolini, Navi liguri in Inghilterra nel Quattrocento. Il registro doganale di Sadwich per il 1439–40 (Bordighera: Istituto Internazionale di Studi Liguri, 2006), p. 54). 32. AGS, Cancilleria. Registro del Sello de Corte. 33. There are actually two ways for making glazes opaque, one is by adding tin, the other one consists in cooking alkaline glaze at a low temperature (less than 700°C), as described in Whitehouse, ‘L’uso dello stagno’. In Iraq, during the Achaemenid period, opacified glazes were produced in 550–330 BC but without adding tin oxides (Mason and Tite, ‘The Beginning of Tin-Opacification’, pp. 41, 46–7). See also Ahmad Y. Al-Hassan and Donald R. Hill, Islamic Technology: An Illustrated History (Cambridge: University Press, 1986); Oliver Watson, Ceramics from the Islamic Lands. Kuwait National Museum. The Al-Sabah Collection (London: Thames and Hudson, 2004). 34. Susana Gómez, ‘Variantes técnicas y formales de la cerámica “verde y morado” de Mértola (Portugal)’, in IV Congreso de Arqueología Medieval Española (Alicante, 1993), Vol. III, 1993, pp. 779–86; Jaume Coll et al., ‘Caracterización química de cubiertas blancas opacas musulmanas de la Valencia Medieval (ss. X–XI)’, Caesaraugusta, 73 (1999), p. 49. For Madinat al-Zahara: José Escudero, ‘La cerámica decorada en “verde y manganeso” de Madinat Al-Zahra’, Cuadernos de la Alhambra, 2 (1990), pp. 99– 112; for Alcalà: Graziella Berti and Tiziano Mannoni, ‘Ceramiche medievali del Mediterraneo Occidentale. Considerazioni su alcune caratteristiche tecniche’, in L. Alves da Silva and R. Mateus (eds), A Cerâmica Medieval no Mediterrâneo Ocidental (Lisbon: Campo Arqueológico de Mértola, 1991), pp. 163–73. 35. For these sites see: Carlos Cano, ‘La cerámica de Madinat Ilbira’, in A. Malpica Cuello (ed.), La ceramica altomedieval en el sur de al-Andalus, Granada: Universidad de Granada, 1993, pp. 273–83; Josefina Pérez-Arantegui et al., ‘La cerámica “verde y negro” de los talleres islámico de Zaragoza: características tecnológicas de sus recubrimientos’, Caesaraugusta ’73 (1999), pp. 43–8; Coll et al., ‘Caracterización química’. 36. Graziella Berti, ‘Pisa and the Islamic World. Import of Ceramic Wares and Transfer of Technical Know-how’, in M. Pearce and M. Tosi (eds), Papers from the EAA Third Annual Meeting Ravenna 1997, Volume 2: Classical and Medieval (Oxford: BAR 718, 1998), pp. 183–90. 37. Julia Beltrán, ‘Pisa arcaica i vaixella verda al segle XIII: l’inici de la producció de pisa decorada en verd i manganès a la ciudad de Barcelona’, Quarhis, 3 (2007), pp. 138– 58; Jávier García and Jaume Buxeda, ‘Pisa arcaica i cerámica vidriada del segle XIII a Barcelona: un estudi arqueomètric’, Quarhis, 3 (2007), pp. 160–79. 38. Judit Molera et al. ‘Chemical and Textual Characterization of Tin Glazes in Islamic Ceramics from Eastern Spain’, Journal of Archaeological Science, 28/3 (2001), pp. 331–40; Coll et al., ‘Caracterización química’; Mason and Tite, ‘The Beginning of Tin-Opacification’. See also Graziella Berti et al., ‘Trasformazioni tecnologiche nelle prime produzioni italiane con rivestimenti vetrificati (secc. XI–XIII)’, in G. Démians d’Archimbaud (ed.), La céramique médiévale en Méditerranée. Actes du VIe congreso de l’AIECM2 (Aix-en-Provence: Narration Éditions, 1998).

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39. Item quinque quintalia de plom de Venecia ad forum quinquaginta quinque solidorum pro quolibet quintalio [1446] (de Osma, Los maestros alfareros, p. 134 n° 54). 40. In 1486 Henry VII granted to John Pardo, Sanchez de Agurto and Pablo Pedrosa, merchants of Spain a licence to export 103 pieces of tin (Gustav A. Bergenroth (ed.), Calendar of Letters, Despaces, and State Papers, relating to the Negotiations between England and Spain preserved in the Archives at Simancas and elsewhere: Vol. I, Henry VII 1485–1509 (London: Longman, 1862), p. 2, no. 6). 41. Rawdon Brown (ed.), Calendar of State Papers and Manuscripts, relating to English Affairs, existing in the archives and collections of Venice and in other libraries of Northern Italy (1202–1509), Vol. I (London: Longman, 1864). 42. Berti et al., ‘Trasformazioni tecnologiche’, pp. 385–6. 43. Caroscio, La maiolica in Toscana, pp. 13–14. For changes involving economic, social and political aspects in the western Mediterranean during the late Middle Ages see William Kingston, The Political Economy of Innovation (Boston: Kluwer, 1984). 44. Berti and Gelichi, ‘Trasmissioni di Tecnologie’; Caroscio, ‘Si cava in Inghilterra’. 45. Anna Moore, Ceramiche Rinascimentali di Castelfiorentino. L’ingobbiata e graffita in Toscana (Florence: Polistampa, 2004). 46. Caroscio, ‘La transizione fra Medioevo e Rinascimento’; Yan Porter, ‘Origines et diffusion du cobalt utilisé en céramique à l’époque médiévale. Étude préliminaire’, in G. Démians d’Archimbaud (ed.), La céramique médiévale en Méditerranée (Aix-enProvence: Narration Éditions, 1997), p. 507. 47. See note 46. 48. Alessandro Zucchiati et al., ‘The ‘della Robbia Blue’: a case study for the use of cobalt pigments in ceramics during the Italian Renaissance’, Archaeometry, 48/1 (2006), pp. 131–52; Alexandra Shortland et al., ‘Ancient Exploitation and Use of Cobalt Alums from the Western Oases of Egypt’, Archaeometry, 48/1 (2006), pp. 153–68. 49. Robert B. J. Mason, Shine Like the Sun. Lustre and Associated Pottery from the Medieval Middle East (Costa Mesa: Mazda Publisher, 2004); Michael Tite and Nigel Wood, ‘The Technological Relationship between Islamic and Chinese Glazed Ceramics Prior to 16th Century AD’, Taoci, 4 (2005), pp. 31–9; J. Jaume Coll et al., ‘Caracterización del cobalto en mayólicas valencianas. Aspectos de tecnología productiva y su evolución (ss. XIV–XIX)’, Albisola, 35 (2002), pp. 63–70. 50. Nigel Wood et al. ‘A Technological Examination of Ninth–Tenth Century AD Abbasid Blue-and-White Ware from Iraq, and its Comparison with Eighth Century AD Chinese Blue-and-White Sancai Ware’, Archaeometry, 49/4 (2007), pp. 665–84. 51. Porter, ‘Origines et diffusion du cobalt’. 52. The archaeometrical analyses undertaken so far have highlighted that the presence of certain elements in the pigments and their ratio might indicate a different source, but ores with similar characteristics do exist in different areas, thus the results of laboratory analysis should be compared with written sources (R. Wen et al., ‘The Chemical Composition of Blue Pigment on Blue-and-White Porcelain of the Yuan and

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Ming Dynasties (AD 1271–1644)’, Archaeometry, 49/1 (2007), pp. 101–15, p. 107). Systematic archaeometrical analysis on cobalt-blue ceramics produced in different centres is lacking and it would be advantageous to relate technical features of different production centres with the diffusion of stylistic patterns and decoration. 53. López, Los orígenes de la cerámica de Manises, p. 33. 54. Coll, La Cerámica Valenciana; Elvira Aura Castro, ‘Aproximación al examen cientifico de la ceramica medieval de Manises’, in IX Congreso de Conservación y Restauración de Bienes Culturales (Madrid, 1992), pp. 422–30. 55. Clodoaldo Roldán et al., ‘Identification of Overglaze and Underglaze Cobalt Decoration of Ceramics from Valencia (Spain) by Portable EDXRF Spectrometry’, X-Ray Spectrometry, 33 (2004), pp. 28–32. 56. Caroscio, La maiolica in Toscana, pp. 24–32. 57. Roberta Corvisiero et al., ‘Prime analisi sul blu nelle ceramiche del Mediterraneo provenienti dallo scavo del Priamàr’, Albisola, 35 (2002), pp. 11–18. 58. For the Iberian Peninsula: Julián Ortega (ed.), Operis Terre Turolii. La Cerámica Bajomedieval en Teruel (Teruel: Museo, 2002), p. 33. Concerning Italy, see: Bernard Gratuze et al., ‘De l’origine du Cobalt: du verre à la Cerámique’, Revue d’Archéométrie, 20 (1996), pp. 23–43; Zoltán Elekes et al., ‘Cobalt-blue Glass Pigment Trade in Europe during Medieval Times’, in G. Demortier and M. Adriaens (eds), Ion Beam Study of Art and Archaeological Objects (Luxembourg: Office for Official Publications of the European Communities, 2000), pp. 50–3; Caroscio, ‘La transizione fra Medioevo e Rinascimento’. 59. Michael Tite, ‘The Production Technology of Italian Maiolica: A Reassessment’, Journal of Archaeological Science, 39 (2009), pp. 2007, 2065–80; Josefina PérezArantegui, et al., ‘Materials and Technological Evolution of Ancient Cobalt-bluedecorated Ceramics: Pigments and Work Patterns in Tin-glazed Objects from Aragon (Spain) from the 15th to the 18 Century AD’, Journal of the European Ceramic Society, 29 (2009), pp. 2499–509. 60. See note 59. 61. For the Italian and Iberian Peninsulas: Marco Spallanzani, Ceramiche orientali a Firenze nel Rinascimento (Florence: Libreria Chiari, 1978; reprinted 1997); Jaume Coll, ‘Documented Influence of China on Maiolica in Spain and New Finds of Chinese Ceramics with Dates to the 16th century’, Transfer: The Influence of China on World Ceramics, Colloquies on Art & Archaeology in Asia, 24 (2007), pp. 123–41. Concerning Egypt and Siria: Watson, Ceramics from the Islamic Lands, p. 422; Venetia Porter, Medieval Syrian Pottery (Oxford: Ashmolean Musem, 1981). 62. Oliver Watson, Persian Lustre Ware (London: Faber and Faber, 1985), p. 24. 63. Conti, Li tre libri dell’arte del vasaio, pp. 164, 261. 64. Graziella Berti, ‘Le role des bacine dans l’étude des céramique à lustre métallique’, in N. Gallois (ed.), Le calife, le prince et le potier. Le faïence a reflets métalliques (Lyon: Musée des Beaux-Arts, 2002), pp. 220–7, esp. 222. 65. Maurice Picon and Julio Navarro, ‘La loza dorada de le province de Murcie: étude en laboratoire’, in La ceramica medievale nel Mediterraneo Occidentale (Florence:

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All’Insegna del Giglio, 1986), pp. 144–6; Hugo Blake et al., ‘The Earliest Valencia Lustreware? The Provenance of the Pottery from Pula in Sardinia’, in David Gaimster and Mark Redknap (eds), Everyday and Exotic Pottery from Europe (650–1900): Studies in Honour of J.G. Hurst (Oxford: Oxbow Books, 1992), pp. 202–24, esp. 222, n. 63. 66. Pedro López, Los orígenes de la cerámica de Manises. 67. Timothy H. Wilson, ‘The Beginnings of Lustreware in Renaissance Italy’, in The International Ceramics Fair and Seminar (London: Nuffield Press, 1996), p. 36. 68. Blake et al., ‘The Earliest Valencia Lustreware?’. 69. Sauro Gelichi, ‘Studi sulla ceramica medievale riminese. 2. Il complesso dell’ex Hotel Commercio’, Archeologia Medievale, 10 (1986), pp. 117–72; Carmen Ravanelli Guidotti, Mediterraneum. Ceramica Spagnola in Italia (Viterbo: Faul, 1992), pp. 62–6. 70. Caroscio, La maiolica in Toscana. 71. Eliyahu Ashtor, ‘The Volume of the Levantine Trade in the Later Middle Ages (1378–1498)’, Journal of European Economic History, 4/3 (1975), pp. 573–612; Marco Spallanzani, Maioliche ispano-moresche a Firenze nei secoli XIV e XV, in Simonetta Cavaciocchi (ed.), Economia e arte, secc. XIII–XVIII: atti della trentatreesima Settimana di studi (Florence: Le Monnier, 2002), pp. 367–77, esp. 376. 72. Alberto García, ‘La presenza di ceramica bassomedievale spagnola nella riviera di ponente: Finalborgo e i Castelli di Andora e Spotorno’, Albisola, 34 (2001), p. 148. 73. Tiziano Mannoni, Ceramica Medievale a Genova e nella Liguria (Bordighera-Genoa: Istituto Internazionale di Studi Liguri, 1975), p. 121. 74. Tiziana Biganti, ‘La produzione di ceramica a lustro a Gubbio e Deruta tra la fine del secolo XV e l’inizio del secolo XVI. Primi risultati per una ricerca documentaria’, Faenza, 73 (1987); Wilson, ‘The beginnings of lustreware in Renaissance Italy’. 75. Pietro Matteri and Tonina Cecchetti, Mastro Giorgio. L’uomo, l’artista, l’imprenditore (Perugia: Camera di Commercio, 1995), p. 47. 76. Gaetano Guasti, Di Cafaggiolo e d’altre fabbriche di ceramiche in Toscana secondo gli studi e documenti in parte raccolti dal Commendator Gaetano Milanesi (Sala Bolognese: Forni, 1902); Galeazzo Cora, Storia della maiolica di Firenze e del contado. Secoli XIV e XV (Florence: Sansoni, 1973). 77. Robert L. Douglas, A History of Siena (New York: Dutton, 1930), pp. 451–2; Gaetano Guasti, Di Cafaggiolo; Albert Van de Put, Hispano-Moresque Ware of the XV Century: a Contribution to its History and Chronology Based upon Armorial Specimens (London: Chapman and Hall, 1904). 78. Sigismundi Titii Historiarum Senensium Liber VII, Biblioteca Comunale di Siena, Mss., B.III.12, fol. 484r, c. 79. Wilson, ‘The Beginnings of Lustreware in Renaissance Italy’, p. 43, note 52. 80. Biganti, ‘La produzione di ceramica a lustro a Gubbio e Deruta’, p. 216. 81. Richard A. Goldthwaite, ‘The Economic and Social World of Italian Renaissance Maiolica’, Renaissance Quarterly, 42/1 (1989), pp. 3–4.

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82. Spallanzani, Ceramiche orientali a Firenze; Spallanzani, Maioliche ispano-moresche a Firenze nel Rinascimento (Florence: S.P.E.S., 2006). 83. Francesco Morena, Dalle Indie Orientali alla corte di Toscana. Collezioni di arte cinese e giapponese a Palazzo Pitti (Florence: Giunti 2005). 84. BIA, Doc ID# 2386 (ASFI, Mediceo del Principato 1170, folio 300). 85. BIA, Doc ID# 21903 (ASFI, Mediceo del Principato 223, folio 37). 86. BIA, Doc ID# 2386 (ASFI, Mediceo del Principato 518, folio 95), published also in Spallanzani, Ceramiche orientali a Firenze, p. 155. 87. El Galeón de Manila (Madrid: Ministerio de Educación, Cultura y Deporte, 2000). 88. BIA, Doc ID# 4436 (ASFI, Mediceo del Principato 2939, not numbered). 89. Ronald W. Lightbown, ‘Oriental Art and the Orient in the Late Renaissance and Baroque Italy’, Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, 32 (1969), p. 231. 90. Francesco Morena, Cineseria. Evoluzioni del gusto per l’Oriente in Italia dal XIV al XIX secolo (Florence: Centro Di, 2009), p. 31. 91. Peacock, Pottery in the Roman World. 92. Berti et al., ‘Trasformazioni tecnologiche’.

Anabaptist Migration and the Diffusion of the Maiolica from Faenza to Central Europe EMESE BÁLINT European University, Florence

Abstract Maiolica workshops in Faenza produced the first bianchi wares in 1540 using a delicate recipe that represented a technical breakthrough in stabilizing white enamel. The celebrated bianchi di Faenza quickly came to symbolize a superior quality so that the neologism faience became the most used synonym for maiolica throughout Europe. The appearance of the new technology coincided with a period of intense and extreme heretical activity in Faenza, which culminated in 1567–1569 and resulted in the inquisition and expulsion of ca. 200 persons, among them many potters. Some 600 miles to the northeast, in Moravia, about 18,000 Anabaptists (mostly from Germany, Switzerland and the Tyrol) found refuge, and started producing bianchi wares that were highly esteemed by the local nobility. The first surviving pieces from 1593 feature influences of both German and Italian maiolica, thus the question remains: what was the mechanism of the diffusion from Italy to Moravia? My chapter will illustrate several theories formulated mainly by art historians, and supported by archival materials, will argue for an indirect link between Italy and Moravia.

INTRODUCTION The diffusion of technology is understood as an uncertain and complex process in which the encounter of diverse experiences and the special environment of individual countries lay the ground for particular development paths.1 Similarly, the history of 131

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science and technology has shown that, rather than simply being a source of progress or a means of Western domination, knowledge is a dynamically co-evolutionary product of the encounters between representatives of various cultures. For this reason, learning and the mobility of skilled personnel who transmitted knowledge have also become important aspects for research. Recent scholarship, critical of both the ‘old picture’ and visions of cultural opposition, has given way to an increasing volume of new narratives deploying terms such as ‘networks of circulation’ and ‘local sites of encounter’.2 Circulation along trading networks is a well-known phenomenon in the history of technology; this chapter will introduce technological transfer via the circulation of practitioners and artisans based on a model that operates with notions like ‘carriers’, ‘receivers’ and ‘contact zone’. My chapter will present the European eastward dissemination of the maiolica wares via the migration of Anabaptist artisans in the sixteenth century. I will take one maiolica type, the Faenza whiteware (bianchi di Faenza), to illustrate how religious factors and migration played a significant role in the circulation of maiolica from Italy to the eastern parts of Central Europe. In the mid-sixteenth century, the production of the bianchi was specific to Faenza, a middle-sized ceramic centre in the province of Romagna. With the spread of the Reformation, Anabaptist and so-called ‘Lutheran’ ideas made their way into the town, and into the ceramics workshops. Important professional-organizational and social changes occurred exactly during this time inside the workshops: egalitarianism disappeared while hierarchy and professional differentiation took over. Workers belonging to the lower classes were more receptive to evangelical messages carried by itinerant preachers and missionaries, thus young workers readily received the message of the new teachings. The severe retaliations and expulsion of these ‘heretics’ from Faenza coincided with a period of unique religious toleration in the Margraviate of Moravia, land of the Bohemian Crown, where Italian exiles ended up through the migration channels established by religious migrants from the Tyrol, Carinthia and northern Italy. We do not have direct evidence of faentini in the Moravian Anabaptist settlements; therefore it would be difficult to establish a direct and linear transfer model of the technique that locates the transfer zone in Moravia. Nevertheless, archaeological and archival evidence indicate the presence of knowledge and skills related to the bianchi di Faenza in the faience production centres of Moravia. The first surviving Moravian whitewares that were made with patterns similar to the bianchi date in 1593, twenty-four years after the expulsion of the ‘heretics’ from Faenza. These vessels, known in the literature as Haban faience/Haban pottery/Habaner Keramik/ Haban tin-glaze earthenware,3 have the characteristics of the bianchi technique mixed with some typically German and Swiss stylistic elements. Looking at the circulation of maiolica makers of Faenza as well as the Anabaptist networks, a more probable diffusion model implies transfer zone(s) in northern Italy and in the Tyrol, where knowledge was carried by maiolica makers from Faenza and received by local potters familiar with German types of pottery, and who later also became carriers and took the technique to Moravia along the Anabaptist networks. The eastward movement of the whitewares presents an unusual model of dissemination through the religious migration of peasants, artisans and other types

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of skilled personnel. It is noteworthy mentioning that there was an important push factor that conditioned the immigration of potters from Faenza. Since the 1540s, the town had been the centre of an intense and extreme heretical activity, probably influenced by Anabaptism. It is believed that the unorthodox ideas first reached the town in 1534 and again in 1538 with the itinerant preacher Bernardino Ochino of Siena, who later died among the Anabaptist Brethren in Moravia (1567).4 The seeds of his preaching fell on fertile grounds: in 1547 and again in 1550 the Church arrested and imprisoned 155 suspected Lutherans. The sheer number of the prosecuted provides an almost complete picture of the vastness of the evangelical movement in a city of only 15,000 inhabitants. All social categories were represented among them: nine ecclesiastics, a tailor, a smith, painters and several ceramicists as well as three notaries and three physicians, along with names from the prominent families, many of whom were members of the government and city councils.5 As Faenza belonged to the Papal States, a ferocious repression followed with imprisonments, tortures and death sentences. The repression culminated in 1567– 69 and resulted in the inquisition and expulsion of circa 200 persons.6 Fleeing artisans could surely follow the migration channels previously established by fellow citizens, but a new channel opened up with the migration of persecuted Anabaptists from South Germany, Switzerland, and from the Tyrol towards the Margraviate of Moravia. From 1526 to 1622 Moravia stood as a ‘Promised Land’ for the Anabaptists; and this period coincides approximately with the first century of Habsburg rule over the lands of the Bohemian Crown (Bohemia, Moravia, Silesia and Lusatia). In 1526 the last king of Bohemia (and king of Hungary), Louis II, fell in a battle against the Turks, and his successor Archduke Ferdinand of Austria tried to make Moravia thoroughly Catholic. Nevertheless, this was an endeavour in which all Habsburgs failed up to 1620. The centralizing tendencies of the Habsburg politics were met with the critical loyalty of the Moravian lords, articulated so as to defend their liberties and privileges. So when Emperor Charles V’s brother Ferdinand became Bohemian King in the fall of 1526, the Moravian estates recognized him but required to confirm their traditional rights, including religious freedom. The local lords, some of them Protestants, practised such a degree of religious toleration that Moravia stood out as a unique area where the exiled religious radicals established their communities. Noteworthy among the tolerant lords were Leonhart von Liechtenstein, lord of Nikolsburg, where the very first Anabaptist settlement was established; Ulrich von Kaunitz, lord of Austerlitz; the Abbess of Maria-Saal at Auspitz; Johann von Liepniek (Lipna), lord of Kromau and Schakowitz; and Heinrich von Lomnitz, lord of Jamnitz. But the local pride in independence and the attempts at aggressive interference on the part of the government triggered permanent strains between the Catholic overlords and the predominantly Protestant estates. These tensions finally culminated in the battle at the White Mountain in 1620. The defeat of the Protestants was followed by drastic enforcement of the Counter-Reformation, and the non-Catholics confronted the alternatives of conformity or emigration. In 1622 all Anabaptists had to leave Moravia.7 They took the skills with them to new localities in the Hungarian Kingdom (today Slovakia and Northern Hungary) and Transylvania.

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The first religious migrants in south-eastern Moravia were Protestants fleeing persecution to this haven of refuge where confessional pluralism was a legal guarantee left over from the Hussite Wars (1419–1436). The ability of hosting a large number of religious migrants (Utraquists, Bohemian Brethren, Lutherans, Calvinist, Anti-Trinitarians and Anabaptists) was the strength of Moravian religious liberty, while the fragmentation of these groups remained its weakness: the Moravian estates paid little attention to Protestant organizational unity and remained dispersed into different faiths.8 According to contemporary sources, at least twenty Anabaptist sects could be distinguished in the area alone.9 The difficulties in the first decades of the Reformation decimated these sects; by the 1550s most Anabaptists in Moravia were affiliated with one of the following major groups: the Sabbatarians, the Austerlitz Brethren, the Hutterite Brethren and the Swiss Brethren.10 Following bitter internal strife among various Anabaptist groups, the Hutterites became dominant in the region and managed to survive while other sects (like the Sabbatharians, the Gabrielites, the Philippites or the Austerlitz Brethren) disappeared. The Hutterites questioned the civil authority and practised adult baptism, were persistently non-violent and practised the community of goods (where there was no individual ownership). They lived in Bruderhofs separated from the local population and their lives were guided by their own social and religious codes taken from the New Testament. These so-called ‘courts’ that the Anabaptists were permitted to start were in fact groups of buildings, consisting of their dwellings and workshops. Social and economic pressure in the immediate environment, as well as sporadic persecutions and two major campaigns by the imperial government in Vienna in 1535–1537, and again in 1547, starkly affected the course of the Anabaptist history by disrupting their settlements. During the second half of the sixteenth century most groups in Moravia dwindled away, but the Hutterite Brethren became the strongest and most dynamic sect in the region, and survived a series of forced migrations towards Eastern Europe, first to Royal Hungary, Upper Hungary and Transylvania in 1622, then into South Russia in 1767, and eventually to the United States and Canada, where Hutterite colonies have persisted since 1874.11 Based on the wide diversity of crafts – well documented through the numerous extant Hutterite craft ordinances12 – the Bruderhof developed an economic profile that posed a competitive threat to the traditional guilds in the region they settled.13 The essence of this semi-industrial mode of production was to produce everything within one roof. Since the ‘Golden Years’ (1565–1592) of the communities in the last third of the sixteenth century, Hutterite craftsmen concentrated on the production of luxury goods targeted especially for the aristocracy. They produced high-quality coaches and wagons, shoes, leather furniture, knives and tableware but were most famous for their white faience wares. In the following centuries the production of luxury faience items became one of the trademarks of these religious settlements, not only in Moravia but in the Hungarian Kingdom and in Transylvania as well. For the most part, they produced bespoke goods to the orders of their customers; nevertheless, their products were also present on the local fairs and supplied the castles of the lower nobility and the houses of the wealthy bourgeoisie.14 Two important strands of research precede my inquiry. The presence of Anabaptists in East Central Europe has attracted the attention of church historians

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ever since the late 1800s, who collected and published numerous surviving documents (chronicles, epistles, theological argumentations, hymnal books) written in the Hutterite communities.15 Much about the same time, art historians recognized the importance of the surviving material culture of the Hutterites and started the first Haban pottery collections. A revived interest in Haban ceramics in the 1960s has resulted in further studies enriched with archaeological findings.16 In the most recent studies17 the enigma of the technological travel between Faenza and Moravia has always been a central question and presented in different theories with hypothetical itineraries that led Italian artisans to Moravia.18 With this chapter I would like to draw attention to the importance of migratory networks that aided the transfer of knowledge.

THE ART OF THE BIANCHI: THE ITALIAN CONTEXT Maiolica is the conventional name for tin-glazed earthenware that originated in the Islamic world and diffused to Renaissance Italy through Spain, while the same technique used outside Italy is known as faience (faïence) and delftware. As Piccolpasso describes, the making of maiolica began with the digging of clay from river beds and its purification. Faenza was fortunate in both its clay rich soil and geographic location which served as a crossroads for the cultures of the Po Valley and the region of the artistically advanced cities of Tuscany. The clay was then shaped either on a foot-powered wheel or in moulds. Spouts, handles, or other decorative elements were applied to the still-damp clay using slip, clay thinned with water. The pieces were fired in new types of wood-fuelled kilns that could be heated to about 1,000 degrees centigrade. The Faenza clay, while a superior medium for modelling, had to be covered with a white background to amplify the decorations that made the wares so desirable. Thus, after cooling, the semiporous wares were dipped into a white glaze mixture (made of sand, wine lees, lead compounds and tin compounds) that, when fired in the kilns, would melt and adhere to the clay providing a smooth glossy surface. Painted decoration followed atop this glaze, using a reduced range of colours: copper green, manganese purple, and brown, cobalt blue, antimony yellow, and antimony-iron orange. Finer works were coated with a second clear glaze called coperta, which added sparkling finish that enhanced the colours beneath. The second firing then took place at a slightly reduced temperature. Two firings represented a technical innovation but increased the costs of labour and fuel, and the risk of wastage.19 The success of tin-glazed maiolica was continuous from the last quarter of the fourteenth century well into the seventeenth century, along with the desire to create hard, opaque white wares that resembled porcelain. Maiolica designers in Italy drew their inspiration from the Spanish lustre wares, from Asian textile decorations such as Persian palmettos and peacock-feather patterns, while vigorous curling leaves derived from Gothic sculpture and manuscript illuminations. Chinese porcelain and its imitation by the Iznik workshops in the Ottoman Empire had also significant impact on the industry in Italy. The biggest maiolica-producing centres were in Urbino, Pesaro, Montelupo, Deruta and – most important for our case – Faenza. Before the appearance and spread of tin glazing, Spanish lustre wares had been on

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the top of the European market, but during the course of the sixteenth century Italian potters created a range of innovative products which kicked the Spanish lustre ware off its leading position. One of these successful innovations was the bianchi technology that originated in Faenza. In 1540 Faentine masters came up with a new style. They found the perfect proportion of tin, earth, sand and lead, which fired at a very precise temperature produced a thick, richly opaque and pure glaze of a rare warm shine that enabled making unusual objects to emulate silver: the crespina (ribbed bowl) or the traforata (pierced fruit-bowls) first, and later more monumental pieces copied from metal works like basins, inkstands, obelisks, large vases etc. The glaze, called bianco, was made with expensive tin imported from England by Flemish merchants via Venice or Livorno, and from Saxony via Bolzano, since the metal was not common in Italy. Applied in several layers, the thick white glaze had a remarkable appearance and shine. The pigments applied atop the dried glaze were made from metallic oxides and represented a restrained palette: blue, yellow and orange. Unlike the previous styles of the maiolica, the decoration was uncomplicated on the whitewares: simple and small figures, putti, coats of arm, garlands of leaves and flowers, all characterized by a brief, light composition. They are just barely sketched, ‘abbreviated’ or compendiato in Italian, and thus the adoption of the term compendiario to describe this type of maiolica painting. What was the secret of their success? To use the words of Liverani, one of the ground-breaking scholars to study the white wares, the bianchi were a revolution and not only a style out of many, as it is the case of the fiorito, the alla porcellana or the berettino. True, the delicate recipe of the white glaze represented a technical breakthrough; but the trademark on its own would not have been enough to create a revolution. Coupled with unique diffusion in spatial, quantitative and temporal terms, the impact of the white ware produced in Faenza was remarkable.20 The first large service of 138 pieces was produced in 1540 by Francesco Mezzarisa (assisted by Pietro di Francesco Zambaldini, a craftsman who specialized in glazes and paints) in partnership with the merchant Pier Agostino Valladori. Long after the introduction of the whitewares, the Mezzarisa workshop still received large orders for the famous istoriato-style maiolica. Among the most important commissions was an order in 1546 for more than 7,000 articles for a Genoese merchant in Palermo. Mezzarisa continued the production of the istoriato until ca. 1550, when he discontinued his exuberant narrative designs in favour of the compendiario.21 The other famous ceramics workshop in Faenza, the Bettisi workshop, also known as the bottega of Don Pino, manufactured at least five whiteware table services and four credenza displays, a total of 600–700 pieces in fourteen years, for various noble families inside and outside Italy.22 Needless to say, the workshops in Faenza received numerous orders for large credenza displays from Italy and from abroad. In Italy, the biggest commissions came from the Gonzaga, Este, Medici, Farnese, Orsini, Aldrobandini, Pallavicini and Altieri families.23 Further prestigious bianchi services were ordered by Alberico Alberici in Bologna and Paolo Dandolo in Venice, as well as by Camillo Gonzaga, count of Novellara, the cardinal Guastavillani, and Cavalier Girolamo Michelozzi and his wife Caterina Alberti.24 Outside Italy, Bavarian, Swiss and Austrian noble

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families placed large orders with workshops in Faenza. Among the most prestigious tableware commissions were the spectacular and varied sets made in 1576 for Albrecht V, Duke of Bavaria, for his successor William V in 1590, and for the wedding of Archduke Ferdinand II of Austria with Anna Caterina Gonzaga in 1582.25 Later pieces, commissioned at the workshops in Faenza between 1619 and 1636, were decorated with the coat of arms of the Electorate of Saxony.26 With this remarkable spread of objects it is quite easy to understand how the celebrated bianchi di Faenza quickly came to symbolize a superior quality. The fortune of the bianchi put in motion a rapid technological progress that gave strength to the workshops most of all through the process of quick moulding. This production process led to an industrial innovation: from then on the workshops were able to please the exigencies of their customers who – beside the representational function of these vessels – required objects inspired by metallic prototypes. This market requirement was decisive until well into the seventeenth century, and determined the technological apparatus of the Faentine potters. The impact that these brilliantly painted wares had upon their contemporary culture may not be fully appreciated today in an era deluged with commodities and images. Humbler than the gold and silver vessels, white majolica was nonetheless a valued product in a luxury economy that was unprecedented since antiquity.27 Richard Goldthwaite believes that the Renaissance can be distinguished from previous periods by a great new demand for secular architecture, comprising not only civic monuments but also private residences. These structures were now gathered in urban centres rather than in the countryside, and one result of this new construction was that ‘furnishings of every kind, from pottery and beds to painting and frescoes, proliferated to fill up interior spaces’.28 This new need for objects not only redefined spending habits but also changed the way the upper classes claimed their place in society via a display of erudition, taste and splendour.29 The Faenza white wares fitted well into a widespread European fashion that characterized the triumph of the white over chromatic shades. Much about the same time, the production of the white opaque milk glass started in Venice, and in Limoges the traditional chromatic shades gave way to the grisaille technique.30 Many developments of luxury consumption played a role in making the white glaze so popular in Europe. Besides the current interest in luxury, this technical breakthrough combined most unexpectedly with variations in the general diet31 and with the general fashion. More elaborate meals required more specialized table settings, including dishes and drinking vessels. Many dozens of dishes were served during one meal and the frequent changing of plates, besides a new preoccupation for refined cooking and elegant serving, required large table services. Sixteenthcentury documents report of table services ranging from 150 to 600 separate items. Such a bountiful production of table wares – serving the middle as well as the upper class – was only possible with materials that were less expensive than silver or gold, commonly used for luxury plates. Clay was just that material: aside from tin, the substances making up majolica were cheap. The pigments applied atop the dried coating were made from metallic oxides: copper, manganese, cobalt and antimony. Of course, majolica was cheap especially when compared with the porcelain it supposed to imitate or with precious metals it replaced. Even a glamorous maiolica

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service was much cheaper than a credenza in precious metals: one silver-gilt salt cellar cost about twice as much as a 100-piece maiolica credenza.32

MAKERS OF THE BIANCHI: CIRCULATION OF THE ARTISANS Besides the wide diffusion of whiteware objects, the circulation of craftsmen was an important factor in the dissemination within Italy and to other parts of Europe. Typical examples of transfer in the early modern period were based on the relocation of knowledge by individuals, as craftsmen readily travelled to take their skills to new markets. It was the case of ceramicists as well. Alessandro Ardente of Faenza was working in Turin from 1572 to 1595, and produced maiolica that is scarcely distinguishable in style from Faenza wares. His active presence – supposedly – opened a migration channel from Faenza to Turin.33 Similarly, Francesco Mezzarisa’s sons, Giovanni and Antonio Mezzarisa, opened a pottery workshop in Venice.34 Another faentino, Vincenzo di Benedetto Gabellotto, was working in the same city in Bastiano dei Raspi’s shop; his father was Casparo the bochaler, active in the parish of San Barnaba in 1546.35 A recent two-volume study accompanying an exhibition held in 2010 on the Italian whitewares gives a comprehensive picture of the northward spread and production of the bianchi.36 The essays in the volumes reveal an intense diffusion of the technology in different places of north Italy where the use of the engobe (a liquid clay slip) and of the sgraffito technique had been dominant before the maiolica production was introduced by immigrant masters from Faenza. A considerable circulation of potters can be traced in the regions of Lombardy, Piedmont, Trentino and Veneto, of Faentine maiolica makers on the one hand, and on the other hand, of subsequent generations of local potters who learned the technique. For example, Tadea di Dus of Lodi, the daughter of Matteo Cavalari, ‘figulum faentino’ and married to a local potter called Antonio Dusi, received privileges in 1613 from the Duke of Savoy to produce maiolica: ‘di fabricar dove meglio le parerà maiorica et in quelli introdurre o sia rinnovare essa arte.’37 After ca. 1630, there was a considerable movement of maiolica makers of Lodi and Pavia hired in manufactures in Torino and Bassano.38 Maiolica craftsmen of the sixteenth century travelled not only from one Italian centre to another, but to Spain, France, the Low Countries, and Central Europe as well. To the north of the Alps, faïence/delftware was produced in Nevers, Lyon and Delft since the second half of the sixteenth century. Domenico Tardessir moved to Lyon, and Giulio Gambini to Nevers. As a high proportion of Nevers production in the first half of the seventeenth century was plain white, in the tradition of ‘Faenza white’, the term faïence became gradually established in French and spread on the continent.39 More to the north, maiolica makers from all around Italy marketed their skills in trading cities with significant Italian merchant communities: in Antwerp, in Bruges, in Amsterdam, and culminating in the great ceramic industry of Delft. From northern Europe, the industry was taken to England. Upon the privileges granted by Queen Elizabeth in 1570, descendants of Italian potters established industries in England, and produced the so-called ‘English delftware’.40

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A technique similar to the Faenza bianchi was put into practice in the Hutterite exile colonies in Moravia in the second part of the sixteenth century. The first surviving pieces from 1593 show a great mastery in finishing; thus they are believed to be produced by potters familiar with the technique, and exclude the imitation of original Faenza pieces already in the possession of Moravian aristocrats. They feature influences of both German faience and Italian whitewares. The rounded jugs with pewter on top, the beer mugs, the hexagonal flasks as well as the tendency to decorate the pieces with inscriptions, with dates, with names or initials and coat-ofarms of the nobles who ordered them, the use of gothic German letters in a coarse and heavy manner, and the combination of sharp colours are characteristics that link the pieces produced in Moravia to the Austro-German and Swiss influence. On the

FIGURE 1: Whiteware showing Austro-German and Swiss influence. Source: Private Collection, Réti-Kulcsár.

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other hand, the perforated dishes as well as the use of a perfect white tin glaze, the use of moulds instead of the wheel to produce perforated or undulated plates lead us in the direction of the Faentine heritage. All researchers agree that the pieces originating in Moravia (as well as those prepared in the Hungarian Kingdom and in Transylvania) were made locally in the Hutterite communities and show basic stylistic and technical analogies with the bianchi of Faenza.41 It is worth considering the kind of vessels that were most frequently produced in Moravia. The best known of all were dishes, particularly those shaped like a cardinal’s hat, with small, shallow bowls and very wide rims, known in Italy as tondini. Also strongly Italian in character were the small dishes for fruit or sweet meat of which there were two distinct types. First, the so-called crespina, was moulded in the shape of a shell, with a narrow bowl and curved edges. In the other type, the bowl was made to resemble basket-work and the rim was filigreed, displaying a high degree of technical virtuosity. The wide variety of drinking vessels (cups, jugs, mugs, pots and jars) are mostly rounded with short necks and wide mouths, and usually fitted with a pewter lid. There is also a typically German form, the melon-shaped ribbed jug which later became more elongated and slimmer. Anabaptist potters also produced apothecary’s albarello vessels and rectangular or hexagonal bottles for travelling medicine chests. Vessels specially made for Anabaptist physicians were the wash-basins with water containers, bleeding cups, shaving-bowls and jars to contain ointments. The Hutterie ceramists’ advanced technical skills made it possible to make ceramic blocks for floors and building materials. They produced hollow tiles, conical water pipes and paving tiles. Among the finest discoveries are the glazed-tile stoves.42 All the beautifully decorated vessels were either custom made for the local aristocracy or sold on local markets; the tableware made for their own use inside the Bruderhof was lead-glazed and unadorned. The extensive archaeological excavations by Heˇrman Landsfeld and Jiˇr í Pajer, as well as the grandeur of the specimens preserved in the castles, are evidence that ceramics was not a peripheral or marginal activity of the Hutterites in Moravia. The archaeological research has documented twelve Moravian production centres, and written sources refer to three others.43 The most important centre, first mentioned in the Great Chronicle in 1571, was in Wätzenobis (now Vacenovice), a village on the estate of the Zerotin family. The Bruderhof was plundered and burned down in 1605 by marauding troops, in 1619 by Austrian troops, in 1620 by Polish troops, and in 1621, after being rebuilt, raided again by imperial troops. Extensive finds revealed ceramic shreds and a high-capacity kiln, confirming the exceptional technical advancement that is evident from the inventive range and technological sophistication of perforated tazzas and ribbed vessels. From the Moravian period of the Eastern European Faience, the perforated vessels are the most representative, which clearly indicates the consumer preference of the time. Altogether nineteen different patterns have been identified and documented in this archaeological site, and this number outshines the Italian models, the prime inspiration.44 Second in size and production was the pottery centre in Tracht (now Strachotín), a market town where the Anabaptist presence is dated from 1551.45 This served as a training centre at the beginning of faience production, thus reaching the highest artistic level of all. The oldest faience centre, and third in rank, was in Teickowitz (now Tavíkovice),

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which kept the most conservative decorations.46 The biggest pottery-producing centres were Alexowitz (now Alexovice), Kostel (now Podivín), Pribitz (now Pˇr ibice) and Tracht with approximately 600 members. A further nine communities were middle-sized (with 300–400 members) and two with 200 members. The Haban faience is now dispersed in various collections, mainly in the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Austria, Hungary and Romania. Since no production marks are present on vessels, the hardest task is to define their exact provenance. For example, the National Hungarian Museum possesses a perforated Anabaptist tazza with the inscription of the date 1610, but the origin of the work has been unknown until the archaeologist Jiˇr í Pajer unearthed a mould in Vacenovice that must have been used to make the dish. Similarly, few objects survived in their original milieu. One rare exception is a set of eight tazzas from 1598 and fifteen dishes from 1610, which survived in the Lobkowicz family collection. Other preserved family collections are more fragmentary in character. They feature coats of arms and attached monograms

FIGURE 2: Perforated tazza, 1610. Whiteware in the manner of the Faenza bianchi. Source: Hungarian National Museum, Budapest.

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of the local nobility, often made for weddings.47 Written documentation comes from the inventories of many Czech, Moravian and Hungarian manors. This is how we know that in 1608, the Teickowitz workshop supplied pottery to the manorial pharmacy in Tˇr ebon ˇ (Wittingau) in Bohemia. We also know that Anabaptists found refuge on the lands of Baron Ferenc Nyári (Franz Niary von Prantsch) in Sabatisch (now Sobotište) and in Horné Orešany, on the domains of Peter Bakith in Holícˇ and Sassin, as well as on the Nádasdy estates where they worked in the service of their protectors.48 Haban faience differed from local pottery in design, in motif and in manufacture.49 Judging from the examples that have been preserved, it is likely that the white faience produced at the Moravian sites in the last quarter of the sixteenth century was Italian-German in style. Later, however, as the industry tended to spread, native influences as well as Ottoman stylistic elements and formal design began to make themselves felt. The decoration was also determined by the taste of the landlord, as long as it did not clash with the Hutterites’ strict, fundamentalist principles.50 They were not allowed to use production marks in order to curtail in-house competition, and it was forbidden to shape their vessels in the forms of books, boots or the like ‘enticing the users to even more drunkenness’.51 Only floral motifs were permitted by the strict regulations, thus Biblical themes, putti, war scenes, etc. were strictly forbidden; human figures, animals and buildings only appeared on Haban ceramics after the colonies were forcibly broken up ca. 1670 and Anabaptist potters became independent and converted to Catholicism. In some aspects, Haban pottery differed from the Italian bianchi as well. Above we have seen how the Italian morphological and stylistic means were applied in the workshops of Moravia. Archeometric measures revealed that the thickness of the glaze on whiteware shreds found in Faenza vary from 0.5 to 1 mm, unusually thick when compared to previously used maiolica glazes (0.4–0.5 mm).52 Using multiple layers of glaze to increase thickness (thus using less tin) was a new technique that revolutionized the production of the bianchi. Later Haban wares produced after 1645 at the Sárospatak castle in the Hungarian Kingdom reveal lots of similarities with the Italian maiolica, but also expose a higher tin content of the white glaze (16–20 weight per cent compared to the 8 weight per cent of the bianchi), which implies that glaze was applied in one layer, thus reducing thickness. In fact, their glaze is similar to the typical tin oxide contents of the glazes of the sculptural ceramics of the della Robbia workshop in Florence,53 which had strong ties with the maiolica workshops in Faenza. The deliberate use of different composition glaze in order to achieve the same result is a noteworthy aspect that could provide clues regarding the spread and the transfer process towards Central Europe. So far, we know little of the way Italian potters circulated north of the Alps. Unlike the dissemination to the west, the eastward trajectory of the faience technology is not so well documented, therefore researchers have made hypotheses based on the morphologic and stylistic concordances between the Moravian and Italian ceramics. In trying to explain this similarity, some researchers attempted to build a direct link between Faenza and Moravia. Béla Krisztinkovich (1887– 1969), a Hungarian authority on Anabaptist ceramics, believes that knowledge related to ceramics was brought to Moravia and to the Hungarian Kingdom by

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the first generation of Anabaptists (nuovi cristiani) from Faenza who fled the Inquisition.54 There are two problematic points in Krisztinkovich’s approach. On the one hand, Haban wares were not the first maiolica objects to reach Central Europe. Italian maiolica had been a highly esteemed commodity in Central Europe almost a century before the production of the Haban wares started. In 1486 the Ferrarese ambassador to the court of Matthias Corvinus, King of Hungary, wrote to Eleonora Duchess of Ferrara saying that if she wanted to make a gift to her sister Beatrice of Aragon, Queen of Hungary, she should send her some Faenza pottery. Not long afterwards a maiolica service was made for Queen Beatrice bearing the impaled royal arms. It was not, however, made in Faenza, but by potters from another booming maiolica centre, Pesaro.55 This was the first important royal order from Central Europe with which Pesaro assured its role among the principal maiolica-making centres of Italy. Italian masters established a workshop in Buda and produced table services and floor tiles for the aristocracy.56 On the other hand, the written sources record potters in the Hutterite communities but all of them have German names. There is no evidence of Faentine or Italian potters in the Hutterite settlements in Moravia, although we know of many Italian exiles who joined the Anabaptist settlements. Among others, Andrea Lorengo from Padua, the nobleman Gian Giorgio Patrizi of Cherso, the weaver and painter Marcantonio Varotta,57 Francesco della Sega of Rovigo who served as a pastor in one Anabaptist community and was sent to Italy as a missionary, and the itinerant preacher Bernardino Ochino who also preached in Faenza and died in Moravia. The Hutterite missionaries Antonio Rizzetto of Vicenza and Giulio Gherlandi of Spaziano, near Treviso, were sent back on mission to northern Italy.58 Although this theory of direct transfer cannot be buttressed, it directs our attention towards the importance of the missionary work of Italian exiles in Moravia. Pietro Marsilli, a specialist in the bianchi di Faenza, has propagated a different transfer theory. Based on the surviving whiteware pieces in Trentino, his theory sustained that the transfer was indirect, meaning that first generation ceramicists from Faenza followed commercial and professional channels to the South Tyrol where they settled and established workshops in the region, more specifically in Malles/Mals in the Val Venosta. Accordingly, their craft must have been carried further by individual German-speaking Anabaptist potters, religious refugees on their way to Moravia. This model would explain the German influence on the Haban wares and the troubling time gap of almost thirty years between the heretics’ expulsion from Faenza and the presence of the technique in Moravia. With a somewhat different placement of the contact zone, Imre Katona also claimed that the carriers of the technology were Swiss, Tyrolean, Styrian and Bavarian Anabaptist potters, already in the possession of the secret of the bianchi when arriving in Moravia. Neither Marsilli nor Katona have found direct evidence to support their theses; nevertheless they are equally useful because they highlight the significance of the Anabaptist religious migration on the one hand, and the circulation of the craftsmen on the other hand. The circulation of maiolica makers in the northern regions of Italy is especially interesting because it compares well with the circulation of Moravian Hutterite

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missionaries and with the migration of Anabaptists from northern Italy to Moravia. To combine these two important aspects drawn from different theories, the following part of this chapter will concentrate on the missionary work of the Moravian Anabaptists and the organization of migration of the Anabaptists from the northern parts of Italy and from the Tyrol.

NETWORKS OF RELIGIOUS MIGRATION Although their communities were situated in Moravia, the Hutterites systematically sent out missionaries and were active in a larger area than any other religious group in the sixteenth century. The 1520s saw a lively spread of Anabaptism throughout the Austrian territories of the Habsburg Empire, especially in Tyrol and Carinthia. In Tyrol in particular, Anabaptism was by far the strongest trend, and remained so until far into the second half of the sixteenth century, in spite of a government that ruthlessly fought all ‘heretics’ wherever they could be ferreted out. In the other German lands of the Empire, Anabaptists further roused powerful movements in Swabia and Hesse, and Hutterites sent missionaries into the Rhine valley, Bavaria and Switzerland. Only Franconia and Thuringia remained largely untouched by their influence.59 The influx of religious refugees to Moravia resulted in a rather heterogeneous collective of radical believers, some of them Anabaptists, some anti-Trinitarian, and some evangelical. After several internal crises, the Hutterite movement acquired a stable character, which meant that it became ideologically and structurally integrated. This kind of homogeneity formed a strong identity, and a big number of incoming refugees could be accommodated. The Hutterites’ appeal was to live in religious and social exile, since joining a community in Moravia involved extreme risks, abandonment of property and a dramatic change of identity. By retaining their original German language, their original garments, and living in a strictly closed social organization, the Anabaptist colonies were cultural and social enclaves amidst the local population. Strict religious principles drove these groups to give up their material effects and to conceive life as earthly exile, constantly awaiting the final union with God. Since Hutterites refused to swear oaths, they excluded themselves from the possibility of gaining municipal citizenship rights. Nor did they become regular subjects of the local lords on whose domains they lived. Instead, they entered into a contractual relationship with the aristocracy, according to which they were freed from feudal labour obligations.60 They contributed to the income of their protectors with taxes, with precisely determined quantities of luxury goods and other types of services. According to their agreements with the protecting patrons in Moravia, the Hutterites had to refrain from proselytizing among the local population, thus they had to engage in missionary works that targeted faraway lands. This became a standard principle, as their mission activities mobilized to assemble the elect in the last days awaiting Christ’s imminent return. At the same time, the organized migration proved to be a survival strategy: in order to sustain these dynamics and a steady number of members, there was need for organized emigration. In the Tyrol, the Anabaptists’ influence on both sides of the Alps turned the Brenner Pass into a constant channel of migration and mutual stimulus between the

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small clandestine communities.61 Persecution of the Anabaptists could be extremely bloody. One contemporary source claimed that prior to 1530 no less than one thousand had been executed, and that stakes were burning all along the Inn Valley in the Tyrol.62 Because migration was dangerous, it was carried out in small groups called Völker. These small groups travelled the Tyrolean river routes on the Inn and the Danube, and then proceeded on foot through the forests to Moravia. Once in Moravia, the groups were integrated into the existing colonies, some prosperous, others almost extinct, and yet others completely new. From this point on, the identity of the refugees was formed by the integrating force of religion. They left Tyrol as Anabaptists (whatever that vague term meant) and in Moravia became Hutterites with very well defined internal rules and moral conduct. Massive migratory reinforcements proved indispensable for the long-term survival of the Hutterites. Those Anabaptist groups in the Bohemian Lands who had remained integrated into their urban or rural social context, or who pursued a course of de-radicalization and social reintegration, were far less exposed to governmental persecution than were the Anabaptists living in the Bruderhofs. This was evident during the two big waves of fierce persecution in 1535 and 1548.63 As a consequence of the revolt of the Anabaptists in Münster (1534–1535), the Bohemian King Ferdinand of Austria demanded the expulsion of the Hutterian Brethren with such persistence that the Moravian nobles did not dare to refuse his orders. Anabaptists used a survival strategy that proved fruitful, dividing the congregation into small groups of six to eight persons to seek employment and shelter. Bigger groups retreated into the forests and hid underground in caves. Within a decade they found it possible to return to their abandoned houses and even establish more communities. By the beginning of the second persecution in 1548 the Brethren had twenty-six colonies in Moravia. For a short time they found refuge in Hungary, particularly on the estates of Baron Ferenc Nyári (Franz Niary von Prantsch) in Sabatisch and in Horné Orešany, on the estates of Peter Bakith in Holic and Sassin, as well as on the Nádasdy estates.64 Within a short time the Brethren established in Hungary twelve congregations. After they were forced to depart, a chronicler related, there were many ‘who united with the Church, became pious, amended their lives and took upon themselves the cross’.65 The end of the second major wave of persecution brought about the ‘Golden Years’ for the Hutterites, a period that allowed the establishment of thriving new settlements. The (re)population of these new settlements required a new technique in organizing migration. In order to be able to fulfil the proselytizing task laid upon them by Jesus’s Great Commission, the congregation semi-annually (usually in the spring and fall) chose from the preachers a number of Brethren to perform a widespread missionary service in all directions, to preach the Gospel in accordance with the commandment of Christ, and to lead the converts to the ‘Promised Land’ of Moravia. Each missionary had his field assigned to him; thus Brethren went out to all parts of Germany (Bavaria, Würtemberg, Hesse, Thuringia, Rhineland, also Silesia and Prussia), to Switzerland, to Poland, to the Tyrol and also to Italy. About four-fifths of the missionaries who were sent out were martyred, but most of their converts managed to arrive in Moravia. The numbers leaving sometimes

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were so large or resources taken along so great that the civil authorities took steps to stop the movement, both by counter-persuasion and by penalties, including confiscation of property and imprisonment. But the missionaries could always be found where magisterial mandates threatened the lives of the Anabaptists and invited the harried families to settle in Moravia, promising toleration and the security of a large group fellowship. Each brother had epistles and tracts in his knapsack beside a small notebook in which they took down notes during their mission trips, such as reports on prospective emigrants.66 Following the missionary work of Francesco della Sega, who engaged on several trips between 1559 and 1562, almost all inhabitants of Cinto, a little borgo situated on the road between Pordenone and Portogruaro in northern Italy, converted and migrated to Pausram (now Pouzdˇrany) in Moravia.67 Among the Italian Anabaptists who joined the Hutterite communities in Moravia in the mid-sixteenth century and were sent back to missions, the following were outstanding: Francesco della Sega or Franciscus von der Sach (from Rovigo), Giulio Gherlandi (from Treviso, called Julius Klampferer or Trevisano), Antonio Rizzetto (from Vicenza, called Antonius Wälsch meaning Italian), and Gian Giorgio Patrizi (from Cherso). When arrested and imprisoned by the Venetian Santo Uffizio in 1561, the missionary Gherlandi, originally a tinsmith and lantern maker, had been sent from Pausram to northern Italy, and he carried a long list of more than forty places and contact persons to be visited during his travel.68 During his many missions Gherlandi was imprisoned several times, last in October 1561, and was drowned a year later. With a careful mapping of these places, one can see that Gherlandi’s mission covered a large part of northern Italy. A concentration of missionary sites is observable around Venice and Padua. Another, albeit smaller, intense missionary site is visible in Emilia and the Romagna, around Bologna and Ferrara, while a third group can be discerned close to the border with Switzerland. Because of the risky nature of moving big numbers of refugees, the Anabaptist missionaries also had to think of safe routes, and used some sort of channels to take the refugees from the origin to the destination. Accordingly, the missionary sites had to correspond with the different migration channels and perhaps act as pooling locations for those wishing to migrate towards Moravia. One such channel led eastward from Venice: large numbers of Venetians and Friulans headed to Moravia via Trieste after Pietro Manelfi, a former Catholic priest who became Anabaptist and returned to the Catholic Church again, had named fellow Anabaptists in his depositions.69 In December 1551 orders for the arrest of the persons named by Manelfi were sent to the political authorities at Padua, Vicenza, Treviso and Asolo, and arrests and recantations followed. Many persons were forced to hide or flee the country; some went as far as Thessalonica, while some found refuge in Moravia with the Hutterites.70 Another migration route ran through the Tyrol. The chronicles of the Hutterite Brethren mention three valleys with extensive Anabaptist movements: the Puster Valley, the Adige Valley and the Inn Valley. These valleys served as natural channels to take the migrants through the mountains either to Innsbruck or to Hall and down the Inn river to Passau and further down on the Danube to Krems. Since migration itself is not unambiguously linear and unidirectional, it is highly probable that those

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expelled from Faenza were accommodated in the Italian Anabaptist communities in the north. The so-called chain migration, typical for the Hutterite strategies, involved sets of related individuals or households who moved from one place to another through a set of social arrangements in which people along the way and at destination provided aid, information and encouragement to the newcomers. Once the direct link between Faenza and Moravia has been dismissed, it is more logical to consider alternative theories to explain the transfer. Migration to the new settlements and the networks maintained by the Hutterite missionaries were braided in intricate ways. Networks are essential sources of social organization and resource mobilization and direct our attention towards a broad context of migration: to kinship groups, communities and economic activities in both countries of origin and settlement, and in between. If we see migration as a network-based process, we are better able to emphasize its embedded quality in a series of political, ethnic, familial and communal relationships and environments.71 The Hutterite case is an outstanding example for understanding migration as not only the rational and economic outcome of individual agency but as an interlaced implication of a broader range of social, cultural, religious and symbolic issues. The elaborate Anabaptist networks in central and northern Italy were developed in territories that also boasted ceramic centres where knowledge related to the Faenza bianchi was put into practice. The territories between Venice and Torino and stretching up to the Alps were intensely penetrated by Anabaptism, and religious migration took place throughout the second half of the sixteenth century. It is most probable that we have to shift our attention to these regions when looking for the transfer zone(s). This is a working hypothesis; further research needs to be done in this respect. One important aspect has been highlighted, however, namely the noneconomic factors that play a significant role in the circulation of objects, of knowledge and of craftsmen in the sixteenth century.

NOTES 1. Nathan Rosenberg, ‘Economic Development and the Transfer of Technology: Some Historical Perspectives’, Technology and Culture, 11 (1970), pp. 550–75; Liliane Hilaire-Pérez and Catherine Verna, ‘Dissemination of Technical Knowledge in the Middle Ages and the Early Modern Era. New Approaches and Methodological Issues’, Technology and Culture, 47 (2006), pp. 536–65. 2. Lissa Roberts, ‘Situating Science in Global History. Local Exchanges and Networks of Circulation’, Itinerario, 33 (2009), pp. 9–30. 3. This class of pottery should in fact be called ‘Hutterite’ or ‘Anabaptist’, but the term ‘Haban’ is well accepted in the ceramics art literature in all countries and all languages. See Eugene J. Horvath and Maria Krisztinkovich, A History of Haban Ceramics. A Private View (Vancouver, 2005), pp. 4–6. 4. Francesco Lanzoni, La Controriforma nella città e diocesi di Faenza (Faenza, 1925). 5. Salvatore Caponetto, The Protestant Reformation in Sixteenth-century Italy (Kirksville, MO: Thomas Jefferson University Press, 1999), p. 246.

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6. Pietro Marsilli, ‘Da Faenza in Moravia: ceramiche e ceramisti fra storia dell’arte e storia della riforma popolare’, Atti. XVIII Convegno Internazionale della Ceramica (1985), p. 11. 7. Martin Rothkegel, ‘Anabaptism in Moravia and Silesia’ in J. D. Roth and J. M. Stayer (eds), A Companion to Anabaptism and Spiritualism, 1521–1700 (Leiden: Brill, 2007), pp. 163–215. 8. Winfried Eberhard, ‘Reformation and Counterreformation in East Central Europe’ in Handbook of European History 1400–1600, vol. 2 (Leiden: Brill, 1995), pp. 551–84. 9. Claus-Peter Clasen, Anabaptism. A Social History, 1525–1618 (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 1972), p. 32. 10. Rothkegel, ‘Anabaptism in Moravia’, p. 167. 11. Astrid von Schlachta, From the Tyrol to North America (Kitchener, Ontario: Pandora Press, 2008). 12. Robert Friedmann, ‘Gemeindeordnungen (Hutterite Brethren)’, in Global Anabaptist Mennonite Encyclopedia Online. Available at: http://www.gameo.org/encyclopedia/ contents/G4535.html [accessed 16 April 2013]. 13. Rothkegel, ‘Anabaptism in Moravia’, p. 203. 14. Béla Krisztinkovich, Haban Pottery (Budapest: Corvina Press, 1962), pp. 9–10. 15. Josef Beck, Die Geschichtsbücher der Wiedertäufer in Oesterreich-Ungarn, betreffend deren Schicksale in der Schweiz, . . . und Süd-Russland in der Zeit von 1526 bis 1785 (Vienna: Druck von Adolf Holzhausen, 1883); Rudolf Wolkan, Die Lieder der Wiedertäufer (Berlin, 1903); A. J. F. Ziegelschmid, Die älteste Chronik der Hutterischen Brüder (Philadelphia: Carl Schurz Memorial Foundation, 1943). 16. Krisztinkovich, Haban Pottery; Imre Katona, A habán kerámia Magyarországon (Budapest, 1974); Heˇr man Landsfeld, ‘Thirty Years of Excavation’, Mennonite Life, 4 (October 1964), pp. 167–73. 17. Jiˇr í Pajer, Studie o novokˇr tˇencích (Strážnice: Nakladatelství Etnos, 2006); Jiˇr í Pajer, Anabaptist Faience from Moravia 1593–1620 (Strážnice: Etnos Publishing, 2011); Marsilli, ‘Da Faenza in Moravia’; Anna Ridovics, ‘A Magyar Nemzeti Múzeum habán kerámiái a 17–18. századból’, Folia Historica, 23/1 (2002), pp. 67–87. 18. Marsilli, ‘Da Faenza in Moravia’, p. 20. 19. Hugo McK. Blake, ‘Medieval Pottery: Technical Innovation or Economic Change?’ in H. Blake, T. W. Potter and D. B. Whitehouse (eds), Papers in Italian Archaeology I: The Lancaster Seminar, BAR Supplementary Series 41 (1978), pp. 435–73. 20. Pietro Marsilli, ‘Bianchi mitteleuropei’ in Carmen Ravanelli Guidotti (ed.), Faenzafaïence. ‘Bianchi’ di Faenza (Ferrara, 1996), pp. 51–62. 21. Gordon Campbell (ed.), The Grove Encyclopedia of Decorative Arts, Volume 2 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), p. 102. 22. Pietro Marsilli, ‘Ceramiche e ceramisti fra Italia, Austria e Germania alla metà del XVI secolo’ in B. Roeck, K. Bergdolt and A. J. Martin (eds), Venedig un Oberdeutschland in der Renaissance. Beziehungen zwischen Kunst und Wirtschaft (Sigmaringen: Jan Thorbecke Verlag, 1993), pp. 183–96.

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23. Ravanelli Guidotti, Faenza-faïence, p. 42. 24. Carmen Ravanelli Guidotti, Thesaurus di opere della tradizione di Faenza (Faenza: Scientifics, 1998), p. 420; Marsilli, ‘Ceramiche e ceramisti’, p. 186. 25. Timothy Wilson, ‘Le maioliche’, in Franco Franceschi, Richard A. Goldthwaite and Reinhold Mueller (eds), Il Rinascimento italiano e l’Europa. Volume Quarto. Commercio e cultura mercantile (Costabissara, Vicenza: Fondazione Cassamarca, 2007), pp. 227–45; Ravanelli Guidotti, Faenza-faïence, p. 42; Marsilli, ‘Ceramiche e ceramisti’, pp. 184–9. 26. Marsilli, ‘Ceramiche e ceramisti’, pp. 188–9. 27. Wendy M. Watson, Italian Renaissance Ceramics. The Howard I. and Janet H. Stein Collection and the Philadelphia Museum of Art (Philadelphia: Philadelphia Museum of Art, 2001). 28. Richard A. Goldthwaite, ‘The Empire of Things: Consumer Demand in Renaissance Italy’ in Frances W. Kent and Patrick Simons (eds), Patronage, Art, and Society in Renaissance Italy (Canberra, 1987), pp. 153–75; Richard A. Goldthwaite, ‘The Economic and Social World of Italian Renaissance Maiolica’, Renaissance Quarterly, 42 (1989), pp. 1–32. 29. Catherine Hess (ed.), The Arts of Fire: Islamic Influences on Glass and Ceramics of the Italian Renaissance (Los Angeles: The J. Paul Getty Museum, 2004), p. 11. 30. Pietro Marsilli, ‘I «bianchi» in Germania e in Mitteleuropa’, in Vincenzo de Pompeis (ed.), La maiolica italiana di stile compendiario. I bianchi, vol. 2 (Turin, London, Venice, New York: Umberto Allemandi & C., 2010), pp. 23–8. 31. Hess, The Arts of Fire, pp. 23–7. 32. Wilson, ‘Le maioliche’, p. 25. 33. Ravanelli Guidotti, Faenza-faïence, p. 44. 34. Campbell, The Grove Encyclopedia of Decorative Arts, p. 102. 35. Francesca Saccardo, ‘Venezia e il Veneto’, in Vincenzo de Pompeis (ed.), La maiolica italiana di stile compendiario, vol. 2, pp. 21–5. 36. Vincenzo de Pompeis (ed.), La maiolica italiana di stile compendiario, vol. 1. 37. Raffaella Ausenda, ‘I bianchi in Piemonte’, in Vincenzo de Pompeis (ed.), La maiolica italiana di stile compendiario, vol. 2, p. 9. 38. Sergio Nepoti, ‘I “bianchi” di Pavia e le conoscenze su altre manifatture lombarde’, in Vincenzo de Pompeis (ed.), La maiolica italiana di stile compendiario, vol. 2, pp. 11–15. 39. Wilson, ‘Le maioliche’, p. 14. 40. Wilson, ‘Le maioliche’, p. 13. 41. Marsilli, ‘Da Faenza in Moravia’, p. 17. 42. Diána Radványi and László Réti, A habánok kerámiamu ˝vészete (Budapest: Novella, 2011), p. 259. 43. Pajer, Studie o novokˇr tˇencích, pp. 135–46.

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44. Pajer, Anabaptist Faience from Moravia, pp. 3–4. 45. The Chronicle of the Hutterian Brethren vol. I, translated and published by the Hutterian Brethren (Rifton, NY: Plough Publishing House, 1987), p. 363. 46. Pajer, Anabaptist Faience from Moravia, p. 4. 47. Pajer, Anabaptist Faience from Moravia, p. 4. 48. Anna Ridovics, ‘A habán kerámia a 17. században’, in Árpád Mikó and Mária Vero ˝ (eds), Mátyás király öröksége. Késo ˝ reneszánsz mu ˝vészet Magyarországon (16–17. század), vol. 2 (Budapest, 2008), p. 88. 49. John A. Hostetler, Hutterite Society (Baltimore and London: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1974), pp. 44–53. 50. Horvath and Krisztinkovich, A History of Haban Ceramics, pp. 6–7. 51. Maria H. Krisztinkovich, ‘Wiedertäufer und Arianer im Karpatenraum’, UngarnJahrbuch, 3 (1971), pp. 50–68. 52. Amato et al., ‘La rivoluzione tecnica dei “bianchi” di Faenza’, in Vincenzo de Pompeis (ed.), La maiolica italiana di stile compendiario, vol. 1, pp. 33–8. 53. Bajnóczi et al., ‘A sárospataki ágyúönto ˝ mu ˝helyben feltárt 17. századi habán kerámialeletek mázának mikroszerkezete és összetétele’, Archeológiai Mu ˝hely, 1 (2011), pp. 1–16. 54. Krisztinkovich, Haban Pottery, p. 7. 55. Wilson, ‘Le maioliche’. 56. Gabriella Balla (ed.), Beatrix hozománya. Az itáliai majolikamu ˝vészet és Mátyás király udvara (Budapest: Iparmmu ˝vészeti Múzeum, 2008). 57. Caccamo, Domenico, Eretici italiani in Moravia, Polonia, Transilvania (Chicago: The Newberry Library, 1970), pp. 194–210. 58. Archivio di Stato di Venezia, Santo Ufficio, busta 18, fols. 2–3. 59. Clasen, Anabaptism, pp. 35–6. 60. Frantisek Hruby, Die Wiedertäufer in Mähren (Leipzig: Verlag M. Heinsius, 1935), pp. 1–20. 61. Massimo Firpo, Riforma protestante ed eresie nell’Italia del Cinquecento (Rome: Laterza, 2009), pp. 9–25. 62. Clasen, Anabaptism, pp. 224–32. 63. Rothkegel, ‘Anabaptism in Moravia’, p. 198. 64. Ridovics, ‘A Magyar Nemzeti Múzeum habán kerámiái’, p. 67. 65. Beck, Die Geschichtsbücher, pp. 181–6. 66. Astrid von Schlachta, ‘ “Searching through the Nations”: Tasks and Problems of Sixteenth-Century Hutterian Mission’, The Mennonite Quarterly Review, 74 (2000), p. 43. 67. Firpo, Riforma protestante ed eresie, pp. 151–2. 68. Archivio di Stato di Venezia, Santo Ufficio, busta 18, fols. 2–3.

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69. Aldo Stella, Anabattismo e antitrinitarismo in Italia nel XVI secolo (Padua: Liviana, 1969), p. 55. 70. Henry A. DeWind, ‘Manelfi, Pietro (ca. 1519–after 1552)’, in Global Anabaptist Mennonite Encyclopedia Online. Available at: http://www.gameo.org/encyclopedia/ contents/M356.html [accessed 23 June 2013]. 71. S. J. Gold, ‘Migrant Networks: a Summary and Critique of Relational Approaches to International Migration’, in M. Romero and E. Margolis (eds), The Blackwell Companion to Social Inequalities (Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing, 2005), pp. 257–77.

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Modernity: Three Case Studies

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A Bold Leap into Electric Light: The Creation of the Società Italiana Edison, 1880–1886 ANNA GUAGNINI University of Bologna

Abstract Only few months after the end of the Exposition Internationale d’Électricité held in Paris in 1881, where Thomas Edison displayed his system of electric lighting, a syndicate was created in Milan with a view to setting up an Italian Edison company. What the promoters envisioned was not only the sale of isolated installations and electrical equipment but also the creation of a commercial power station, similar to the plant that Edison was building in New York. By the end of 1883 the power station, set up in the centre of Milan, was in operation, and in 1884 the Società Generale Italiana di Elettricità Sistema Edison was incorporated. The aim of this chapter is to examine the debate on the opportunity of adopting electric lighting which took place in the early 1880s, the negotiations with the Edison headquarters in New York and Paris, the actors involved and their diverse agendas. The chapter offers also a reassessment of the role played by Giuseppe Colombo, professor of mechanical engineering of the local Istituto Tecnico Superiore, in launching the company and steering its course in the first decisive years. It was under his direction that by 1886 the Società Edison turned to alternating current and became a pioneer in the new long distance high tension technology.

INTRODUCTION From the very outset of his electric lighting enterprise, marked by the incorporation in 1878 of the Edison Electric Light Company, Thomas Edison began to lay the 155

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foundations for the extension of his business to the other side of the Atlantic. Already in 1880 the Edison Electric Light Co. of Europe had been created in order to manage his European patents and sell lighting equipment.1 In the aftermath of the success he obtained at the Exposition Internationale d’Électricité held in Paris in 1881, and of the demonstrations held in London at the Crystal Palace Exhibition at the beginning of 1882, the plan took a more definite form. The solution that was adopted was the creation in February 1882 of the Paris-based Compagnie Continentale Edison, as the headquarters from which the continental European market was to be developed. The French company was flanked by a factory for the production of electrical equipment to be sold in the main European countries, and a company for the sale of isolated plants. In the same year the Edison Electric Light Company Ltd was established in London, with the specific aim of exploiting the British market. When the company was incorporated, plans for the construction of the Holborn Street Station were already in progress; soon after permissions for the establishment of other plants were submitted. Neither of the two companies that were promoted directly by the Edison parent company succeeded in their mission. By the end of 1883 the English company, caught in the collapse of the speculative bubble triggered by early developments of the electric industry, had to merge with its main competitor, the Swan Electric Company, thus becoming the Edison & Swan United Electric Co., Ltd. As a result of this operation the power station that was set up by Edison in London, with a view to encouraging the opening of other installations in Britain, was closed down and none of the plants for which permission was requested were built.2 The Parisian CCE too, despite the strenuous effort put up by Edison, went through a process of gradual decline. Not only the original project of manufacturing electrical equipment in France was abandoned, but also the plan of making it the headquarters from which the development of Edison’s system and the sale of his equipment was to be directed and controlled proved ineffective.3 By contrast, the company that was set up in Germany developed into an extraordinarily successful enterprise. Launched as a result of the initiative of a German entrepreneur, Emil Rathenau, and with the decisive support of an economically and politically powerful group of Berlin banking houses, the Deutsche Edison Gesellschaft (later to become in 1887 the Allgemeine Elektrizitäts Gesellschaft) was originally created as a subsidiary of the Parisian company. However it soon departed from the parent company and embarked upon an ambitious plan of its own.4 Before the creation of the German company a similar enterprise was launched in Italy; once again, it did not originate from the business strategy of the Compagnie Continentale Edison, but from the initiative of local financiers. Set up in Milan, the Società Italiana di Elettricità Sistema Edison was by the eve of the First World War the largest Italian electrical utility, maintaining that position until the nationalization of the sector in 1963 and re-entering the sector of energy production with the denomination Edison S.p.A. in 1991. In the same way as the Deutsche Edison Gesellschaft, the Italian company embarked upon a bold entrepreneurial project which did not follow the direction envisaged by the Parisian Edison company for its subsidiaries. Much has been written on its history, especially on its developments into the twentieth century and on its role in the complex vicissitudes

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of the Italian industrial and financial economy.5 The scope and the time-span of this study are more limited; what I want to examine here are the circumstances in which this company was launched and its very first period of activity. In particular, the aim is to extend the observation to the various actors involved in the transfer of the new technology to Italy, and to reconsider the role of the person who is unanimously regarded as the protagonist of that process, Giuseppe Colombo, the man who ‘brought’ Edison’s system to Italy. The documents in the Archive at the Thomas Edison National Historical Park in West Orange, New Jersey, and available in digital format, allow us to complement that side of the story with further evidence.6 The result is a more complex picture, in which the agendas, motivations and expectations of different actors interacted, often in conflicting ways.

FABBRI AND THE FLORENTINE PLAN The presence around Edison of a variety of business partners and commercial intermediaries, all of them determined to take part in the exploitation of his inventions, has already been discussed. As Paul Israel and Thomas Hughes point out, already in the late 1870s Edison sought the assistance of agents in the exploitation of his telephone and phonograph patents in Europe. An agreement was signed in 1877 with the Hungarian-born entrepreneur Theodore Puskas, for the sale of Edison’s patents in Europe (Russia, Spain, Austria, Italy, France and Belgium); one year later Edison secured the support of Joshua Franklin Bailey, who had been Elisha Gray’s agent. The two established a collaboration in a joined-up effort to promote Edison’s interest in Europe, signing most of their correspondence with Edison and the Edison companies as Puskas & Bailey.7 When the American inventor entered the field of electric lighting, the awareness that what lay ahead was a long period of extensive and costly research induced him to enter into an agreement with powerful financial partners. The incorporation of the Edison Electric Light Company (EELC) in 1878 was the result of the agreement with such partners, most notably Drexel, Morgan & Co., a leading New York-based investment bank.8 Their contribution was all the more vital because Edison intended to expand his market for lighting apparatus at international level. What Edison needed was not only the financial backing of well established bankers but also their negotiating skills and experience with regard to international agreements and the management of patents in foreign countries. Drexel Morgan & Co., with offices in London and Paris, were ideally equipped to provide that support.9 Clearly the intention of the bank was to obtain the exclusive control of the international business. However Edison was unwilling to abandon the collaboration with his agents in Europe, not only because he did not want to repeal previous arrangements but also because he wanted to exploit the network of European contacts they had already established with regard to the management of the telephone and the phonograph patents. Therefore he retained their assistance, as a result of which they continued to play an important role in the development of the European business.10 In fact, Puskas and Bailey represented Edison’s interests during the

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negotiation for the creation of the French company, of which Bailey became the executive officer.11 A decisive role in paving the way to the agreement with Drexel, Morgan & Co. was played by Egisto Paolo Fabbri. Not only was he deeply involved in the development of the British Edison Electric Light Company Ltd., he also had a special interest in another of the European countries. Born in Florence in 1828, Fabbri left Italy in 1854 when the Leghorn-based shipping company for which he worked failed. Having settled in New York with his brother, Ernesto, he was first employed as a bookkeeper and then as a partner of a shipping company; by 1860 he established his own shipping firm, Fabbri & Chauncey, with thriving business interests in South America. In 1875 he left the firm in the hands of his brother and joined Drexel Morgan & Co., of which he became one of the most prominent and influential partners.12 Although he lived in the US and had his commercial interests deeply rooted there, Fabbri kept close links with his country of origin, especially with Florence, his home town. It was because of this connection that, during the negotiations leading to the incorporation of the EELC, he asked Edison to make his brother’s firm, Fabbri & Chauncey, the agents for Italy (and South America). Edison, who was obviously keen to satisfy the request of his powerful ally, agreed, explaining to Puskas that, in so far as Italy was concerned, Fabbri & Chauncey ‘are thought to be better agents, Mr. Fabbri being an Italian of the best connection and standing in that country’.13 The connection that Fabbri had in mind as a local agent was Alessandro Garbi. A retired Florentine military officer, Garbi had been himself in the United States in the 1850s as the secretary of Leonetto Cipriani, a Tuscan merchant and politician who played an important role in the process of unification of Italy.14 The problem of the agency for Italy re-emerged when in 1882 the Compagnie Continentale Edison was set up in Paris. Established in the aftermath of the extraordinary success obtained by Edison’s display at the Exposition Internationale d’Électricité, organized in 1881 with the vital financial support of Morgan, Drexel & Co., the company was in charge of promoting Edison’s system in France and in the French colonies, in Belgium, Denmark, Germany, Austria and Hungary, Russia, Spain (but not the Spanish colonies) and Italy.15 This means that the creation of an Italian agency, or agencies, was to be controlled by the French company. By then Fabbri’s main concern and occupation was the creation of the London-based Edison Electric Light Co. and the promotion of Edison’s system in Britain.16 However he had not lost interest in the transfer of the new technology to his own country of origin.

ELECTRIC LIGHTING IN MILAN Admittedly, as a market for electric lighting Italy did not look very promising, lagging as it did behind the economically more advanced Northern European countries. Nevertheless there, as elsewhere, electric lighting enjoyed great popularity, and demonstrations were arranged for the benefit of enthralled crowds of observers. One of the first of these demonstrations took place in Milan in February 1877, when an arc-lamp was installed on top of a tower in the central Piazza del Duomo.17

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Another display of the new and improved Jablochkoff arc-lamps was organized in 1879, again under the venerable gothic spires of the Duomo.18 When the news about incandescent lamps began to circulate, they were promptly reported and discussed. The comments, as might be expected, were cautious; however they did not stifle the curiosity of the public, all the more so with regard to the experiments carried out by the charismatic inventor who was known even in Italy as the Wizard of Menlo Park. In fact, as early as February 1880 Edison was approached by a prominent firm of New York lawyers, Burrill, Davidson & Burrill, who informed him that ‘a company of Italian gentlemen of the highest position’ were considering the possibility of introducing his lamps and his system in Italy.19 The contact yielded no result, and the identity of the gentlemen remains unknown. However it is a telling indicator of the interest in Edison’s work that, when plans began to be laid for a national exhibition to be held in Milan in 1881, the organizing committee tried to secure Edison’s participation. The general secretary of the committee, Amabile Terruggia, an engineer and member of the Town Council, asked the editor of the New York-based journal Eco d’Italia to contact the inventor; as it happened, it was Fabbri who provided the letter of introduction. A representative of the journal was invited to visit the Menlo Park laboratory, but although he was received with courtesy, Edison made it clear that his participation was out of the question due to his many pressing engagements.20 The Esposizione Nazionale, which was held in the second half of 1881, was the occasion for another display of arc lighting, not only in the Piazza del Duomo but also on the site of the exhibition. Electricity was also celebrated in the very temple of Italian opera, the Teatro alla Scala, when in March 1881 the curtains were raised on the Ballo Excelsion. Described as a sequence of moving tableaus, the piece, which combined dance, music and mime, was a grand celebration of technological progress; one of the tableaus was specifically devoted to the origins and development of applied electricity, from Volta to telegraphy. The performance culminated in a ballet performed by dancers decorated with small light bulbs switching on and off. The success was extraordinary.21

PAVING THE WAY: JAMES SHEPHERD The man in charge of arranging the first demonstration of Edison’s new system of lighting in Milan was a British engineer, James Shepherd.22 It is possible that he was among the visitors at the Parisian Exposition and that he made contacts with the American inventor’s representatives on that occasion. What is certain is that by the Autumn of 1881 Shepherd had settled in Milan, where he was admitted to the local Collegio degli Ingegneri e degli Architetti.23 In October 1881 he was asked by the Camera di Commercio of Milan and by the Comitato della Società di Incoraggiamento per le Arti e Mestieri to provide the equipment for a series of lectures on electric lighting.24 A few months later, in January 1882, Shepherd was granted permission by the Milanese municipal authorities to arrange a demonstration of electric lighting in the foyer of La Scala, the world-famous opera house.25

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The installation was promptly arranged with materials and expertise provided by the ‘task-force’ sent by Edison to Paris in order to organize the display of his equipment and machinery at the Exposition Internationale d’Électricité. Batchelor, Edison’s right-hand man who was at the head of that group of technicians, and was later to become the technical director of the CCE, sent to Milan one of his assistants, Edward G. Acheson, to supervise the installation.26 The demonstration, which began in February 1882, was successful. Favourable comments were published in the local press, which unanimously referred to Shepherd as Edison’s agent.27 Acheson too mentioned Shepherd in his correspondence with Edison, praising his initiative and pointing out not only that he ‘is greatly liked and stands strong in Italy’ but also that he had ‘a very wide circle of influential friends, . . . [who] reach out pretty much all over Italy’.28 At the end of March incandescent lights were installed in the fashionable Caffé Biffi in the Galleria, the elegant glass-vaulted arcade connecting Piazza del Duomo and Piazza della Scala; once again the comments in the press were enthusiastic.29

THE FORMATION OF THE MILANESE SYNDICATE These demonstrations organized in Milan and other towns were taking place in a competitive market, with other electrical manufacturers – Swan, Crompton and especially Siemens – eagerly trying to gain a foothold in Italy. But it is clear that there was also competition between the agents engaged in the promotion of Edison’s interests and the exploitation of his portfolio of Italian patents, which by 1881 consisted of twenty-seven lighting-related items.30 Garbi, on behalf of Fabbri, was already at work ‘having an eye’ to Edison’s interests; this meant carrying out research about patent matters and possibly identifying potential customers. Although the profile of the customers was not specified, what he had in mind was most probably the sale of isolated plants for private and public use.31 However, during the negotiations for the setting up of the CCE Fabbri realized that other attempts were being made to transfer Edison’s technology to Italy – and he did not take it well. To make things worse, the proposition he had submitted to that end was received rather coldly by ‘Friend Edison’ because, as the latter pointed out, it did not offer the guarantees required for the fulfilment of the contract. The American inventor did not conceal that he was rather in favour of another proposal communicated by Puskas and Bailey.32 It is not clear whether this proposal was connected to the attempt made by Terruggia to invite Edison to Milan. What is very likely is that a delegation of observers from Lombardy visited the electrical exhibition in Paris which opened in August 1881. In Italy, as elsewhere, several manufacturers, especially the owners of large textile mills in the northern regions, were manifesting an interest in the possibility of replacing gas lighting with electricity. The exhibition offered an excellent opportunity of examining in person, not only through the eyes of commentators, the development of that technology and especially of the new incandescent lamps. The articles published in the Milanese journals and newspapers in the late Summer and Autumn of 1881 testify to the interest generated by the Parisian event, and by its electric lighting section in particular. Although at that

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stage the formation of a company was not mentioned, it is possible that before the end of 1881 such a plan was already being discussed. Whether Shepherd was involved in that process, and in what role, also remains to be ascertained. What is certain is that the success of the demonstration he held at La Scala and in the Galleria must have been hailed with great satisfaction by the promoters of the syndicate for the development of Edison’s system in Italy. On his return to Paris at the end of February 1882, having completed his task, Acheson described enthusiastically in his report to Edison the ‘exciting prospect’ he heard about during his stay in Milan, namely the creation of an Italian company entirely financed by Italian banking houses.33 The news inevitably reached Florence, and back-fired. Bailey in particular, who was in charge of the negotiation, was aware that the spectacular and much-publicized demonstration in Milan had upset Garbi, who clearly considered the promoters of that initiative as competitors. At that point Bailey tried to ‘remove the difficulty’ via personal contacts, keeping in mind that the powerful Fabbri was as interested as ever in the creation of a Florentine agency.34 So in April Bailey set out for Italy in order to deal with the problem. First he went to Florence where he met Garbi and proposed to make him the representative for Italy of the CCE.35 However a few days later he visited Milan, where he received further information about the local project. At this point not only did he become convinced that this proposal was more promising, but also that the economic and financial conditions of the country made it impossible to form more than one company, whereupon he changed his mind. As he wrote to Edison, some of the main Italian banks were involved and they were prepared to raise no less than ItL 3 million, that is the same amount raised for the incorporation of the CCE (the French Francs and the Italian Lire had the same value). Moreover their intention was not simply to open an agency for the sale of lighting equipment and isolated plants, but to set up a central station.36 On the basis of that information a draft version of the contract was discussed for the creation of a syndicate, as a preliminary stage in the formation of an Italian company. On Bailey’s return to Paris in mid-April, Puskas explained to Sherbourne Eaton, the president of the EELC, the details of the draft contract and the royalty plan. He confirmed that three major banks operating in Milan, the Milanese branch of the Banca Generale di Roma, the Banca di Milano and the Credito Lombardo, were among the subscribers of the preliminary contract. The only person mentioned in the correspondence was Felice Buzzi, (the head cashier of another bank, the Banca Nazionale); among the shareholders of the banks above mentioned were some of the most prominent Lombard manufacturers: for example Cristoforo Benigno Crespi, the owner of one of the technologically most advanced cotton textile factories (Banca di Milano), his brother Giuseppe, himself a cotton manufacturer (Credito Lombardo), who were later to be members of the board of directors of the company. It is also likely that other industrialists whose names appear in the list of the original shareholders (see Appendix) were also among the promoters of the syndicate. As for Garbi, and in an attempt to pre-empt Fabbri’s reaction, they suggested the possibility of making him the responsibility of a local agency, working in accord with the ‘central’ company; and apparently an understanding was reached on that basis with both Garbi and the Milanese committee.37

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Initially the Board of directors of the CCE, definitely sceptical about the chances of success of an Italian company, considered it ‘not a desirable business’. As they pointed out, the country was unlikely to offer a sufficiently profitable market for electric lighting. Even Puskas, who was actively promoting the creation of an Italian agency, had to admit that: the Italian cities, with few and partial exceptions, are neither commercial nor industrial; they are aggregations of villages with little wealth and quite generally with limited credit. The use of gas is not at all general. Milan with 330,000 inhabitants has only 30,000 gas lights of which 4,000 are public.38 However, having ascertained that the banks involved offered adequate guarantees, Bailey and Puskas persuaded not only Edison but also the French members of the CCE that the proposition was a valid one. They also succeeded in modifying the conditions outlined in the provisional contract (the share of the capital due to the CCE for the licensces and the assistance in launching the company, and the royalties on the sale of equipment) in such a way as to make them more acceptable to the Italian financiers.39 By then, the intention of the syndicate had been made explicit. The sale of isolated plants and lighting equipment, which would have been Garbi’s main commercial target, was part of their business plan; but its cornerstone was the creation, right in the centre of Milan, of a central station for the production and distribution of electricity to both public and private customers – not just a model station, but a commercial one. It was to be a direct challenge to the French company Union des Gaz, which had held the monopoly for the production and distribution of lighting gas in Milan since 1845. This was the kind of project that was bound to be particularly appealing to Edison, whose main concern in that period was the construction and sale of central stations of the kind he was experimenting with in New York and London. In mid-April the creation of a syndicate for the development of Edison’s system was announced in the local newspapers.40 Only a few days after it was reported that a group of Italian manufacturers and bankers was to pay a visit to Holborn Station in London. It is easy to imagine that they were the same people with whom Bailey had signed the preliminary agreement.41

GIUSEPPE COLOMBO, ACADEMIC AND BUSINESSMAN It was at this stage that Giuseppe Colombo made his entry. Professor of mechanical engineering at the Istituto Tecnico Superiore of Milan (ITS), Colombo was a wellknown public figure and a leading authority on industrial technology, not only within the local community but also at national level. He was therefore the obvious choice for the lecture on electric lighting that was organized on occasion of the temporary illumination of the La Scala. The event, which took place in March, was held in the hall of the theatre and was complemented by a demonstration carried out by Shepherd.42 Colombo, the son of a goldsmith, was born in Milan in 1836. He studied mathematics at the University of Pavia where he attended the courses preparing for admission to the engineering profession; on his graduation in 1857 he began

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teaching at the professional school established by Società d’Incoraggiamento d’Arti e Mestieri in Milan and in a local secondary level technical school.43 When in 1862 the Istituto Tecnico Superiore was created, he was appointed to the chair of mechanical engineering.44 Colombo was from the start one of the leading figures in the development of the Istituto and of its industrial section in particular; he was also a stalwart ally of its Director, the mathematician Francesco Brioschi, in his determination to give to the school a distinctive technical orientation while at the same time retaining and indeed enhancing its academic status. Their mission was the formation of a new generation of engineering graduates who were to take the lead in the industrial modernization of the country, and above all of Lombardy. Their deeds matched their words, for Colombo, along with Brioschi, actively encouraged and supported the entrepreneurial endeavours of their former students.45 Several of their ITS graduates became successful entrepreneurs: among them, Alberto Riva (agricultural machinery, then turbines), Bartolomeo Cabella (production of scientific instruments, later electrical machinery), Pio Borghi (textile manufacture), and Angelo Salmoiraghi (scientific instruments). The creation of the company G.B. Pirelli & C. is the best-known example of the role they played: not only the decision of Giovanni Battista Pirelli (one of the first graduates of the ITS) to enter the new field of the rubber industry was strongly influenced by his former teachers, but also Colombo and Brioschi were decisive in securing the capital that allowed him to launch his industrial initiative.46 When in 1897 Brioschi retired, Colombo, who had been from the mid-1870s his closest associate, was appointed in his place and remained at the helm of the school until his own retirement in 1911. Colombo was also actively engaged in politics, both at local and national level, believing as he did that the modernization of the country and the transition to a more advanced industrial economy depended essentially on its institutions. He was Municipal Councillor from 1881 to 1889, then, a member of the Parliament for the Right party from 1886 and of the Senate in 1900. He was also, albeit briefly, Minister of Finance in 1891 and Minister of Treasury in 1896.47 Colombo’s reputation was not based only on his academic credentials. There is no doubt that teaching was his foremost occupation and preoccupation; however it is also clear that from the very outset of his teaching career he began to carry out a considerable amount of external work, acting not only as a consulting engineer but also as a contractor. It was by no means uncommon for a professor of an institution of higher technical education to be engaged in such work, usually in the form of consulting; however in his case this practice was remarkably extensive. In 1872, when he was already a professor of industrial mechanics and of construction of machines at the ITS, he joined in the consulting firm established by Eugenio Cantoni, a well established Milanese textile (cotton) manufacturer, and Robert R. MacKenzie, a Scottish engineer.48 The firm, Cantoni, Colombo, MacKenzie and Co., was the representative for Italy of several important mechanical engineering firms, mainly but not exclusively British.49 Their business was not only to act as commercial agents, but also as contractors, undertaking the construction or the reorganization of entire industrial plants, especially in the North of Italy. Some of the plants were described in the journal

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published by the firm, L’Industriale, whose aim was to offer information about recent progress in mechanical engineering while at the same time being a shopwindow for their commercial and consulting practice.50 The extent to which the Milanese professor was involved in external work emerges clearly in his correspondence with his former students. When, in 1871, the young graduate Giovanni Battista Pirelli was engaged in his ‘grand tour’ of continental industry that preceded and laid the foundation of his entrepreneurial career, Colombo informed him that he was about to set up a ‘fairly large-scale practice’, accepting ‘commissions for complete projects and buying the best machinery available, in Italy or abroad’.51 In 1876 the company was disbanded.52 Colombo, however, did not abandon his extra-academic practice: in fact, by the end of that year he had persuaded another of his former students, Paolo Almici, to create a new consulting firm, Almici & C. Colombo, who subscribed half of the capital of the firm (amounting to a total of ItL 150,000) remained a partner until 1901 when the collaboration came to an end following Almici’s death.53 The consulting practice must have been very profitable;54 and yet financial gain was not his paramount motivation. After all, Colombo’s academic position was not only well established but also remunerative: in 1875 his professorial salary amounted to ItL 6,000 per year, further raised in 1881 to ItL 6,500, above the top level of the academic scale.55 For him, as well as for the teachers of technical disciplines in institutions of higher education, in Italy as elsewhere, consultancy and engineering practice were also essential ways of keeping abreast with the development of the technologies they taught. The importance of such an activity was openly and proudly acknowledged by Colombo himself when, reflecting on his career as a teacher, he commented: Gentlemen, I followed several routes during my life; I started with teaching, but I also practiced the engineering profession, believing – as I do – that in an engineering school the professor of an applied science must be able to apply it himself, and that he wields all the more authority among his students if he is able to illustrate his teaching with the results of his personal experience.56 In 1882, when he gave the lecture on electricity in the hall of La Scala, he was about to be involved in a new and even more demanding form of external activity; and it was one for which his previous consulting and contracting practice provided the necessary experience.

COLOMBO AND ELECTRICITY A staunch advocate of modernization, and actively engaged in the promotion of industrialization, Colombo’s approach to technical innovation was nevertheless judicious. He believed that in Italy progress with regard to industrial technologies could be achieved most effectively by encouraging the importation and adaptation of proven technologies, especially in such sectors as mechanical engineering in which Italy was most conspicuously lagging behind the pace-makers. ‘Wisdom – he argued – consists in choosing a rational but simple engine, and to hold on to that model, studying only ways of improving its manufacture.’57

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FIGURE 1: Giuseppe Colombo (1836–1921).

Caution also characterized his initial approach to the industrial applications of electricity. Although the teaching of that discipline fell into the fold of his colleague, Rinaldo Ferrini, professor of technical physics at the ITS, Colombo manifested a keen interest in this new technology. Already in a lecture that he had given in 1877 he had described its recent developments, comparing the relative merits and costs of

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gas and electric lighting. His view was that, in consideration of the high cost of gas in Lombardy, arc lighting was already convenient for large factories where steam engines and other sources of motive power were in use; as for public spaces where such sources had to be especially set up, the advantage over gas was still very limited.58 Three years later, in a conference held at the Società di Incoraggiamento di Arti e Mestieri, he discussed the improvement made in the design and production of arc lamps. The new Jablochkoff lamps, he argued, had achieved a most satisfactory level, both in terms of quality and cost/efficiency; however the problems of the subdivision and of the use of electricity in small spaces were not yet adequately solved. The Milanese professor offered to his audience a brief survey of Edison’s experiments with incandescent lamps, but ingenious as they undoubtedly were, and a testimony to his exceptional inventive drive, he was convinced that his system was still far from practical.59 Colombo’s interest in electricity remained high. He regularly attended the most important national and international exhibitions, and was often invited to attend and report on them – especially with regard to his own sector, namely mechanical engineering. This said, it is not clear whether Colombo paid a visit to Paris on the occasion of the Exposition Internationale of 1881; of course he may have visited the exhibition privately or as a member of a local delegation – although it would have been unusual for him to do so without publishing some comments on his return.60 For certain he was not a member of the official Italian delegation appointed by the Italian Ministry of Agriculture, Industry and Commerce to report on the progress of applied electricity. The head of the delegation was Galileo Ferraris, professor of technical physics at the Museo Industriale of Turin. Ferraris graduated in engineering in 1869 at the Scuola di Applicazione per Ingegneri of Turin, where he began his academic career as assistant to the chair of technical physics. In 1877 he was appointed professor of the same discipline and two years later his chair was transferred to the Museo Industriale of Turin where a degree course of industrial engineering was organized; he held that position until his death in 1897.61 From April to May 1879 Ferraris, who had already carried out research on applied electricity and telephony, held a series of five lectures on electric lighting at the Museo Industriale.62 The following year he was one of the members of the committee that was appointed by the Municipality of Turin to examine a request for permission to arrange an arc-lighting demonstration (using Jablochkoff lamps), with a view to establishing a permanent installation in the centre of the town. Interestingly, the opinion expressed by the committee was negative because the system was regarded as neither economically convenient nor technically satisfactory.63 In his capacity as the most qualified Italian expert in the new field, Ferraris was invited to report on the Parisian exhibition to the Ministry. His task was accomplished in January 1882, when he delivered a typically thorough and detailed analysis of all branches of applied electricity on display at the exhibition.64 He was particularly struck by the demonstration of Edison’s new dynamo, the ‘Jumbo’ model, which took place in mid-October 1881, only one month before the end of the event. The engine, as he pointed out, was not totally novel and there were several aspects requiring further improvements. Nevertheless, by increasing considerably

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the dimension and power of the generators Edison had made an important step forward towards the design and production of the kind of dynamos that could in the future open the way to the development of other industrial applications of electricity, not limited to lighting. What he envisaged was the use of electricity as a ‘carrier’ for transporting and distributing motive power over long distances. In Italy coal, most of which had to be imported, was exceedingly expensive, so high hopes were pinned on the possibility of exploiting the water power of the rivers descending from the Alps. For that reason the experiments that were already being carried out, most notably by Marcel Deprez in France, were examined with considerable interest by Ferraris and other Italian observers. From that exhibition – he argued – I drew the conviction that some of the most grandiose applications of electricity, such as those that can be carried out with regard to lighting, the transportation and distribution of mechanical energy, and some metallurgical works, can become in the near future actually practical and economical.65 As for the present, Ferraris’ optimism was tempered by caution even with regard to electric lighting. Ferraris was ready to admit that it was one of the most important applications of electricity and deservedly had pride of place at the Parisian exhibition. However in his report he argued that gas lighting was still preferable from an economic point of view. He acknowledged that arc lighting had already proved itself a technically valid alternative for use in large buildings and open spaces; by contrast, the use of incandescent lighting could only be justified on the basis of special requirements, particularly for the lighting of private dwellings and generally of small spaces. In any case he believed that electricity could compete with gas only if and when public lighting systems were established at municipal level, fed by large and powerful generators.66 More specifically Ferraris remained unconvinced about the quality of Edison’s incandescent lamps: he argued that their performance, in terms of horse power required for the same lighting effect, was inferior to that of his main competitors, both Swan and Lane-Fox.67

COMITATO PER LE APPLICAZIONI DELL’ELETTRICITÀ SISTEMA EDISON That being the judgement of Italy’s foremost expert of electrical technology, the decision to proceed with the creation of a syndicate, with a view not just to becoming intermediaries in the sale of equipment but also to establishing a central power station, is striking. It must be kept in mind that both the technological and the commercial validity of the system were as yet unproven. Pearl Street Station in New York was still a building site; moreover it was conceived from the start as a large-scale experimental trial, as a shop-window of Edison’s business enterprise.68 The Holborn Station set up by the British Edison company in London was officially opened in April 1882; but that as well was conceived not as a permanent commercial plant but rather as a large-scale demonstration whose aim was to raise the interest of financiers and industrialists in the City and to attract potential customers.69

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It is plausible that the proponents of the Milanese project intended to exploit the benefits of an early entry in a new and promising commercial sector, without awaiting further improvements of the technology on which it was based. Certainly some of the manufacturers whose names appear in the list of the original shareholders, most notably the Crespi brothers, Girolamo Silvestri and Guglielmo Miani (mechanical engineering), and Luigi Erba (pharmaceuticals) were staunch advocates of technological innovation – although it remains to be ascertained what role they played in the launching of the syndicate. To what extent the promoters of this initiative were aware of the technical risk they were taking is not clear; in any case, their preoccupation must have been considerably relieved by the lecture that Colombo gave in March at La Scala. The opinion he expressed on that occasion was definitely more optimistic than in his previous public statements on electric lighting. Having demonstrated the ease with which the incandescent lamps could be switched on and off, the lack of danger in handling and using them and other improvements, he concluded that the system was technically and commercially workable.70 Moreover, and most importantly, he observed that although a solution was not yet available, considerable progress was being made with the experiments on long distance transmission of electricity. Already in his previous lectures he had discussed the possibility of using the hydraulic resources of the northern Italian regions not only to produce electricity for lighting but also as a way of making available and distributing motive power for the benefit of the industrial and commercial activities of the urban areas. In a prophetic tone he declared: A day will perhaps come when the power of water falling from our Alps will be driven to the plane and distributed to houses like drinking water or gas. What I am saying is not lyric or utopian. . . . Perhaps the plan is not ripe enough to become successful now, but I have no doubt that sooner or later it will be possible to do it. It is just a matter of time.71 On this point, and with an eye to the future, Colombo was totally in agreement with Ferraris. However he disagreed with his Turinese colleague with regard to the present, and more precisely on the possibility that the electricity produced by enginedriven dynamos could compete with gas as a source of lighting. In fact, his lecture provided scientific support (buttressed by his academic reputation) to the entrepreneurial initiative promoted by the Milanese financiers. But was he informed about their project? Or was he indeed its mastermind, as all historical accounts of the origin the Italian Edison company indicate? With regard to the commercial prospects of the system, Colombo argued: [a]ll depends on the formation of companies for the distribution of light to private houses offering sufficiently advantageous conditions so as to meet the challenge of gas lighting, because it is clear that it would not be convenient for anybody to arrange a separate plant with a dynamo electric machine for the lighting of a flat, or even an entire house.72 However the comment that followed would have been odd had it been coming from someone who was already involved in the project:

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This said – he asked his audience – how is it that we do not see already entrepreneurial companies that, having installed in suitable parts of the town dynamo electric machines and having laid underground wires, undertake the distribution of light to private dwellings at a fair price? My answer is that it is necessary to leave time to time.73 In reality, far from leaving time to time, by then the negotiation with the Edison Company was already taking place. In July 1882 the Comitato per le Applicazioni dell’Elettricità Sistema Edison was officially set up; the aim of the syndicate was to pave the way for the creation of an Italian Edison company. It was at that point that Colombo’s name was first mentioned as one of the underwriters of the provisional contract. The document was signed by the representatives of four banks, namely Banca Generale, Banca di Milano, Credito Lombardo (the three banks mentioned in Bailey’s correspondence), the Banca di Credito Italiano (being the Milanese operative branch of the Società Generale del Credito Mobiliare, one of the main Italian banks at national level) and by four individuals: Pacifico Cavalieri, Achille Villa (both private bankers), Felice Buzzi (Head cashier of the Banca Nazionale) and Colombo.74 By then Garbi’s name had disappeared from the correspondence between Bailey and Puskas, and the parent companies. As for Shepherd, in the Summer of 1882 he was still involved in setting up isolated plants in Northern Italy, but then his name ceased to be mentioned in the correspondence between Edison and his assistants.75

NEGOTIATING WITH EDISON Although he was not the man who ‘brought’ Edison to Milan, Colombo’s role within the Comitato was by no means limited to that of a ‘scientific guarantor’, in the same way as distinguished academics were often invited to join the board of electricity companies. Admittedly he was not an expert in electrical technology, but he had considerable experience in setting up and organizing industrial plants, and in dealing with foreign companies. That was the vital contribution that he was expected to offer in the launching of this new pioneering enterprise, and what led to his appointment as executive director. As soon as the Comitato was established, Colombo started his new task in earnest. The site of the power station was an abandoned theatre in Via Santa Radegonda, a narrow street very close to the Piazza del Duomo, the Teatro alla Scala and the Galleria. In July he began the preliminary work: surveying the building in preparation for its internal reorganization, obtaining permits for laying the underground conductors and assembling a team of workers. Acheson, who after setting up the experimental plant at La Scala returned to Paris, was sent back to Milan to assist him.76 Then Colombo set off with Bailey aboard the SS Arizona, on the way to Edison’s headquarters in New York. On his arrival in mid-August, he began collaborating with Edison’s technicians in the preparation of the plans for the installation. The correspondence indicates that the orders for the materials started immediately to be issued according to the specifications he received from them. Everything was to be imported from the United States, not only the dynamos, the

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lamps, cables, wires and all the necessary equipment produced by the various companies of the Edison group, but also the steam engines and the boilers.77 His days in New York were busy with meetings with members of Edison’s technical staff, visits to the installation and the manufacturing shops of the Edison companies, and dealing with suppliers. Although he was operating in what was for him an unusual business environment, his correspondence indicates clearly his familiarity with that sort of negotiations. As a result of the agreement between the syndicate and the CCE, the machinery and apparatus for the construction of the central station was to be paid to the Edison companies at the same price paid by the Parisian company.78 However his task was also to arrange the purchase of the components (most notably the steam engines and the boilers) produced by the same manufacturers that supplied them to Edison; and he did so in a very business-like way, and very effectively, obtaining the same conditions offered to Edison.79 Another problem soon emerged and was tackled with determination. His firsthand experience of the work being carried out at the Pearl Street Station convinced him that in order to set up the Milanese station it was necessary to secure the assistance of a competent technical expert. Acheson, was undoubtedly capable of dealing with isolated plants, but what was needed now was someone who could superintend the creation of a large-scale power station. It took less than no time for Colombo to realize that the ideal man for the job was John W. Lieb, one of the engineers in charge of the construction of the Pearl Street Station.80 Already in September 1882 Colombo made it clear that he regarded it as ‘absolutely necessary to have Mr. Lieb’.81 The request that Lieb should come as a supervisor of the installation was reiterated when Colombo was back in Milan.82 Edison was by no means enthusiastic at the prospect of one of his most competent and trusted technicians leaving New York. In the end the request was accepted, and in November Lieb was allowed to depart for Milan, though Edison explicitly stated that it was a temporary concession. ‘I only lend Mr. Lieb – he declared – and if he should be required for other services after he has got through at Milan, my permission must be obtained.’83 Having thus completed his mission in the US, Colombo left New York on 16 September 1882 only a few days after the official opening of the Pearl Street Station. At the beginning of October Colombo, on his way to Milan, was in London to examine the developments of the Holborn Station.84

THE PROBLEM OF TECHNOLOGICAL DEPENDENCE When the contract with the Italian syndicate was signed, Edison commented that it was a leap into the dark.85 As a matter of fact, the subscribers of the syndicate were taking an even bolder leap into his lighting system. Both parties pinned their hopes of success, especially with regard to the central station, on the contracting and organizational expertise of the man who was in charge of the transfer process from New York to Milan. Once he became acquainted with Colombo and his practical, business-like approach, Edison began to feel more confident; he went so far as to tell him, as a compliment, that ‘he must have mistaken his nationality, that he could not possibly be an Italian and he thought that if he [Colombo] looked up his ancestry it would prove that he was a Down East Yankee’. For that reason, according to his

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secretary, Insull, Edison ‘had great hopes of the Italian station. . . . it cannot fail to come out all right if Colombo gives his personal attention to it’.86 As for Colombo and his associates, their own hopes rested on Edison himself. They embarked upon a large-scale experiment, one that was inevitably fraught with technical difficulties. Colombo in particular was well aware that he was dealing with the importation of a daringly new technology, but he trusted the American inventor’s capacity to solve the problems that inevitably lay ahead. On his departure from New York he considered it as an agreement that Edison was to take care that ‘nothing of what he thinks necessary for the success of the station will be omitted, and that he will make to the present order whatever variation or addition he may consider useful’.87 In fact, they relied on the advice and the assistance of the American headquarters not only for the immediate success of the plant but also for its future developments and expansion. Although their contractual link was with the Parisian CCE, they assumed that the agreement entitled them to benefit from any further improvement that was accomplished by Edison and adopted in his American installation. This was not what Edison perceived as his own role vis-à-vis the European companies that bore his name. Having created commercial enterprises for the production of the components of electrical plants, he was in the business of selling those components and making a profit. The agreements with the Italian company, he complained, did not include unlimited access to the products of his endeavours as an inventor.88 Colombo, for his part, did not yield: the request for information about the progress that was being made in New York was a constant feature of his messages – sometimes expressed in a rather peremptory tone: As Mr. Clarke [i.e., Charles Clarke, one of the mechanical engineers in charge of designing Pearl Street Station] promised me, I want a full account of the progress of the Pearl Street Station since my departure; whether you work now with more than one dynamo, and what has been the practical result of the coupling of the governors. If this is as good as your telegram sent to me in Paris induced me to believe, I beg Mr. Clarke to send me a sketch and a description of it without delay [underlined by Colombo]. For the future I should be very grateful if you will send me detailed reports of any improvement and modification in your system or in the Pearl Street Station.89 The case of the steam engines is exemplary of such a conundrum. Already in January 1882 Edison began having problems with the performance of the Porter & Allen engines; not only their speed regulation was unsatisfactory but when attempts were made to connect two or more engines they chased each other, thus generating threatening vibrations that were all the more dangerous because they were directly coupled to the dynamos. A temporary solution was found by mechanically connecting the governors of the engines. However the problem was not solved until a new kind of engine, produced by the firm Armington & Sims, became available. It was found that by coupling the new engines with the Porter & Allen ones the performance of the latter was stabilized.90 However, by then the orders for Porter & Allen engines for the Milanese stations had already been placed. When the information reached Milan, Colombo tried to obtain the replacement of the engines

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that had already been delivered, on the ground that if they were deemed to be unsuitable for the New York plant, they could not be good for the Milanese station either. After all Edison himself told Colombo that the new engines were ‘vastly superior’.91 The nature of the problem was clearly spelled out by Bailey, who pointed out to Edison that the original order was made by Colombo on the basis of his indications, and on the basis of trust. The decision not to share with the Italian customers the change in the arrangement of the engines was bound to affect Colombo personally in the eyes of the Milanese syndicate, thereby leaving ‘a very nasty responsibility on Colombo who wholly on his confidence and enthusiasm for you went ahead and made these orders and purely as a matter of confidence’.92 Edison reacted bitterly to the protestation: What I sent was the very best engine in the market at the time. Because I happened later on to get a better engine – one more suited to our requirements and more economical in working – it is no reason why I should be called upon to make the change and to bear the expense of doing so. If I went to admit such a claim you might call on me to take back all old machines in case I should at some future time invent a dynamo of a far more economical and reliable character than that now used.93 He repeated the complaint in a sharp letter to Bailey, in which he stated once again that he could not be expected to pay the cost of updating the plants he sold once they had been installed: The Italian Company must not expect to get everything to run perfectly in a new business without any changes or extra expense. I am spending money right along and your companies get the benefit of this . . . of money and also of my time. And I get no compensation for it and I think the least they can do is to bear the expense of taking advantage of such improvements as I may make.94 However the members of the Milanese syndicate stood firm by their position; so in the end the two parties accepted a compromise, namely to replace only two of the Porter Allen with the new Armington & Sims and to adopt the same arrangement experimented in New York.95 What must have convinced Edison, in the end, was that the success of the Milanese central station was fundamental for the future of his system in Europe and therefore anything done in order to ensure the efficient working of that plant was also for the good of the American company. As it was pointed out to him by the Italian syndicate, If one station works badly, we shall not form a society, because the sale of a few isolated plants will not warrant the forming of a share company with a capital of several millions and we are convinced that nobody either in Italy or in any other parts of Europe would for a long time put up the money to form a Central Station of electricity. So it is necessary to work as perfectly as possible in the very beginning; this is the interest of Mr. Edison himself, who will be able to sell a number of these large machines, if the one exhibited will have given a good result.96

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FIGURE 2: Santa Radegonda Power Station, Milan, c. 1884.

DEPARTING FROM THE EDISON MODEL The original plan was to start the station by the end of 1882.97 However that target was definitely optimistic. When Lieb arrived in Milan, in January 1883, little progress had been made: the refurbishment of the building was not yet completed and the dynamos and boilers were still packed up in the local Custom House. One of Edison’s technicians, Henry C. Patterson, was supervising the laying of the underground conductors but none of the buildings had been wired yet.98 It was in the first half of 1883, and under Lieb’s direction, that the construction began to gain momentum. At the end of June the Santa Radegonda central station was inaugurated, and the Teatro Manzoni, where the Comitato arranged a gala evening for invited guests, was lighted by electricity.99 At last, in December the most important showpiece, the Teatro alla Scala was connected to the central station. On Boxing Day 2,500 incandescent lamps welcomed the public of Amilcare Ponchielli’s ‘La Gioconda’.100 A few days afterwards, in January 1884, the Società Generale Italiana di Elettricità Sistema Edison was incorporated. The CCE, having been paid in shares for the transfer of Edison’s patent rights, was the principal shareholder; the four banks that took part in the launching of the Comitato were the other main shareholders. The other subscribers were financiers and manufacturers, most of them Milanese (see Appendix). By the end of that year the plant was the largest operating central station in Europe. Six dynamos were installed, all of the C (Jumbo) model, plus a small one for overnight use. The network of 6,350 metres of underground cables

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TABLE 1 Customers of the Central Station Santa Radegonda and number of lamps in 1884 Teatro alla Scala (municipal) Teatro Manzoni (private) 3 Private clubs 28 Shops 3 Private homes Società Generale Italiana di Elettricità

2,862 420 288 1,390 * 35 80

Domanda all’Onorevole Comitato dell’Esposizione Generale Italiana in Torino 1884 (Milan: Società Generale Italiana di Elettricità Sistema Edison, 1884), p. 10. * The main customers in this category were the Hotel Continental (450 lamps) and the Caffé Cova (267 lamps).

extended within a radius of 550 metres from the station. Most of the 3,200 lamps were installed in buildings for public use.101 The principal customer was the Municipality which was responsible for the Teatro alla Scala; the other customers with more than 250 lamps were fashionable hotels and shops. Although the central station was its main business, the company did not neglect other commercial activities. In the period 1882–1883 they sold twenty-one isolated plants, and fiftyone in 1884, most of them in textile mills in the northern and central regions of Italy; among them there were also some generators installed on board of the liners of the Compagnia di Navigazione Raggio of Genoa.102 Although in their report the Consiglio di Amministrazione stated that in so far as the central station was concerned, the balance between costs and income had already been achieved, they could not help but acknowledge that the company was operating at a loss. In reality, and not surprisingly, for the first three years the balance continued to be negative,103 much as happened with the New York and the London plants.104 That was by no means unusual for a company based on a new pioneering technology, and it was not in itself a sign of mistakes in the management of the company. In fact, the problems that the company was facing were those examined and discussed in much of the literature on the early development of electricity generation and distribution and in particular on the limits of the direct-current system. The reverse salient holding back the development of the new technology, in Thomas Hughes’ interpretive framework, was the cost of distribution. The efficiency of various components – the lamps, the dynamos, the regulating apparatus – was steadily improved, and that brought about a reduction of the costs; however the conveyance of electricity to distant customers required increasing the diameter of the copper conductors and hence the cost of the service. Edison, as always confident in his capacity to solve problems, in 1883 devised a solution consisting of the three-wire system, the aim of which was to extend the network beyond the limits imposed by the two-wire system without increasing the cost.105 When the news about this method reached Milan, Colombo and Lieb asked Edison to send information;106 in July 1884, and after repeated requests, they had still not received them.107 In that period Edison was occupied with the reorganization

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of his lighting companies, as a result of which he secured for himself the full control of that complex against the attempt by the board of directors of the EEC (more precisely the representatives of the banking interests) to centralize it and bring it under their own control.108 One of the aims of such an operation was to foster the innovative spirit of the enterprise; new technical solutions were indeed what the Milanese company was soliciting in order to expand further its central station project, but without receiving the support that was expected. By then, however, Colombo had began considering other solutions, although that meant overstepping Edison’s guidelines. Electrical technology was in dramatically rapid evolution, and other ways of overcoming the problem of distribution were being explored. As it happens, it was in Italy – more precisely in Turin – that Colombo came across the pioneering invention of Lucien Gaulard and his partner John Dixon Gibbs. On occasion of the Esposizione Generale Italiana to be held from April to October 1884 the Italian Government and the Municipality of Turin decided to offer a prize (ItL 15,000) for ‘an invention or a complex of apparatus by which, most notably, the practical solution of the problems connected to the industrial applications of electricity, the long-distance transmission of mechanical work, electric lighting and metallurgy could benefit’.109 Departing from previous attempts to transmit direct current over long distances, Gaulard designed a system based on alternating current, using transformers as stepup and step-down devices.110 Not only were they awarded the prize,111 but Ferraris, having examined and tested carefully the system, demonstrated that it was considerably more efficient than other technical experts had previously supposed.112 The validity of the new approach was also immediately perceived by Colombo, who only a few days after attending their demonstration in Turin (and before reading Ferraris’ report) gave a positive assessment of the solution suggested by the French inventor and of the contribution that it could offer towards the reduction of the costs of transmission, both for lighting and for motive power. What he envisaged was a combination of the two systems, namely the creation outside the towns of large central stations (with the dynamos fed by steam or, if possible, by hydraulic engines), using high tension for the transportation of electricity close to areas where it was to be used; at that point transformers strategically set up near the main clusters of customers were to step down the electricity to the tension required for local distribution.113

ALTERNATING IN CONTINUITY Although Colombo was well aware of the fact that the new system needed improvements, he considered it as worth pursuing. He was not alone in his acknowledgment of the importance of Gaulard’s system: other Italian engineers and entrepreneurs who in the mid-1880s began to consider setting up lighting plants, spurred by the success of the Milanese initiative, opted from the start for the use of transformers and alternating current.114 However for Colombo and the Milanese company, with a large-scale plant already in operation and a substantial amount of money invested in the technology emanating from the parent company, the move in that direction was more difficult; moreover using alternating current meant departing

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from Edison’s technological paradigm. The approach that he adopted was to explore the effectiveness of other solutions by introducing them as a complement to the system in use. Over the next two years the network was further extended so as to connect more customers within the 550 metres radius from the central station, using the two-wire system. Moreover, following an agreement with the Municipality, 85 Siemens arc lamps were installed for street lighting (the agreement with the French CCE allowed the use of such lamps produced by other companies). In order to feed them, two other dynamos were installed in the Santa Radegonda station. By 1886 the electric light installation in Milan was regarded as the largest of its kind in the world.115 It was at this point that plans began to be laid for extending further the network. This was to be achieved by adopting the new approach pioneered by Gaulard; but it was not their apparatus that was installed. Colombo judiciously chose the most advanced technology that was available, namely the improved transformers designed and produced by the Hungarian company Ganz & Co.116 The system was successfully tested in the late Spring of 1886, when the new apparatus installed in the Santa Radegonda station supplied high tension alternating current for the lighting of the Teatro Dal Verme, at a distance of 1,150 metres.117 Steering the company into a new technological course, and one that did not originate from the parent company, was Colombo’s main technological contribution to the development of the Società Edison. It must be pointed out that the decision was taken with Lieb’s full support and approval. During his employment in Milan the American engineer continued to regard himself as an ‘Edison man’, and kept constantly in touch with the American headquarters. However in 1886, when Colombo decided to install the Ganz system along with the existing Edison generators and distribution lines, Lieb raised no objection. On the contrary, he supported the attempt made by Francis Upton, one of Edison’s chief assistants and the Manager of the Lamp Company, to arrange an agreement between the EEC and the Hungarian company.118 Upton, who visited Italy in 1887, was favourably impressed by the installations; and in his correspondence with him Lieb confirmed that the transformer in use in Milan was working in a perfectly satisfactory way.119 Obviously Edison was informed about the experiment carried out by Colombo in Milan, and it is not unlikely that, at that stage, when he had not yet decided what position to take with regard to Ganz and more generally the use of alternating current, he regarded the Italian installation as a source of valuable information. In the end, the decision was made, and it was definitely hostile to the new system: in the 1890s Edison was one of the staunchest advocates of direct against alternating current in the battle of the systems.120 Yet the aggressive campaign launched by Edison against alternating current did not affect Colombo’s strategy. Because of his appointment to the Parliament in 1886, the latter gradually left most of the technical supervision to Lieb and to the technicians (all of them graduates of the ITS) who since the launching of the company had begun to be formed under the guidance of the American engineer.121 However Colombo remained the executive officer of the Società until his ministerial appointment in 1891.122 It was in that capacity that, firmly believing as he did that the success of electric over gas lighting and the further expansion of the Milanese utility sector depended on the harnessing of alternative

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sources of energy, he began laying the foundation for the creation of a large-scale hydroelectric power station. As I pointed out above, when he became involved in the company Colombo had no previous experience in the field of applied electricity. His experience as a consulting engineer and a contractor was his most valuable qualification for the position he was offered. However, like other mechanical engineers who entered the field of electrical engineering in the early 1880s, he learned on the job. Although he never became a practising electrical engineer, with the assistance of Lieb, he learned what was necessary in order to make competent decisions with regard to the choice of the technologies that best suited the particular context and circumstances in which the company was operating. In 1889 the Società Edison requested (and one year later obtained) a concession for diverting water from above the rapids of the river Adda, near Paderno. By then some hydroelectric plants, using alternating current and transformers for conveying electricity to the urban areas, were already in operation; however they were small installations, and the transmission lines relatively short.123 The fact is that the transfer of high-voltage alternating current over long distances still remained a major problem. At the end of the 1880s Ziani de Ferranti’s pioneering attempt to scale up the system with the creation of a gigantic power station at Deptford, from which high voltage alternating current was transmitted to the centre of London, resulted in a series of disastrous accidents and a substantial financial loss for the London Electric Supply Corporation, the company which owned the plant.124 Adding to the technological difficulty of the project, in 1890 the Società Edison was entering a period of financial difficulties, made even more challenging by the economic crisis affecting the country. These circumstances induced Colombo and the company to postpone the exploitation of the concession. In fact, in the period 1888–92 the further expansion of the Milanese network was achieved by the adoption, at last, of the three-wire system, and the construction of a new power station where Thomson Houston dynamos were used to feed arc-lamps for public illumination.125 However these were temporary solutions: in 1891 the experiments carried out at the International Electrical Exhibition in Frankfort-on-the-Main, when the high-voltage alternating current produced by a water turbine in Lauffen was transported to the site of the exhibition along a 175 km line, confirmed not only the feasibility of long-distance power transmission, but also proved beyond any doubt the efficiency of the method.126 It was at that point that plans began to be made for the construction of a power station and the transportation of high tension alternating current from Paderno to Milan, at a distance of c. 35 km. The station began to be constructed in 1895; when it was finally opened in 1898 the Paderno hydroelectric power station was the largest and the most advanced in Europe.127

CONCLUSION The launching of the Paderno plant was the culmination of a technological trajectory firmly rooted in the original proposal that the promoters of the Comitato made to the CEE and the parent Edison company in 1882. The distinctive feature of that proposal was that it was prompted by members of a business community with a well

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defined agenda of their own: they were determined to pursue a line of development, commercial and technological, that was primarily functional to local interests and to what they perceived as the most promising commercial opportunities for the development of the sector. The original project also included the sale of isolated plants, and the production of electrical equipment. However the market for electrical equipment did not prove as successful as expected; as for the setting up of a manufacturing section, the plan was soon abandoned – much to the chagrin of Colombo, who strongly advocated it. The economic crisis of the 1890s was particularly damaging for the sale of isolated plants, and in view of the aggressive competition of other electrical manufacturers it is by no means obvious that an Italian manufacturing branch would have been able to secure a market for its products. What remained as the core business of the company was the utility sector, stemming from the original bold decision to set up a power station in the centre of Milan. Undoubtedly the decision to adopt a new and unproven technology was a risky one in view of the inevitably rapid obsolescence of the apparatus installed in the stations. However the company succeeded in effecting a prompt technological reorganization, departing gradually but inexorably from Edison’s paradigm: although in the US at the very end of the century the parent company managed to develop a substantial market for direct current central power stations, in Italy that path was abandoned as soon as a technologically and commercially feasible alternative became available. What determined that change of direction was the opportunity to put into practice the long-held dream of exploiting the abundant resources of the water-power of Lombardy. Colombo, with the status of a prominent scientific authority, well connected to the local economic, financial and political community, was the capable executive director of the new company who, drawing on his experience as a consultant and a contractor (and with Lieb’s vital support), effected the transfer of Edison’s technology to Italy. Even more importantly, he was the competent technical decision-maker who steered the course of the company away from Edison’s system in the equally bold direction of a new technology based on alternating current, long-distance transmission and the exploitation of hydraulic power. Finally, it was a distinctive characteristic of the Italian company that the departure from Edison’s paradigm did not generate an open conflict with the American parent company or with Edison himself. The contractual agreements with the CCE were resolutely re-negotiated, as a result of which the Italian company obtained more favourable conditions and also the possibility of collaborating with other electrical manufacturers (most notably the Hungarian Ganz company and the American Thomson-Houston). Yet the move into the field of alternating took place in an amicable way, so much so that the Italian company never abandoned the name of Edison. It is the name that the company, one of the largest operating in the energy sector in Europe, still bears today.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I discussed the initial draft of this chapter with Giorgio Bigatti, who has been generous, as usual, with comments and helpful suggestions. Brian Bowers and Robert

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Fox read the text and made valuable comments. Although I had the opportunity of using, at last, some of the documents I gathered during a visit to the Edison Archives I made many years ago, this work would not have been possible but for the research facilities offered by the online Digital Edition of the Thomas A. Edison Papers. My thanks to the directors and editors of this extraordinary archival resource.

Appendix Original shareholders of the Società Generale Italiana di Elettricità Sistema Edison President: Enrico Rava, Director of the Milanese branch of the Banca Generale Managing director: Giuseppe Colombo (amministratore delegato) The capital was 3,000,000 Lire, in 12,000 shares of 250 Lire each Compagnie Continentale Edison Banca Generale Banca di Credito Italiano Credito Lombardo Banca di Milano Felice Buzzi Pacifico Cavalieri Carlo Erba Achille Villa Banco di Roma Società Anglo-Romana Gas Girolamo Silvestri Giuseppe Colombo Eugenio Cantoni Giulio Richard Luigi Erba Enrico F. Mylius Guglielmo Miani Don Fabrizio Colonna

300,000 * 270,000 225,000 202,500 180,000 184,000 135,000 129,600 126,000 121,500 67,500 64,800 54,000 32,400 32,400 32,000 27,000 16,200 16,200

* Shares obtained by the CCE on payment of the patent licences and of its assistance.

Details of the individual shareholders Felice Buzzi, Principal Cashier of the Banca Nazionale Pacifico Cavalieri, private banker Carlo and Luigi Erba, pharmaceutics manufacturers Achille Villa, member of the Board of Directors of the Comitato Milanese of the Banca Generale Girolamo Silvestri, engineer a manufacturer Eugenio Cantoni, cotton manufacturer Giulio Richard porcelain manufacturer Enrico F. Mylius, silk merchant, financier and philanthropist

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Guglielmo Miani, partner and director of Miani & Venturi, mechanical engineering Don Fabrizio Colonna, Roman nobleman and land-owner.

NOTES 1. Robert Friedel and Paul Israel, Edison’s Electric Light. Biography of an Invention (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1987). Paul Israel, Edison. A Life of Invention (New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1998); Robert Friedel and Paul Israel, Edison’s Electric Light: The Art of Invention (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2010). Edison and his financial partners, in their determination to extend their market internationally, established companies for the promotion of their products in South America and Asia. William J. Hausman, Peter Hertner and Mira Wilkins (eds), Global Electrification: Multinational Enterprise and International Finance in the History of Light and Power (1878–2007) (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011), pp. 77–8. 2. Thomas P. Hughes, Networks of Power. Electrification in Western Society 1880–1930 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1983), pp. 52–65. 3. The formation and decline of the French companies has been examined by Robert Fox, ‘Thomas Edison’s Parisian Campaign: Incandescent Lighting and the Hidden Face of Technology Transfer’, Annals of Science, 53 (1996), pp. 157–93. See also Alain Beltran, ‘La difficile conquête d’une capitale: l’énergie électrique à Paris entre 1878 et 1907’, Histoire, Économie & Société, 4 (1985), pp. 369–95. 4. Hughes, Networks of Power, pp. 66–78. Conrad Matschoß, Die geschichtliche Entwicklung der Allgemeinen Elektricitäts-Gesellschaft in den ersten 25 Jahren ihres Bestehens (Berlin–Heidelberg: Springer, 1909). 5. The early history of the company is described in the four-volumes history of the Italian company history published on occasion of its fiftieth anniversary; see Ruggero Bisazza, ‘La Società Edison e il suo Gruppo’, in Giorgio Mortara (ed.), Il Cinquantenario della Società Edison: 1884–1934, Vol. 4 (Milan: Società Edison, 1934), pp. 133–258. Claudio Pavese, ‘Le Origini della Società Edison e il suo Sviluppo fino alla Costituzione del “Gruppo” (1881–1919)’, in Bruno Bezza (ed.), Energia e Sviluppo. L’Industria Elettrica Italiana e la Società Edison (Turin: Einaudi, 1986), pp. 22–167; and by the same author, ‘La Prima Grande Impresa Elettrica: La Edison’, in Giorgio Mori (ed.), Storia dell’Industria Elettrica in Italia, Vol. 1, Le origini. 1882–1914, 2 Vols (Bari: Laterza, 1992), Vol. 1, pp. 449–521. A new contribution to the early history of the company, Stefano Righi, La Città Illuminata. L’Intuizione di Giuseppe Colombo, la Edison e l’Elettrificazione dell’Italia (Milan: Rizzoli, 2013), with an essay by Andrea Colombo, ‘Centotrent Anni di Energia a Milano’, pp. 163–316, was published when this essay was already completed. 6. Thomas A. Edison Papers Digital Edition (http://edison.rutgers.edu/digital.htm). The documents are identified by the acronym TAED. They were accessed in the period from June 2012 to October 2013. 7. Israel, Edison. A Life of Invention, pp. 148–9. Hughes, Networks of Power, pp. 48– 50. On Bailey in particular see Bailey to Edison, 7 February 1878 (TAED D7840B), and George Harrison Bliss to Edison, 22 February 1878 (TAED D7802ZBH).

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8. Hughes, Networks of Power, p. 30. 9. Israel, Edison A Life of Invention, p. 174. 10. Hughes, Networks of Power, p. 50. 11. It was Bailey in particular who signed as Edison’s representative the agreement between the latter and the Edison Electric Light Company of Europe on the one hand, and the French financiers on the other. Translation. The Contract of November 15, 1881. The Edison Electric Light Company of Europe Ltd, and Messrs Porgès and Léon (New York: C.G. Burgoine, 1882) (TAED D8228K). 12. Israel, Edison. A Life of Invention, p. 174. On Fabbri see also Vincent Philip Carosso and Rose C. Carosso, The Morgans: Private International Bankers, 1854–1913 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1987). 13. Edison to Puskas, 13 November 1878 (TAED D7821ZAO). 14. Garbi joined Cipriani when the latter tried to launch a commercial venture in California. On his return to Italy he became Lieutenant of the Piedmontese Army in the Independence Wars 1860–1861 and 1866. Garbi retired from the Army in 1871; it is not clear what was his occupation in the 1870s and how he became acquainted with Fabbri. When Fabbri died in Florence in 1894 Garbi was one of the beneficiaries of his will; described as a friend, he received $2,000. ‘Will of Ernesto P. Fabbri’, The New York Times, 27 December 1894 (the name Ernesto, Egisto’s brother, is obviously a mistake). 15. Translation of the contract of 15 November 1881. The European countries that were excluded, besides the United Kingdom where a separate company was set up, were Sweden, Norway and Portugal and Ireland. 16. Israel, Edison. A Life of Invention, p. 217. 17. Dino Padelletti, ‘I Metodi Moderni di Illuminazione’, L’Illustrazione Italiana, 9 (1877), pp. 126–7, 142–3. 18. Giuseppe Colombo, ‘Illuminazione Elettrica’, La Perseveranza, 21 April 1879; reprinted in Federico Giordano (ed.), Discorsi e Scritti Scientifici di Giuseppe Colombo, 3 Vols (Milan: Hoepli 1934), Vol. 3, pp. 324–41. 19. Burrill, Davidson & Burrill to Edison, 7 February 1880 (TAED D8024D). 20. ‘Una Visita a Menlo Park’, L’Eco d’Italia, mid-June 1880 (TAED SM014122). 21. Bruce Sinclair, ‘Technology on its Toes: Late Victorian Ballets, Pageants, and Industrial Exhibitions’, in Stephen H. Cutcliffe and Robert C. Post (eds), Context: History and the History of Technology. Essays in Honor of Melvin Kranzberg (Bethlehem, PA: Lehigh University Press, 1989), pp. 71–87. The Ballo Excelsior enjoyed an extraordinary and enduring success, not only in Italy (in 1881 it was performed more than hundred times) but also in Europe and the United States, where it was put on stage in the Summer of 1883. On that occasion the electrical effects were supervised by Edison. ‘‘Excelsior” at Niblo’s Garden’, New York Times, 22 August 1883. 22. Very little is known about him. It is not clear whether he was a relative of the homonymous director of the Società Anglo-Romana per l’Illuminazione a Gas di

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Roma, established in 1867, which held the monopoly of gas lighting in Rome and later became one of the shareholders of the Italian Società Edison (see Appendix). La Società Anglo Romana per l’Illuminazione di Roma col Gas ed altri Sistemi dopo 60 Anni di Vita – 1854–1914 (Rome: E. Pinci, 1914). 23. Shepherd’s admission was recorded on 20 November 1881; Atti del Collegio degli Ingegneri e Architetti in Milano, 14 (1881), p. 65. 24. ‘Notizie Cittadine’, La Perseveranza, 10 October 1881. 25. ‘Notizie del Palazzo Marino’, Corriere della Sera, 29–30 January 1882, p. 2. In the event, the lecture and the demonstration were combined in the public performance that will be described below. 26. Acheson joined the Menlo Park team in 1880. His task was initially to assist Edison in the preparation of carbon filaments, but when the French enterprise was launched he was one of the technicians who were sent to Europe with Batchelor to set up lighting installations. On his return to the United States in 1885 he began working again at Edison’s headquarters and then set up as an independent inventor, achieving considerable success with the exploitation of his patents on silicon carbide (carborundum). Edward Goodrich Acheson, Edward Goodrich Acheson. A Pathfinder, Inventor, Scientist, Industrialist (Port Huron, MI: Acheson Industries, 1965). 27. ‘La Luce Elettrica Edison alla Scala’, La Perseveranza, 12 February 1882; ‘La Luce Elettrica di Edison’, La Lombardia, 18 February 1882; ‘La Luce Edison a Milano’, Il Sole, 22 February 1882. 28. Acheson to Edison, 26 February 1882 (TAED D8238ZAD). As a further evidence of the connection, during his stay in Milan Acheson used Shepherd’s address for his correspondence; Batchelor to Acheson, 11 February 1882 (TAED X001J1AG). However in the Edison Archives there is no evidence of his connection with either the American or the Parisian company, nor of his role in launching the Milanese initiative. Shepherd is mentioned by Bisazza in his history of the Edison company, who refers to him as the representative of the Brush Electric Light Corporation in Milan. Bisazza ‘La Società Edison’, pp. 134. His passage from Brush to Edison is also mentioned in Righi, La Città Illuminata, pp. 45–6, and Colombo, ‘Centotrent’Anni di Energia a Milano’, ibid., pp. 185, 210–12. 29. ‘Luce Elettrica Edison’, Il Sole, 24 March 1882; see also Bailey and Puskas to Sherbourne Eaton, President of the Edison Electric Light Company, 29 March 1882 (TAED D8238ZAP). 30. Subject-Matter Index of Patents for Inventions Granted in Italy from 1848 to May 1 1882 (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1885). 31. Johnson to Edison, 6 November 1881 (TAED D8104ZER). 32. Johnson to Edison, 6 November 1881 (TAED D8104ZER); and Edison to Johnson, 23 November 1881 (TAED LB009331). 33. Acheson to Edison, 26 February 1882 (TAED D8238ZAD). According to Acheson, they went so far as to invite him to remain in Milan as the chief engineer of the proposed company. 34. Bailey and Puskas to Eaton, 29 March 1882 (TAED D8238ZAP).

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35. Bailey and Puskas to Edison, 1 April 1882 (TAED LM001180D); see also Insull to Edison, 3 April 1882 (TAED LB012010). On the basis of a telegram received from Florence, Samuel Insull (Edison’s personal secretary) thought it appropriate to send a message to Fabbri informing him that Garbi had been made the representative of Edison’s electric lighting interests in Italy. Insull to Fabbri, 3 April 1882 (TAED LB012010). 36. Bailey to Edison, 7 April 1882 (TAED LM001184C). 37. Puskas to Eaton, 18 April 1882 (TAED D8238ZAV). 38. Puskas to Eaton, 18 April 1882 (TAED D8238ZAV). 39. Puskas to Eaton, 18 April 1882 (TAED D8238ZAV) and Bailey to Insull, 15 May 1882 (TAED D8238ZBE). 40. ‘Luce Elettrica’, Il Sole, 16 April 1882. 41. The visit was announced in ‘La Luce Elettrica Edison’, Il Sole, 20 April 1882. 42. Colombo explicitly referred to Shepherd as the representative of the Edison Company, thanking him for his support. Colombo, ‘Lezione sulla Luce Elettrica’, in Giordano (ed.), Discorsi e Scritti Scientifici di Giuseppe Colombo, Vol. 3, pp. 335–47, esp. 345. Colombo’s lecture, and Shepherd’s contribution, were commented in highly favourable terms by the main local newspapers: ‘Illuminazione Elettrica’, Il Sole, 13–14 March 1882; ‘Illuminazione Elettrica’, Il Corriere della sera, 13–14 March 1882; ‘La luce Elettrica’, La Lombardia, 14 March. 43. Carlo G. Lacaita, ‘Giuseppe Colombo e le Origini dell’Italia Industriale’ in Lacaita (ed.), Giuseppe Colombo. Industria e Politica nella Storia d’Italia. Scritti Scelti 1861–1919 (Bari: Laterza, 1985), pp. 5–86; Edoardo Borruso, Studi di Storia dell’Industria Milanese (1836–1983) (Milan: Guerini, 1996), Chapter 4, ‘Il Giovane Colombo e la Formazione dello Sviluppo Industriale Milanese’, pp. 81–146. Rita Cambria, ‘Giuseppe Colombo’, in Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani, http://www. treccani.it/enciclopedia/giuseppe-colombo_(Dizionario-Biografico)/ [accessed 12 February 2013]. 44. The Istituto, like the other Italian engineering schools, was an institution of higher education; its distinctive characteristics were that, unlike them, it was not attached to a university, and that from its opening it had an industrial section alongside the traditional civil engineering one. Carlo G. Lacaita, ‘Il Politecnico di Milano’, in Il Politecnico di Milano 1863–1914 (Milan: Electa, 1981), pp. 9–36. Anna Guagnini, ‘Education and the Engineering Profession in Italy. The Scuole di Applicazione of Milan and Turin, 1859–1914’, Minerva, 4 (1988), pp. 512–48. See also Elena Canadelli and Paola Zocchi, Milano scientifica, 1875–1924, Vol. 1, La Rete del Grande Politecnico (Milan: Sironi, 2008), especially Ornella Selvafolta, ‘Una Scuola per il Progetto. La Formazione Scientifico-tecnica al Politecnico di Milano’, pp. 50–71. 45. Brioschi was himself actively engaged in a number of financial and industrial initiatives. Carlo G. Lacaita and Andrea Silvestri (eds), Francesco Brioschi e il suo tempo (1824–1897) (Milan: Franco Angeli, 2000). In 1871 he created and became the president of the Banca di Costruzioni of Milan, of which he was the president, whose aim was to provide financial support for public works.

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46. Both of them were also among the original shareholders of Pirelli’s company, subscribing respectively ItL 5,000 (Colombo) and ItL10,000 (Brioschi). Francesca Polese, Alla Ricerca di un’Industria Nuova. Il Viaggio all’Estero del Giovane Pirelli e le Origini di una Grande Impresa, 1870–1877 (Venice: Marsilio, 2004), pp. 125, 154–5. On Colombo’s role in supporting the industrial enterprise of another of his pupils, Alberto Riva, see Giorgio Bigatti, Alberto Riva e la Milano Industriale del suo Tempo (Milano: Brioschi, 2013). 47. Colombo’s political career is discussed by Lacaita in ‘Giuseppe Colombo’. 48. Cantoni in that period was engaged in the reorganization of his activity and also entering the world of finance as the promoter of the creation of a new bank, the Banca Industriale e Commerciale. Colombo was by then already one of the shareholders in the Cotonificio Cantoni. Luigi Ganapini, ‘Eugenio Cantoni’, in Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani, http://www.treccani.it/enciclopedia/eugeniocantoni_(Dizionario-Biografico)/ [accessed 12 February 2013]. 49. Among them, Ruston Procter & Co., Lincoln (agricultural engineering), Shand, Mason & Co., London (steam and hand pumps), Joseph Robinson & Co., Salford (bleaching and dyeing machinery), George Russell & Co., Glasgow (stationary boilers and engines, steam and hand cranes and light locomotives), S. Worssam & Co., London (saw-mill machinery), Samuel Law & Sons, Cleckeaton (card makers, equipment for textile mills). 50. For example, in an article on ‘Stabilimento di Filatura di Cascami di Seta, Novara’, it was stated that ‘the design and direction of all the setting up of the plant, both the edifice and the purchase and installation of engines, the machines and the transmissions were entrusted to the firm Cantoni, Colombo, MacKenzie & Co.’, L’Industriale, 2 (1872), p. 82. In the first three years of its publication the journal, whose cost was paid by Cantoni, contained several pages of advertisements of the firms above mentioned of which Colombo and his partners were agents. 51. Colombo to Pirelli, 10 February 1871, and Colombo to Pirelli, 16 March 1871, Archivio Privato di Alberto Pirelli, Milan. In the headed paper he used for business and, occasionally, for his private correspondence, he described himself as ‘G. Colombo Industrial engineer. Design of Industrial Plants, Machines and Material for Industries and Constructions’. 52. MacKenzie continued on his own his consulting practice in Milan, where in 1882 he set up a pin manufacture; Guida di Milano per l’Anno 1882 (Milan: Tipografia Bernardoni, 1882), p. 1107. 53. Giorgio Bigatti, La Città Operosa. Milano nell’Ottocento (Milan: Franco Angeli, 2000), pp. 102–3. See also Lacaita, Giuseppe Colombo, pp. 42–3. 54. When the partnership with Cantoni and MacKenzie ended he and Cantoni received ItL 185,000. Bigatti, La Città Operosa, p. 102. 55. ‘Indicazione degli uffici coperti come funzionario incaricato od in ruolo nelle R. Università’, File Colombo, Archivio del Politecnico di Milano. In that period the salary of university professors was ItL 5,000/6,000 and did not depend on students’ fees. MAIC, Direzione Generale di Statistica ‘Statistica degli impiegati civili e militari dello Stato’, Annali di Statistica, Serie IV (1887), p. 103. The average salary of a

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teacher in a technical school was ItL 1,680/2,400; a teacher in a ‘liceo’ (secondary classical school) earned ItL 1,920/2,400. 56. Giuseppe Colombo, ‘Discorso’ in Onoranze al Senatore Giuseppe Colombo. Direttore del R. Istituto Tecnico Superiore di Milano. Nel 50° Anno d’Insegnamento (Milan: Tipografia Allegretti, 1907), pp. 33–4. 57. Colombo, ‘Le Gallerie delle Macchine del Lavoro e del Materiale Ferroviario all’Esposizione Nazionale di Milano, 1882’, in Giordano (ed.), Discorsi e Scritti Scientifici di Giuseppe Colombo, Vol 3, pp. 1062–76, esp. 1072. Robert Fox and Anna Guagnini, Laboratories, Workshops and Sites. Concepts and Practices of Applied Research in Industrial Europe, 1800–1914 (Office for the History of Science and Technology, University of California, 1999), pp. 164–5. 58. Colombo, ‘Sulla Illuminazione Elettrica’, L’Industriale (1877), p. 25; in Giordano, Discorsi e Scritti Scientifici di Giuseppe Colombo, Vol. 3, pp. 322–3. 59. Colombo, ‘Sulla Illuminazione Elettrica’, conference held at the Società di Incoraggiamento di Arti e Mestieri, 20 April 1879, La Perseveranza, 21 April 1879; in Giordano, Discorsi e Scritti Scientifici di Giuseppe Colombo, Vol. 3, pp. 324–34. 60. Reports on the Parisian exhibitions, and glowing descriptions of Edison’s display, were published in the Milanese newspaper La Perseveranza; however they came from the pen of an anonymous correspondent who was clearly not a technical expert. ‘Lettera d’Estate, Parigi 17 Agosto 1881’, La Perseveranza, 23 August 1881; and ‘Lettera d’Estate, Parigi 30 Settembre 1881’, La Perseveranza, 6 October 1881. 61. Bern Dibner, ‘Ferraris Galileo’, in Dictionary of Scientific Biography, Vol. 4 (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1971), pp. 588–9. Salvo D’Agostino and Arcangelo Rossi (eds), Galileo Ferraris e il suo tempo, Special issue of Physis: Rivista Internazionale di Storia della Scienza, 35 (1998). 62. Galileo Ferraris, ‘Conferenze sull’Illuminazione Elettrica’, Ingegneria Civile e le Arti Industriali, 5 (1879); reprinted in Galileo Ferraris, Opere di Galileo Ferraris, 3 Vols (Rome: Associazione Elettrotecnica Italiana, 1902–4), Vol. 2 (1903), pp. 17–116. 63. Illuminazione coll’Elettricità. All’Onorevole Signor Sindaco della Città di Torino (Turin: Eredi Botta, 1880). One of the members of the committee was the chemist Ascanio Sobrero. 64. Galileo Ferraris, ‘Sulle Applicazioni Industriali della Corrente Elettrica alla Mostra Internazionale di Elettricità tenuta in Parigi nel 1881. Relazione a S. E. Domenico Berti, Ministro di Agricoltura, Industria e Commercio’, in Ferraris, Opere, Vol. 2, pp. 117–269. Roberto Maiocchi, ‘La Ricerca in Campo Elettrotecnico’, in Mori (ed.), Storia dell’Industria Elettrica in Italia, Vol. 1, pp. 155–99. 65. Ferraris, ‘Sulle Applicazioni Industriali della Corrente Elettrica’, p. 118. 66. Maiocchi, ‘La Ricerca in Campo Elettrotecnico’, pp. 159–60. 67. Fox, ‘Thomas Edison’s Parisian Campaign’, p. 182. 68. Hughes, Networks of Power, pp. 40–5; Friedel and Israel, Edison’s Electric Light. Biography of an Invention, pp. 205–12.

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69. Hughes, Networks of Power, pp. 55–6; Friedel and Israel, Edison’s Electric Light. Biography of an Invention, pp. 216–18. Israel, Edison. A Life of Invention, pp. 216–18; Brian Bowers, A History of Electric Light & Power (London: Peter Peregrinus Press, 1982), pp. 108, 139–40. 70. Colombo, ‘Lezione sulla Luce Elettrica’ (Conference held at the Società Promotrice di Esplorazioni Scientifiche, Milan, 12 March 1882), in Giordano (ed.), Discorsi e Scritti Scientifici, Vol. 3, pp. 335–47, esp. 345. The lecture, and Shepherd’s role, were commented also in ‘L’Esposizione di Elettricità a Londra’, L’Illustrazione Italiana, 9 (1882), pp. 241–4. 71. Colombo, ‘Lezione sulla Luce Elettrica’, p. 339. 72. Colombo, ‘Lezione sulla Luce Elettrica’, p. 344. 73. Colombo, ‘Lezione sulla Luce Elettrica’, p. 346. 74. The creation of the company is examined in detail by Bisazza, ‘La Società Edison’, p. 136; and Pavese, Le Origini della Società Edison, pp. 46–51. 75. Acheson to Bailey, 26 July 1882 (TAED X001J1AM). Shepherd ceased to be a member of the Collegio degli Ingegneri e Architetti at the end of 1883 but he continued to live in Milan until 1885. His name and address was last recorded in the Guida di Milano per l’Anno 1885 (Milan: Tipografia Bernardoni, 1885), p. 880. 76. Acheson to Bailey, 26 July 1882 (TAED X001J1AM). 77. Colombo to Bailey, 12 September 1882 (TAED D8238ZDA). 78. Colombo to Edison, 23 August 1882 (TAED D8238ZCK). 79. Colombo to Insull, 9 September 1882 (TAED D8238ZCY); Colombo to Bailey, 12 September 1882 (TAED D8238ZDB); Babcock & Wilcox to Edison, 14 September 1882 (TAED D8238ZDE); Colombo to Insull, 14 September 1882 (TAED D8238ZDG); Colombo to Bailey, 14 September 1882 (TAED D8238ZDH ). 80. After graduating in mechanical engineering at the Stevens Institute, Lieb joined Brush Electric Company where he began his apprenticeship in the design and construction of lighting installations. In 1881 he was recruited by Edison and after a stint as a draftsman in the engineering department of the Edison Electric Illuminating Company and work in the Edison Machine Works he was assigned to the Pearl Street Station. John W. Lieb, Biography. IEEE Global History Network, http://www.ieeeghn. org/wiki/index.php/John_Lieb [accessed 20 February2013]. 81. Colombo to Bailey, 12 September 1882 (TAED D8238ZDA). 82. Colombo to Edison, 10 October 1882 (TAED D8238ZDT). 83. Edison to Colombo, 17 November 1882 (TAED LB014442). 84. Colombo to Edison, 10 October 1882 (TAED D8238ZDT). 85. Edison to Eaton, 23 July 1882 (TAED LB007741). 86. Insull to Batchelor, 28 September 1882 (TAED D8243I). 87. Colombo to Bailey, 12 Sept 1882 (TAED D8238ZDA). 88. Edison to Bailey, 8 February 1883 (TAED LB015274).

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89. Colombo to Edison, 10 October 1882 (TAED D8238ZDT). In fact, similar requests came also from Edison’s own collaborators, Batchelor in Paris and Johnson in London, who were urging to be kept abreast with the result of his experiments. 90. Friedel and Israel, Edison’s Electric Light. Biography of an Invention, pp. 212–13. 91. Edison to Colombo, 17 November 1882 (TAED LB014442); in a sentence that appeared in the draft of the letter, but was subsequently deleted, Edison went so far as to declare that ‘in fact the Armington engine is the one thing requisite to make our central station complete’. 92. Bailey to Edison, 20 January 1883 (TAED D8337F). 93. Edison to Compagnie Continentale, 16 January 1883 (TAED LB015163). 94. Edison To Bailey, 8 February 1883 (TAED LB015274). 95. Edison to Societé Electrique Edison, 30 January 1883 (TAED LM001281C). 96. Comitato per le Applicazioni dell’Elettricità to Compagnie Continentale Edison, 15 February 1883 (TAED D8337W). 97. Colombo to Bailey, 12 September 1882 (TAED D8238ZDA). 98. Lieb to Edison, 13 January 1883 (TAED D8337C). 99. Lieb to Edison, 1 July 1883 (TAED D8337ZCO). 100. Giuseppe Colombo, ‘Éclairage Électrique du Theatre de la Scala’, La Lumière Électrique, 11 (1884), pp. 116–17. 101. For a description of the plant see Giuseppe Colombo, ‘Illuminazione Elettrica’, in Collegio degli Ingegneri ed Architetti di Milano, Milano Tecnica dal 1859–1884 (Milan: Hoepli, 1885), pp. 459–73. 102. Società Generale Italiana di Elettricità Sistema Edison, Resoconto. Assemblea Generale ordinaria 29 Marzo 1885. Bilancio dell’Esercizio al 31 Dicembre 1884 (Milan: Tipografia Sociale E. Reggiani & C., 1885). 103. See note 102, pp. 3–11. A detailed analysis of the accounts and financial statements of the company has been carried out by Pier Angelo Toninelli, La Edison. Contabilità e Bilanci di una Grande Impresa Elettrica (Bologna: Il Mulino, 1990). 104. Hughes, Networks of Power, pp. 43–6, 62. 105. Israel, Edison. A Life of Invention, p. 219; Hughes, Networks of Power, pp. 83–4. 106. Colombo to Edison, 5 February 1884 (TAED D8436V); Lieb to Edison, 11 February 1884 (TAED D8436ZAJ), and Colombo to Edison, 27 March 1884 (TAED D8436ZBU). 107. Colombo to Edison, 11 July 1884 (TAED D8436ZDA). 108. Israel, Edison A Life of Invention, pp. 224–9. 109. Esposizione Generale Italiana in Torino nel 1884. Catalogo Ufficiale (Turin: Unione Tipografica-Editrice, 1884), pp. 10–11. The Società Edison as well entered the competition. What they submitted was a description of the system installed in Milan; ‘All’Onorevole Comitato della Esposizione Generale Italiana di Torino 1884’, nd, probably May 1884 (TAED D8464G).

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110. Hughes, Networks of Power, pp. 85–95. Girolamo Ramunni, ‘La Mise en Place du Système Électrotechnique’, in François Caron and Fabienne Cardot, Historie Générale de l’Électricité en France, Vol. 1, Espoirs et Conquêtes 1881–1918 (Paris; Fayard, 1991), pp. 308–76, esp. 315–20. 111. Galileo Ferraris, ‘Relazione della Giuria Internazionale per la Sezione di Elettricità sul Conferimento del Premio di Lire Quindicimila Stabilito dal Governo e dal Municipio di Torino’, Ferraris, in Opere, Vol. 2, pp. 317–36. The decision of the judges was to assign two thirds of the sum to Gaulard and Gibbs for their transformer and one third to the Società Anomima Italiana di Miniere di Rame e Elettrometallurgia. As for the Società Edison, because their claim was not based on the innovativeness of the system they presented, but rather on its completeness and effectiveness, they were only awarded an honourable mention. 112. Galileo Ferraris, ‘Ricerche Teoriche e Sperimentali sul Generatore Secondario Gaulard e Gibbs’, in Ferraris, Opere, Vol. 1 (1902), pp. 163–254. 113. Colombo, ‘Le Système Gaulard et Gibbs a l’Exposition de Turin’, La Lumière Électrique, 14 (1884), pp. 43–6. His comments provoked the sharp reaction of Marcel Deprez, who was engaged in a vigorous battle against Gaulard’s system – both the use of the transformer and of alternating currents. Marcel Deprez, ‘Sur les Générateurs Secondaires de MM. Gaulard et Gibbs’, La Lumière Électrique, 14 (1884), pp. 41–3. 114. In 1885 Gaulard’s system was adopted for the lighting of half of the city centre by the Municipality of Turin, the other half being assigned to a local agent of the Milanese Edison Company. Claudio Pavese, ‘Il Processo di Elettrificazione tra Ottocento e Novecento’, in Vincenzo Ferrone (ed.), Torino energia. Le politiche energetiche tra innovazione e società 1700–1930 (Turin: Archivio Storico della Città di Torino, 2007), pp. 175–219. See also ‘Rassegna Scientifico-Industriale’, Gazzetta Ufficiale del Regno d’Italia n. 211 (Rome, 1886), pp. 5081–3. 115. ‘Electric Light in Milan’, Electrical Review, 18 (1886), p. 146. 116. Before deciding to buy their equipment Colombo attended a demonstration that took place at the National Universal Exhibition held in Budapest in 1885; Cambria, ‘Giuseppe Colombo’. 117. Colombo, ‘Usine Éléctrique de Milan. Éclairage Éléctrique a Grande Distance’, La Lumière Électrique, 20 (1886), pp. 481–2. ‘Experiments with Alternating Current Transformers in Milan’, Electrical Review, 19 (1886), pp. 104–5. 118. In 1886, following contacts made by Karl Zipernowski, the technical director and chief engineer of Ganz, Upton drafted an agreement between the Hungarian company and EEC. Karl Zipernowski to Francis Upton, 16 November 1886 (TAED W100DMBB); Draft agreement between Edison Electric Company and Ganz & Co., 25 November 1886 (TAED W100DMBA). 119. Upton to Edison, 26 November 1886 (TAED HM860293); Upton to Johnson, 5 January 1887 (TAED MU101); Lieb to Upton, 17 September 1887 (TAED MU112). 120. On the battle of the systems see Hughes, Networks of Power, Chapter V. Israel, Edison A Life of Invention, Chapter 17; W. Bernard Carlson and André J Millard,

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‘Defining Risk within a Business Context. Thomas E. Edison, Elihu Thomson, and the A.C.-D.C. Controversy, 1885–1900’, in Branden B. Johnson and Vincent T. Covello (eds), The Social Construction of Risk (Boston: Reidel Publishing, 1987), pp. 275–93. 121. Eventually, in 1894, Lieb returned to New York to became assistant to the VicePresident of the Edison Electric Illuminating Company of New York, then General Manager in 1897, and eventually Vice-President of the company. 122. Until his resignation he received from the Società an annual salary of ItL 12,000. Società Generale Edison di Elettricità Sistema Edison, Resoconto. Assemblea Generale Ordinaria 29 Marzo 1885 (Milan: Tipografia Sociale E. Reggiani, 1885), p. 24. 123. With regard to continental Europe, one of the first hydroelectric power stations was set up in 1886 in Tivoli, near Rome, using Gaulard’s system; ‘Rassegna ScientificoIndustriale’, Gazzetta Ufficiale del Regno d’Italia (Rome, 1886, n. 211), pp. 5081–3. In 1888 a similar station supplied electricity to Lucerne (Switzerland), using Ganz equipment; Edouard Hospitalier, ‘L’Usine Électrique de Thorenberg’ La Nature, 16 (1888), pp. 343–6, 379–82. The Hungarian company was also the contractor for the hydroelectric power stations erected in 1889 in Innsbruck (Austria), and in the proximity of the small towns of Dieulefit and Valréas, in south-eastern France; see respectively Killingworth Hedges, Continental Electric Light Central Stations (London: E. and F.N. Spon, 1892), p. 16, and Edouard Hospitalier, ‘L’Éclairage Électrique de Dieulefitte et Valréas’, La Nature, 17 (1889), pp. 199–202. In 1889 a hydroelectric power station using direct current was erected in Genoa; the system adopted was René Thury’s. Louis Goicot, ‘The Transmission and Distribution of Energy by means of Electricity at Genoa’, Journal of the Institution of Electrical Engineers, 22 (1893), pp. 445–68. 124. On Ferranti and the extensive literature on Deptford Station see Hughes, Networks of Power, pp. 238–47, and John F. Wilson, Ferranti and the British Electric Industry, 1864–1930 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1988). 125. Bisazza, ‘La Società Edison’, pp. 157–8. 126. Hughes, Networks of Power, pp. 129–36. The experiment, being the result of the collaboration between Oskar Von Miller (a consulting engineer and the director of the exhibition), Charles E. L. Brown (technical director of the Swiss firm Maschinenfabrik Oerlikon), and AEG electrical engineers, proved that the loss due to transmission was less than 30 per cent, much lower than expected. 127. Claudio Pavese, Cento Anni di Energia. Centrale Bertini, 1898–1998 (Milan: Silvana, 1999).

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Keeping Abreast with the Technology of Science: The Economic Life of the Physics Laboratory at the University of Padua, 1847–1857 CHRISTIAN CARLETTI SPHERE, Université Paris-Diderot 7 / CNRS

Abstract In the mid-nineteenth century, before the unification, the Kingdom of Lombardy-Venetia was part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Although the University of Padua was not among the hubs of scientific research in Europe, its physics laboratory strove to keep pace with the most recent developments of the discipline. In order to do so a key factor was the availability of adequate facilities for experimental research. The aim of this chapter is to examine the strategies that were implemented by the directors of the laboratory in order to obtain the necessary resources and how such resources were allocated. Drawing on detailed documentary evidence, the author discusses how the directors operated in the market for scientific instruments and the links they established with the international community of the instruments makers. One of the original aspects emerging from this study is that, contrary to general belief, the Austrian government was by no means reluctant to provide the funds required for the improvement of the laboratory facilities of the Italian university.

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INTRODUCTION On 31 August 1853, the courtyard of Palazzo Bo, the seat of the University of Padua, was opened to the public for the staging of an unusual show. In the middle of the courtyard, on a raised dais almost as high as the loggia, an arc lamp was set up; under the dais, hidden by a drape, there were 120 Bunsen batteries to light the lamp with. Prepared with great attention to detail and dramatized in order to create a theatrical effect, the aim of this show was to promote electric light. The event had been announced to the citizens of Padua well in advance and by dusk there were already hordes of onlookers crammed into the upper loggia, from whence they could fully appreciate the bright light produced by the lamp. The lamp was lit from eight in the evening until one in the morning, so that the effect of the light produced in the courtyard could be enjoyed in complete darkness.1 In order to allow everyone to witness the event, ‘all the doors of the university were open, and every sort of citizen came whether invited or not’, with the result that there was a continuous flow of visitors throughout. The University tower, lit up by the lamp, could be seen glowing brightly even by the inhabitants of the distant hills and the event caused quite a stir in general.2 The Venetian newspaper La Gazzetta reported that electric light had been used for public lighting in Italy for the first time, and described the lighting of the arc lamp as ‘a spectacle’ of science and industry.3 However, the spectacle was not an end in itself. Behind the positivist rhetoric of progress, which exalted a form of science dedicated to the improvement of society, lay the economic life of the University’s physics laboratory. Francesco Zantedeschi, professor at the University of Padua and director of the physics laboratory, organized the event in order to attract the attention and the support of the Austrian government (Padua was part of the Kingdom of LombardyVenetia and remained under Austrian control from 1815 to 1866). Towards the end of 1852, Zantedeschi wrote to the Chancellor’s Office to propose holding a number of ‘public lectures’ on electricity as a means of illumination. In his letter he explained that electric light constituted an extremely important subject ‘due to its practical applications to railroads, navigation and the lighting of public squares and military encampments’.4 In reality, electric lighting was only of marginal interest to Zantedeschi: his research concerned the nature of light and focused in particular on the influence of magnetic fields on electric light. The decision to arrange a public demonstration, however, seemed a useful expedient for raising funds. The money that was formally requested for the public event would allow him to buy the necessary instruments to continue with his line of research and experimentation. His strategy was a successful one. In a receipt of payment from March 1853, we can see the list of materials purchased from the Maison Duboscq instrument makers in Paris. Among other things, he acquired an arc lamp equipped with a self-regulating mechanism, a Silbermann heliostat, some achromatic lenses, 100 Bunsen batteries and 10 Grove batteries.5 A number of other Bunsen batteries and some further apparatus for regulating the combustion of the carbons in the arc lamp were prepared by the Venetian technician Giacomo Longhi, while Alessandro Duroni, a Milanese photographer and instrument maker specializing in the field of optics, was asked to

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make a Fresnel lens.6 In order to purchase these instruments, the laboratory director managed to obtain an extraordinary funding amounting to 2,000 Austrian Lire (AL), a figure just under his own annual salary. The example of the electrical spectacle at the University of Padua highlights the plurality of factors that the survival of a laboratory depended on in the midnineteenth century. The laboratory occupied a space at the frontier between a number of different worlds: it was designed for teaching, but also served as mediating zone between scientific research, technological innovation and the general public. The interests of the university, the policies of the Austrian government, the needs of the students and the ambitions of the professors all fed into the laboratory. Related activities, such as obtaining and maintaining the equipment, involved the abilities of local technicians as well as those of Italian and European instrument makers. In turn, the relationships established with the technicians and instrument makers became a means or an opportunity to pass on knowledge or to create partnerships that had a direct influence on the outcome of research activities. This chapter is an initial and partial attempt to reconstruct and measure the network of forces at play in the life of the laboratory by analysing the economic resources of which it was endowed and how they were employed. Unfortunately, the lack of studies on the economic status of other laboratories operating in Europe in the mid-nineteenth century makes it impossible to draw comparisons.7 However, the data available for the University of Padua allow us to shed light on the international scientific instruments market and also to map the relations between this market and local science. Our examination of the allocation of resources in the period between 1847 and 1857 has also revealed the internal dynamics within the laboratory, such as the involvement of technicians in experiments and the administrative procedures necessary for new purchases. The most significant element, however, is the relationship between the government and the university. Throughout the period of Austrian domination, Padua, together with Pavia, constituted a flagship of scientific progress in the region and was an important hub for communication and trade with Vienna. An analysis of the resources made available by the government of the Austrian Empire to the University of Padua’s physics laboratory has provided us with the necessary elements to make an indirect analysis of the government’s policies regarding its Italian province. What emerges is that the laboratory benefited from a considerable amount of support; this contradicts the oft-repeated idea that Italian science was stymied by a callous and mistrustful foreign ruler.

BUYING INSTRUMENTS In the period between the European Restoration and the annexation of the Venetian Region to Italy (1815–1866), the physics laboratory formed part of the Faculty of Philosophy and Mathematics, one of the four faculties the University of Padua was divided into.8 The Faculty of Philosophy and Mathematics, for its own part, consisted of two administrative structures that corresponded to the two main courses available: Philosophical studies and Mathematical studies. As the funds for both the teaching and the research activities carried out by the physics laboratory at the University of

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Padua were provided entirely by the Austrian government, every request for funding had to work its way through a complex bureaucratic procedure going from the laboratory director to the director of philosophical studies and eventually to the Luogotenenza,9 after obtaining authorization from the Chancellor’s Office. It was not unknown for the Luogotenenza to request for an expert to make an on-site inspection before approving the purchase of new instruments or the maintenance of those already owned by the laboratory. Only after this inspection would the request be submitted to the Ragioneria di Stato (the State Exchequer), where the final decision would be made. The sources I consulted reveal that this long process, which involved an intense exchange of correspondence, resulted in a considerable lengthening of the time needed for the purchase of new instruments. Nevertheless, new purchases were made frequently and a browse through the receipts of payment for the instruments purchased by the university’s physics laboratory makes for some real surprises, in terms of both the quantity of materials acquired and the number of different places they came from. A detailed examination of the acquisitions allow us to evaluate the laboratory’s ‘spending power’, to clarify how the resources available to the laboratory were invested and to provide details about the quality, cost and origin of the instruments. Salvatore Dal Negro was professor of physics at the University of Padua and director of the physics lab from 1806 to 1839.10 As far as the instruments purchased during this period are concerned, it is worth mentioning at least one of the most expensive acquisitions, approved and financed by the State Exchequer in 1823.11 The sum obtained by Dal Negro amounted to around 4,800AL.12 In a missive sent by Dal Negro to the Chancellor’s Office in 1825 we find the list of the items purchased, with their relative costs and sources: a Rochon micrometer (172AL, Angelo Bellani, Milan), a Wollaston goniometer (80AL, Angelo Bellani, Milan), a Dollond microscope (230AL, Girolamo Polcastro, Padua), a cronometer (400AL, Francesco Tessarolo, Padua), a catadioptric microscope (646AL, Giovanni Battista Amici, Modena), a Biot machine for the polarization of light (175AL, manufacturer unknown), a pyrometer (280AL, Carlo Grindel, Milan), a model of a steam machine (916AL, manufacturer unknown), a double effect pneumatic machine (1125AL, Vienna Imperial-Royal Polytechnic Institute), a hydrostatic balance (162AL, Vienna Imperial-Royal Polytechnic Institute), a Fortin pneumatic machine (400AL, Carlo Grindel, Milan), an armillary sphere (200AL, manufacturer unknown).13 An 1845 report by the Philosophical Studies Office judged the management of the laboratory under Salvatore Dal Negro’s tenure to be satisfactory and stated that its range of instruments had been greatly enriched. However, the report lamented the lack of new acquisitions in the period between 1839 (when Dal Negro left his position) and 1845, and put this temporary stalemate down to the fact that for the past six years the chair of physics had been ‘highly unsettled’, mostly ‘occupied by substitutes’.14 In fact, in the period 1839 to 1845 the chair of physics was held in sequence by Luigi Magrini, Giuseppe Belli, Antonio Radmann and Luigi Cattaneo.15 In 1845 Antonio Perego was appointed professor of physics. No sooner had he taken the chair, Perego began making a detailed reconnaissance of the laboratory. In his report to the Chancellor’s Office he wrote that many machines needed to be

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‘restored’ if experiments and research activities were to be performed effectively. Other items of equipment were obsolete and he asked to remove them from the laboratory because they no longer met the needs of contemporary physics and were therefore useless. Lastly, Perego wrote that ‘the laboratory lacks many instruments and many machines that are vital to the progress of the School of Physics’.16 These machines were essential for teaching and therefore, he argued, they had to be added to the equipment that was already available. Between 1847 and 1848 Perego managed to obtain funding for a total of 9,287AL: the most significant items included two pieces of apparatus for experiments on the polarization of light (768AL) and an Armstrong hydro-electric machine (1,400AL).17 In 1848, Francesco Zantedeschi was appointed director of the laboratory and he continued making regular purchases. In June 1851, 318AL were spent for apparatus for optics experiments ordered to the Maison Duboscq, and in October of the same year a further 29 items were purchased (again from the Maison Duboscq), including experimental machines and spare parts for those already owned by the lab, for a total of 3,341AL.18 Among the laboratory papers there is a handwritten note listing the instruments bought in 1852: the director of the laboratory ordered from the renowned Parisian instrument maker Ruhmkorff ‘a Wheatstone machine for measuring the speed of electricity’, ‘a Ruhmkorff machine’ costing 700AL and designed for experiments on the rotation of the plane of polarization of light, two different models of telegraph, a thermo-electric cell and two compasses. Thanks to the intercession of the physicist Stefano Marianini, a Nobili galvanometer was also obtained. A ‘Lamont apparatus’ priced at 780AL was made in Cologne and sent to the laboratory by Johann von Lamont himself. A Linari and Palmieri magneto-electric machine made in Verona by Giovanni Battista Battocchi, a Morse telegraph costing 600AL (made by the instrument maker Paolo Rocchetti in Padua), another telegraph made in Florence, and an ‘electromagnetic motor’ invented and manufactured by Julius Plücker, physics professor in Bonn, were also purchased.19 In 1853 a number of acoustics instruments made by the Parisian instrument maker Marloye arrived at the laboratory, and 420AL were spent on the purchase of a galvanometer multiplier (intended for electrophysiology experiments) that Emile Du Boys-Reymond had commissioned from the Berlin instrument maker Sauerwald.20 In the same year the laboratory paid 459AL for a lens made by the Viennese instrument makers Voigtländer and Sohn. Lastly, 2,480AL were spent on instruments commissioned to the Maison Duboscq: these included the arc lamp (290AL), the 100 Bunsen batteries (464AL) and the Silbermann heliostat (522AL) used for the electrical lighting spectacle held in 1853.21 The acquisition of new instruments did not stop there. Two years later, in 1855, a magneto-electric machine was bought from the instrument maker Emil Stoehrer in Leipzig at a cost of 700AL.22 Between 1855 and 1856, a further 50 items for the physics laboratory were received from Maison Pixii (or Maison Fabre et Kunemann) in Paris: most of the instruments arrived in Padua towards the end of 1855 in four chests weighing 344 kilograms, at a cost of 2,460AL; the others were dispatched in 1856 at a cost little over 1,400AL.23 In the following years, numerous electrical instruments were purchased from the Institute Techomatique. Other important instrument makers, whose names appear repeatedly in the receipts dating from the

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same period, include Giovanni Battista Amici, who worked at the Museo di fisica e storia naturale24 in Florence and who specialized in the field of optics, the Parisian instrument maker Froment, and the Viennese chemists and pharmacists Weinzierl and Lenoir. The number and prices of the instruments listed above give us a fairly clear idea of how the available funds were used. Nonetheless, the picture of the expenditure that characterized the economic life of the laboratory would not be complete without mentioning the cost of equipment maintenance. It is worth noting at least one operation authorized in 1850 and performed by Paolo Rocchetti, the instrument maker and technician for the Workshop of the Astronomic Observatory in Padua. The receipt issued by Rocchetti contains a list of the machines he repaired. The first operation, costing 110AL, involved two brass mirrors (with their stands and connected apparatus) used for optics experiments. The second item to be repaired was a ‘machine for demonstrating the collision laws’: on this machine ‘the column . . . and the parapet where the metal rods are inserted were rebuilt’. Rocchetti restored the machine to a ‘condition whereby it may be used for experiments’; the cost of this operation came to 100AL. For the repair work of two Dal Negro oligochronometers and of an Atwood machine the laboratory paid 120AL. Getting the ‘Poleni machine for demonstrating the time taken by a body to travel a particular distance’ back into working order cost 48AL. The repair and repainting of the supports of an ‘unequal-arm balance for determining the resistance of bodies to being moved’ cost 50AL.25

THE ECONOMIC LIFE OF THE LABORATORY The examination of the purchases made by the physics laboratory at the University of Padua in the central decades of the nineteenth century allows us to reconstruct a significant sample of the costs of instruments available on the market at that time (Table 1). The costs of the repairs carried out in 1850 by Paolo Rocchetti (Table 2) give us a comparison between the cost of purchasing new instruments and the expenses incurred subsequently to keep the laboratory’s apparatus in working order. Even more revealing of the real value of the instruments is a comparison with annual salaries (Table 3). Most of the instruments listed have prices ranging from 400AL to 600AL, while a particularly costly machine, such as the pneumatic machine made in the workshops of the Polytechnic Institute of Vienna, could exceed 1,100AL. This figure is just under the 1,200AL that represented the annual salary paid to the members of the Imperial Regio Istituto Veneto di Scienze, Lettere ed Arti.26 The salary of professors at the University of Padua, on the other hand, ranged from a minimum of 1,500AL for a temporary professor to a maximum of 4,000AL per year paid to a full professor nearing the end of his career. In 1838, when Francesco Zantedeschi was a ‘second level’ teacher at the Porta Nuova school in Milan, his annual salary amounted to 2,400AL. The following year, when he was promoted to ‘third level’ and transferred to the Santa Caterina school in Venice, his annual salary was increased to 2,700AL.27 The annual wage of a technician employed as a laboratory assistant at the University of Padua in 1852 was only 222AL; in 1841, Francesco Cobres, a technician and

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TABLE 1 Cost of instruments Figures given in Austrian Lire Instrument

Manufacturer

Place

Cost

Air pump Alphabetic telegraph Arc lamp Bunsen battery Armillary sphere Catadioptric microscope Coulombs’s balance Electromagnetic engine Galvanometer Hydraulic press Induction coil Magneto-electric machine Morse telegraph Microscope Objective Pneumatic machine Fortin pneumatic machine Silbermann heliostat Wollaston goniometer

Fabre et Kunemann Froment Duboscq Duboscq ? Giovanni Battista Amici Fabre et Kunemann Francesco Cobres Sauerwald ? Wenzel Batka Stöhrer Paolo Rocchetti Polytechnic Institute Voigtländer Polytechnic Institute Carlo Grindel Duboscq Angelo Bellani

Paris Paris Paris Paris ? Modena Paris Venice Berlin Munich Prague Leipzig Padua Vienna Vienna Vienna Milan Paris Milan

561 580 290 4.64 200 646 351 48 420 526 314 694 600 588 459 1,125 400 522 80

TABLE 2 Repair of the instruments Figures given in Austrian Lire Instrument

Cost

Brass mirrors for optical experiments Two oligochronometers and an Atwood machine Machine for demonstrating the collision laws Poleni machine Unequal-arm balance

110 120 100 48 50

instrument maker employed full-time by the Venice school, received an annual wage of 360AL; in 1837 Carlo Dell’Acqua was employed as a technician in the laboratory of the Sant’Alessandro School in Milan with the same salary. The discovery of the 1849 Catalogue of machines, instruments and books and the subsequent research carried out on related sources have made it possible to reconstruct the economic status of the physics laboratory at the University of Padua, with exhaustive information available for the period between January 1847 and December 1857 (Table 4).28 In 1847, the laboratory director Antonio Perego received funds amounting to 7,119AL, to which a further 768AL were added for the purchase

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TABLE 3 Annual salaries Figures given in Austrian Lire Position

Amount

Temporary professor (University of Padua) Full professor (University of Padua) ‘Second level’ professor (Liceo Porta Nuova, Milan) ‘Third level’ professor (Liceo Santa Caterina, Venice) Permanent members of the Imperial Royal Institute of Science Literature and Arts (Milan and Venice) Laboratory assistant (Venice, Liceo S. Caterina) Laboratory assistant (University of Padua) Laboratory assistant (Milan, Liceo S. Alessandro)

1,500 4,000 2,400 2,700 1,200 360 222 360

TABLE 4 Funds available to the Physics Laboratory of the University of Padua in the years 1847–1857 Figures given in Austrian Lire Year

Funds for instruments

Ordinary funds

Other funds

Total amount

1847

7,119

1,200

10,487

1848 1849 1850 1851 1852 1853 1854 1855 1856 1857 1847–1857

– – – 13,212 – – 4,663 – 750 1,800

1,200 – 1,200 1,200 1,200 1,000 1,200 1,200 1,200 1,200

768 1,400 – – 1,500 – – – – 1,500 – –

1,200 – 2,700 14,412 1,200 1,000 5,863 2,700 1,950 3,000 44,512

of two pieces of apparatus for experiments on the polarization of light, plus 1,400AL specifically earmarked for an Armstrong machine. The fund was completely used up on the purchase of instruments between 1847 and 1848.29 With regard to the immediately subsequent period, as far as I have been able to ascertain no funds were allocated in 1849. In the three-year period 1851 to 1853, a total of 13,212AL was granted for the purchase of new instruments,30 while 4,663AL was allocated in 1854 to 1855,31 750AL in 185632 and 1,800AL in 1857.33 To calculate the total resources available to the laboratory, we must also add the standing fund that was destined for consumables but was usually dipped into to help

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with the cost of new acquisitions. From 1847 to 1857, this standing fund always amounted to 1,200AL per year, except for 1849, when the fund was not granted, and 1853, when it was cut back to 1,000AL. To these resources we also need to add the 1,500AL allocated in 1850 for maintenance operations and, lastly, 1,500AL allocated between 1855 and 1857 for the materials needed for the experiments carried out by candidates for high school teaching posts.34 The grand total comes to 44,512AL: therefore in the eleven years between the beginning of 1847 and the end of 1857, the laboratory had an average of 4,046AL available per year, but the average goes up to 4,450AL if we bear in mind that for one year (1849) the university remained closed and received no financing.

AUSTRIAN POLICIES The more than 4,000AL received by the Padua laboratory every year was a considerable sum: it was equivalent to the annual salary of a full professor on the University’s payroll and around 11 times the annual salary of a lab assistant (Table 3). The almost 45,000AL obtained from the government and the more than 60 instruments purchased in the period between 1847 and 1857 certainly made the laboratory at the University of Padua a well-equipped one. The size of these resources is indicative of the Austrian government’s propensity to encourage the opening of new laboratories and give economic support to those already functioning. The same propensity can be observed also with regard to the region’s high schools (called Licei). The data available are incomplete and contain many gaps, and there have been no systematic studies in this field, but we know that high school laboratories were allocated annual funds: from the 1830s to the 1850s these ranged from 600 to 1,000AL per year. Similarly to the case of the University of Padua, the teachers in charge of high school laboratories were authorized to apply to the government for extra funds to cover the cost of instruments. For example, in 1843 the Sant’Alessandro high school in Milan was granted an extraordinary subsidy amounting to 1,800AL for the purchase of electromagnetic machines, while in 1844 it received 4,364AL for the purchase of further scientific instruments.35 A few years previously, in 1838, the Porta Nuova high school in Milan had been awarded 1,250AL, and earlier still an extraordinary fund amounting to 3,000AL was granted to the physics laboratory of the Verona high school, with a similar figure going to the Trento high school (which at that time was not part of the Kingdom of Lombardy-Venetia).36 In 1839, the Santa Caterina high school in Venice was awarded 4,000AL for the purchase of new machinery: a pneumatic machine from Vienna, some electromagnetic machines made in Milan by Carlo Dell’Acqua, instruments made by the French instrument makers Gurjon, Soleil and Bianchi, and lastly teaching and experimental models made by Francesco Cobres in Venice.37 At the same time, the Austrian government financed the opening of laboratories within institutions that promoted economic development and business initiatives. The best known example, in 1838, is the authorization to create the Società d’Incoraggiamento d’Arti e Mestieri in Milan.38 The Society, established as a result of the initiative of a number of local businessmen for the purpose of providing

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specialist training to the manufacturing sector, was mostly funded through the subscriptions paid by its members. However, the Austrian government actively supported the Società by allocating a public fund of 19,000AL, part of which was spent on teaching materials and the science laboratory for Giovanni Antonio Kramer’s school of chemistry.39 In the late 1830s, the Austrian government also supported the reopening of the Imperial Regio Istituto Veneto di Scienze, Lettere ed Arti,40 which, by providing assistance to entrepreneurs and supporting inventors, played a key role in local economic development. The government granted the Institute 40,000AL, again in this case intended partially to renovate the physics laboratory.41 In 1843 – to cite one final example – Luigi Alessandro Parravicini, an engineer who had already overseen the establishment of the Technical Institute in Novara (Kingdom of Sardinia), moved to Venice, where he set up a new Technical Institute whose aim was to provide professional training for industry. The Institute, whose graduates were allowed entrance to mathematics faculties, gave its students a solid grounding in laboratory sciences: in 1846, Parravicini requested and obtained around 40,000AL from the Austrian government, all of which went to set up a chemistry laboratory and to purchase the necessary instruments for natural history, physics and drawing laboratories.42 Despite the lacunae, these data about government investment in training and in the upkeep of laboratories draw our attention to the relationships between science and innovation in the pre-unification period. The general situation of backwardness in Lombardy-Venetia has been put down to various factors,43 including: the lack of an industrial revolution, which denied local science concrete opportunities for growth;44 a lack of unity and the rigid conservatism imposed by the European Restoration, which led to insurrections and political instability;45 the dominant speculative nature of scientific research which cultivated experimental work but was far removed from the practicalities of industry.46 Nevertheless, it has been observed that the factors preventing the North of Italy from keeping up with the industrialized European countries in the mid-nineteenth century fail to explain the sharp growth that took place from the 1870s onwards, in particular in Lombardy. Taking this argument as a starting point, a more recent historiography questioned the characteristics of a technical-scientific culture that had become consolidated in the pre-unification period and that formed the background to the remarkable development that took place in the closing decades of that century. It focused in particular on the work of civil engineers and technical experts, and on the role played by institutions.47 The research carried out on the University of Padua laboratory contributes to this attempt to identify the factors that contributed in an effective way to the development of the North of Italy in the pre-unification period. Thanks to this study, the idea that the ‘stinginess’ of the Austrian Empire towards the Italian regions was one of the obstacles hindering the development of technological and scientific culture is turned on its head. The economic resources available to the laboratory at the University of Padua and the simultaneous investments in other laboratories in the Kingdom of Lombardy-Venetia combine with other phenomena that have already been studied, such as the privileged status of scientists, who were authorized to arrange scientific

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conferences (Italian scientists held three conferences in Lombardy-Venetia under Austrian reign: Padua 1842, Milan 1844 and Venice 1847),48 and the reforms that led to the rise of a modern patent system.49 If we take these elements together, they point in the direction of a government that, far from thwarting local initiative, tried to promote it in a variety of ways. The reasons of the Austrian administration’s relative willingness to invest in the promotion of scientific progress cannot be examined here; moreover, the scientific policies of the Austrian Empire are as yet awaiting to be examined in depth, as only recently some attempts have been made to unravel them.50 What is clear is that the growing concern with science was the outcome of a reaction to the climate that prevailed in the two decades following the Congress of Vienna, characterized by a strong clericalism imbued with a deeply entrenched hostility to France, materialism and the proliferation of a class of scientists and technical experts. What led to the defeat of this hostility towards the end of the 1830s was the pressure exerted by liberal movements inspired by a vigorous rationalism and in keeping with the ideal of science as a model of knowledge. The drive to modernization, as has already been argued, came from an elite group of Vienna liberals who identified molecular physics, chemistry and evolutionary theories as symbols of the fight for freedom.51 The investments in the development in Lombardy-Venetia were the result of a changed attitude within the Austrian government, which, especially in the 1840s, began to foster modernization because its advocates believed that scientific progress was a means to social pacification. The main indicator of this change is perhaps the project – drawn up in Vienna by Franz Serafin Exner – that envisaged the creation of new facilities and new institutional opportunities for the teaching of the sciences and of technology.52 However, it was not until the revolt of 1848 that a real departure from the previous cultural tradition was made and the Empire made a definitive shift towards the promotion of scientific knowledge.

CONCLUSION: LOCAL SCIENCE AND INTERNATIONAL NETWORKS As well as allowing us to piece together the picture of its economic resources, the data regarding the University of Padua draw attention to the relationship between local science and European science. The data for the years 1847 to 1857 have allowed us to analyse where the available resources were invested and at the same time indirectly provide a picture of the ties that were formed between the needs of the laboratory and the technical skills that could be found abroad (Figure 1). Most of the resources (53 per cent) were invested in the skills of French instrument makers, who, until the 1860s, were the leading actors of a market sector that had Paris as the benchmark for the whole of Europe. The fact that a significant segment (18 per cent) of the resources was invested in the German market reflects the importance that Germany was gradually gaining in this sphere. In particular, between the second half of the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth century, Germany became the most important European supplier of instruments for science teaching. The instruments bought within the Austrian Empire (13 per cent) were almost all made in Vienna. These figures on the one hand highlight the political

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FIGURE 1 Destination of the funds invested by the Physics Laboratory of the University of Padua in the purchase of instruments, 1847–1857

Sources: The data are retrieved from archival documents cited in this chapter (see notes 20–26 and 32–36) and the correspondence between Francesco Zantedeschi and the instrument makers. For a detailed list of relevant materials see Christian Carletti, ‘Fonti per la Storia della Scienza: Le Spese del Gabinetto di Fisica dell’Università di Padova durante la Direzione Zantedeschi, 1849–1857’, Quaderni per la Storia dell’Università di Padova, 42 (2009), pp. 255–67; Christian Carletti, ‘L’Epistolario Zantedeschi, 1853–1858’, Quaderni per la Storia dell’Università di Padova, 43 (2010), pp. 325–43.

independence of the Kingdom of Lombardy-Venetia from Austria, while on the other they show an interest in the work of instrument makers whose influence and skills are yet to be adequately studied and assessed: among them are the technicians of the Polytechnisches Institut and the Viennese instrument makers Voigtländer and Georg Simon Plössl for optics, Weinzierl and Lenoir for chemistry, Ludwig Schulmeister and Josef Leiter for medicine, and Heinrich Kappeller for weather instruments. As for the remaining 7 per cent, it was impossible to ascertain how it was used and it includes the purchase of instruments of doubtful origin. Although in some cases the sources seem to hint at the acquisition of apparatus produced in Great Britain, on the whole it is clear that the production of British scientific instruments was of little or no interest. This fact could perhaps be explained by the strong attraction exercised by France and Germany in this sector and by the fact that France, and not England, was traditionally the main scientific and political partner of the Italian intellectual elites.53 The fact that only 9 per cent of the funds remained in Italy is of particular importance, and it confirms the view held by historians that there were very few local instrument makers in the mid-nineteenth century, and those few were often non-professionals whose work was generally well below the standards of quality achieved by foreign instrument makers. In the case of Lombardy in the pre-unification period, it is difficult to come up with anyone other than the well-known names Angelo Bellani, Alessandro Duroni, Carlo Grindel and Carlo Dell’Acqua, all of whom were practising in Milan, while as far as Veneto is concerned we can mention only Francesco Cobres and the Rocchetti workshop at the Astronomical Observatory in Padua.54

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Moreover, the role of these instrument makers was limited to maintenance and repair work, or to the production of instruments whose lower costs were detrimentally counterbalanced by inferior quality. The case of Salvatore Dal Negro offers a very telling demonstration of this: towards the end of the 1820s, he commissioned a pneumatic machine from the Milanese instrument maker Carlo Grindel.55 Dal Negro, who would have preferred to make this purchase abroad, was forced to accept the request to choose an instrument maker who would keep the costs down; however, he did not fail to inform the Chancellor’s Office that the choice of Grindel was the result of a compromise he accepted reluctantly, and that to find a good machine it would have been necessary ‘to turn to the instrument makers of Paris’.56 For a number of Bunsen batteries, used for the public experiments on electric lighting mentioned at the beginning of this chapter, the laboratory director Francesco Zantedeschi turned to the Venetian technician Giacomo Longhi. In this case, Zantedeschi explicitily asked Longhi for a product made ‘according to the knowledge applied in the workshops of the Parisian engineers and instrument makers’, whom Zantedeschi had had occasion to meet during a recent visit to the French capital.57 In this case, as in many others, the Parisian instrument makers were held up as the model to follow; thus the fact that their instruments were copied, or maybe purchased and then reproduced, confirms that local instrument makers were far behind their French counterparts. The hypothesis that these processes led to the establishment of knowledge transfer dynamics which could potentially improve the skills of local instrument makers is by and large confuted. The case of Tecnomasio Italiano, a firm of instrument makers created in Milan by Carlo Dall’Acqua, Luigi Longoni and Ignazio Porro, is an exception not backed up by the commercial development of other manufacturers operating locally.58 One of the elements that played a key role in hindering the development of local expertise was undoubtedly the diffidence shown towards local instrument makers, as a result of which their participation in research activities was greatly limited. On this note, the dispute about duplex telegraphy in which Francesco Zantedeschi played an active role is a case in point. In October 1854, during a trip to Vienna, Zantedeschi was invited by the director of the Austrian telegraph service, Wilhelm Gintl, to witness a number of experiments conducted on the Vienna-Linz telegraph line. Until that time, transmission between two telegraph stations had to take place alternately: sending a telegraph message to a certain station meant being unable to receive one at the same time. Gintl was making one of the first attempts at two-way transmission and was aiming to devise a new system that would allow two operators in two different telegraph stations to send a dispatch at the same time as they were receiving another. As soon as he returned from his visit to Vienna, Zantedeschi, well aware of the economic benefits of finding a solution to this problem, embarked on a working relationship with Paolo Rocchetti, the University of Padua’s mechanic and instrument maker. Rocchetti produced the first experimental models designed by Zantedeschi and assisted him during the twoway transmission tests which took place in Rocchetti’s own workshops.59 Zantedeschi published his results in 1854,60 but the debate quickly spread to involve physicists and technicians working abroad. The issue of two-way transmission

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also gained ground in the milieu of the Académie des Sciences and important essays appeared in the magazine Cosmos, where Antoine Masson, Frédéric de la Provostaye and Paul Desains disputed the issue with Léon Foucault, Jules Regnauld and Louis Breguet.61 When the debate caught fire, Zantedeschi abandoned his partnership with Paolo Rocchetti and moved to France. In January 1855, he carried out his first experiments on two-way telegraphy using French lines and in the following months he turned to Fabre & Kunemann, one of the most important houses of instrument makers in Paris, to help put the finishing touches to his project. This interaction with Fabre & Kunemann, who provided input in the form of suggesting significant changes to the telegraph model designed by Zantedeschi, led to a business partnership. In August 1855, Fabre & Kunemann wrote to Zantedeschi to inform him that they would be happy to make the telegraph he had designed, and they stipulated their conditions for the partnership: they would take out a patent in the name of both the inventor (Zantedeschi) and the manufacturer (Fabre & Kunemann); the costs were to be borne jointly and later covered by the income from sale of the devices; patents were to be taken out first in France, then in Belgium and lastly in the United States; the association would last as long as the patents lasted; Zantedeschi was to keep the instrument makers up to date with any scientific progress in this field and in return Fabre & Kunemann would make new experimental models for him.62 The abandonment of his partnership with Paolo Rocchetti in favour of collaboration with an experienced instrument maker turned out to be a profitable decision. Fabre & Kunemann provided Zantedeschi with access to a network of skills in a market of innovation that was foreign to Rocchetti and that remained inaccessible to Italian instrument makers until at least the end of the nineteenth century.

NOTES 1. Francesco Zantedeschi, Proposta di Applicazione della Luce Elettrica ai Fari ed Esperimento Eseguito sulla Torre del Campidoglio a Roma nel 1855 dai Signori FabbriScarpellini, e Proposta della Luce Elettrica ai Fari, ed Esperienze eseguite nell’I. R. Università di Padova (Venice: Antonelli, 1866), pp. 4–5. 2. Francesco Zantedeschi, ‘Del moto rotatorio dell’arco luminoso dell’elettromotore voltiano (1856)’, in Vita e Opere di Francesco Zantedeschi, ed. Giovanni Colombini (Padua: Dipartimento di Fisica G. Galilei, 1989), 188. 3. ‘Notizia’, Gazzetta Privilegiata di Venezia 792 (1853), 2 September. 4. Francesco Zantedeschi, letter to the ‘Direzione della Facoltà Filosofica dell’Università di Padova’, 24 January 1853, published in Zantedeschi, Proposta di Applicazione della Luce Elettrica, pp. 2–3. 5. Maison Duboscq, letter to Francesco Zantedeschi, ‘Fourni pour le Cabinet de physique de l’université Royale et Impériale de Padoue’, March 1853, Biblioteca Civica di Verona (from now on abbreviated as BCV), Zantedeschi, folder 876. On the Maison Duboscq: Paolo Brenni, ‘19th Century French Scientific Instrument Makers. XIII: Soleil, Duboscq, and their Successors’, Bulletin of the Scientific Instrument Society, 51 (1996), pp. 7–16.

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6. Alessandro Duroni, letter to Francesco Zantedeschi, Milan 7 January 1853, Accademia di Agricoltura Scienze e Lettere di Verona (from now on abbreviated as ASLV), Zantedeschi, Epistolario, vol. VI. On Duroni see Michele Falzone Del Barbarò, ‘Alessandro Duroni’, in Dizionario biografico degli italiani, http://www. treccani.it/enciclopedia/alessandro-duroni_%28Dizionario-Biografico%29/# [accessed 7 March 2013]. 7. For an overview on the role played by laboratories in the nineteenth century physical research: Robert Fox and Anna Guagnini, Laboratories, Workshops, and Sites: Concepts and Practices of Research in Industrial Europe, 1800–1914 (Office for History of Science and Technology, University of California, Berkeley, 1999); Christa Jungnickel and Russell McCormmach, Intellectual Mastery of Nature (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1986). 8. The University of Padua was structured in four Faculties: Philosophy and Mathematics, Politics and Law, Theology, Surgery and Medicine. For a history of the University of Padua in the nineteenth century see Giampietro Berti, L’Università di Padova dal 1814 al 1850 (Padua: Antilla, 2011); Maria Cecilia Ghetti, ‘L’Università’, in Padova 1814–1866. Istituzioni, Protagonisti, Vicende di una Città, Piero Del Negro and Nino Agostinetti (eds) (Padua: Programma, 1991), pp. 65–89. 9. The Luogotenenza was the local administrative reference point in the provinces of the Austrian Empire. In the case of the Venetian Region the Luogotenenza was based in Venice. 10. On the professors of physics at the University of Padua during the nineteenth century, see Sandra Casellato and Luisa Pigatto, Professori di Materie Scientifiche all’Università di Padova nell’Ottocento (Trieste: LINT, 1996). 11. Rettorato, letter to ‘Governo di Venezia’, Padua 18 December 1823: Archivio Storico dell’Università di Padova (from now on abbreviated as ASUP), Rettorato, 1823, folder 36, n. 131. 12. All prices are converted to AL and rounded down. For the exchange rates see Angelo Martini, Manuale di Metrologia (Rome: E.R.A., 1976; first edition 1883). 13. A full list of the instruments is in Dal Negro, letter to the Rettorato, Padua 22 February 1826: ASUP, Rettorato, 1825, folder 42, n. 209. Further details on Rochon micrometer, Wollaston goniometer, Dollond microscope and Tessarolo cronometer are in Dal Negro, letter to the Rettorato, Padua 18 December 1823: ASUP, Rettorato, 1823, folder 36, n. 131. On the steam machine model see Governo, letter to the Rettorato, Venice 19 October 1826: ASUP, Rettorato 1826, folder 43, n. 541. On the double effect pneumatic machine and the hydrostatic balance see Dal Negro, letter to the Rettorato, Padua 29 March 1826: ASUP, Rettorato, 1825, folder 42, n. 372. On the Fortin pneumatic machine and the armillary sphere see Dal Negro, letter to the Rettorato, Padua 6 August 1828: ASUP, Rettorato, 1825, folder 42, n. 444. 14. Studio Filosofico, letter to the Rettorato, Padua 8 December 1845: ASUP, Rettorato, 1846/1847, folder 96, n. 188. 15. See Casellato and Pigatto, Professori di Materie Scientifiche all’Università di Padova nell’Ottocento.

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16. Antonio Perego, letter to the Rettorato, Padua 27 August 1845: ASUP, Rettorato, 1846/1847, folder 39. 17. See: Studio Filosofico, letter to the Rettorato, Padua 8 December 1845, ASUP, Rettorato, 1846/1847, folder 96, file 188; Governo, letter to the Rettorato, Venice 2 January 1847, ASUP, Rettorato 1846/1847, folder 96, file 188. 18. See Maison Duboscq, receipts of payment addressed to Francesco Zantedeschi, Paris 13 June 1851 and Paris 15 October 1851: BCV, Zantedeschi, folder 876. 19. The instruments purchased are listed in the ms. ‘Scritto il 10 di giugno del 1852’: BCV, Zantedeschi, folder 876. 20. Sauerwald, letter to Francesco Zantedeschi, Berlin 13 July 1853: ASLV, Zantedeschi, box III, folder I. 21. Maison Duboscq, receipt of payment addressed to Francesco Zantedeschi, Paris 5 March 1853: BCV, Zantedeschi, folder 876. 22. Emile Stoehrer, letter to Francesco Zantedeschi, Leipzig 10 December 1855: ASLV, Zantedeschi, folder III, file I. 23. Ms. ‘Fabre e Kunemann, Strumenti spediti il 22 Dicembre 1855 e il 19 Febbraio 1856’: ASLV, Zantedeschi, folder III, file I. 24. Museum of Physics and Natural History. 25. Paolo Rocchetti, Officina Meccanica, Osservatorio Astronomico di Padova, payment receipt, Padua, 22 July 1850: ASLV, Zantedeschi, box III, folder I. 26. Imperial Royal Venetian Institute of Science, Literature and Arts, see Giuseppe Gullino, L’Istituto Veneto di Scienze, Lettere ed Arti: Dalla Rifondazione alla Seconda Guerra Mondiale (1838–1946) (Venice: Istituto Veneto di Scienze, Lettere ed Arti, 1996), p. 32. 27. ‘Direzione del Liceo Santa Caterina di Venezia’, letter to Francesco Zantedeschi, Venice 9 April 1839: ASLV, Fondo Zantedeschi, box III, folder III, n. 94. 28. Ms. ‘Catalogo delle Macchine, degli Strumenti e dei Libri; Ed Inventario dei Mobili ed Oggetti spettanti al Gabinetto Fisico dell’I. R. Università di Padova’: ASUP, Rettorato, 1849, folder 103, transcribed and published in Giampietro Berti and Christian Carletti, ‘Gli strumenti della fisica’, Quaderni per la storia dell’Università di Padova, 41 (n.d.), pp. 212–59. For a description of the instruments owned by the laboratory in 1849 see Francesco Zantedeschi, Dell’Origine e del Progresso della Fisica Teorica e Sperimentale nell’Archiginnasio Padovano (Venice: Naratovich, 1858). The Museum of the History of Physics at the University of Padua keeps part of the scientific instruments mentioned in the Catalogue; see Duecento Anni di Elettricità (Rovigo: La Grafica, 1995); Sofia Talas and Giulio Peruzzi (eds), Bagliori nel Vuoto. Dall’Uovo Elettrico ai Raggi X: Un Percorso tra Elettricità e Pneumatica dal Seicento a Oggi (Canova: Treviso, 2004); Gian Antonio Salandin and Maria Pancino, Il Teatro di Filosofia Sperimentale di Giovanni Poleni (Trieste: LINT, 1987). 29. The instruments purchased are listed in the ms. ‘Catalogo delle macchine’, instruments from n. 1069 to 1101. 30. Rettorato, letter to Francesco Zantedeschi, Padua 28 February 1854: ASLV, Zantedeschi, box II, folder I.

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31. Rettorato, letter to Francesco Zantedeschi, Padua 2 October 1856: ASLV, Zantedeschi, box II, folder I. 32. ‘Liquidazione finale del resoconto per l’anno amministrativo 1856 del Gabinetto di Fisica dell’I. R. Università di Padova’: ASLV, Zantedeschi, box II, folder I. 33. ‘Liquidazione finale del resoconto per l’anno amministrativo 1857 del Gabinetto di Fisica dell’I. R. Università di Padova’: ASLV, Zantedeschi, box II, folder I. 34. ‘Liquidazione del conto prodotto dal professore di fisica in base al decreto n. 12893 per il restauro di alcune macchine presenti nel Gabinetto’: ASLV, Zantedeschi, box II, folder I. 35. ‘La direzione del Liceo S. Alessandro di Milano’, 2 August 1844, n. 1197: Archive of the Liceo S. Alessandro, box 54, folder 7. 36. Francesco Zantedeschi, letter to the ‘Direzione del Liceo Santa Caterina di Venezia’, Venice 31 January 1839: BCV, Zantedeschi, folder 877. 37. Ms. ‘Cenno storico sui Gabinetti di Fisica e Storia Naturale ed Orto Botanico dell’I. R. Liceo di Venezia’, Padua 4 December 1856: BCV, Zantedeschi, folder 868. 38. Society for the Encouragement of Crafts and Manufacturing. 39. Carlo G. Lacaita, L’intelligenza Produttiva. Imprenditori, Tecnici e Operai Nella Società d’Incoraggiamento d’Arti e Mestieri di Milano (1838–1988) (Milan: Electa, 1990), pp. 20–1. 40. Imperial Royal Venetian Institute of Science, Letters and Arts. 41. Gullino, L’Istituto Veneto di Scienze, Lettere ed Arti, p. 19. 42. See Claudia Salmini, ‘L’Istruzione Pubblica dal Regno italico all’Unità’, in Girolamo Arnaldi and Pastore Stocchi (eds), Storia della Cultura Veneta. Vol. 6, Dall’Età Napoleonica alla Prima Guerra Mondiale, (Vicenza: Neri Pozza, 1986), pp. 59–78; Claudia Salmini, ‘L’Istruzione Primaria a Venezia e la Nascita della Scuola Tecnica’, in Donatella Calabi and Giuseppe Bonaccorso (eds), Dopo la Serenissima: Società, Amministrazione e Cultura nell’Ottocento Veneto (Venice: Istituto Veneto di Scienze, Lettere ed Arti, 2001), pp. 227–8. 43. For an overview on the history of Italian science before the unification see Giovanni Paoloni, ‘Scienza, università e accademie dagli Stati preunitari allo Stato unitario’, in Scienze in Italia, 1840–1880. Una storia da fare (2 vols), Vol. 1, Quaderni Pristem (Milan: Bocconi University Press, 1993), pp. 1–32. 44. Renato Giannetti, ‘Il progresso tecnologico’, in Franco Amatori et al. (eds), Storia d’Italia, Annali 15. L’industria (Turin: Einaudi, 1999), p. 393; Roberto Maiocchi, ‘Il ruolo delle scienze nello sviluppo industriale italiano’, in Gianni Micheli (ed.), Storia d’Italia, Annali 3. Scienza e Tecnica nella Cultura e nella Società dal Rinascimento a Oggi (Turin: Einaudi, 1980), p. 874. 45. Luigi Cerruti, ‘Dante’s Bones: Geography and History of Italian Science, 1748–1870’, in Kostas Gavroglu (ed.), Sciences in the European Periphery During the Enlightenment (Dodrecht: Kluwer, 1999), pp. 95–178; Giuseppe Penso, Scienziati Italiani e Unità d’Italia: Storia dell’Accademia Nazionale dei XL (Rome: Bardi, 1978).

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46. Pietro Redondi, ‘Cultura e Scienza dall’Illuminismo al Positivismo’, in Gianni Micheli (ed.), Storia d’Italia, Annali 3. Scienza e Tecnica nella Cultura e nella Società dal Rinascimento a Oggi (Turin: Einaudi, 1980), pp. 677–811. 47. Giorgio Bigatti, La Città Operosa: Milano nell’Ottocento (Milan: Franco Angeli, 2000); Luciano Cafagna and Nicola Crepax, Atti di Intelligenza e Sviluppo Economico: Saggi per il Bicentenario della Nascita di Carlo Cattaneo (Bologna: Il Mulino, 2001); Augusto Ghetti (ed.), Ingegneria e Politica nell’Italia dell’Ottocento: Pietro Paleocapa (Venezia: Istituto Veneto di Scienze, Lettere ed Arti, 1990); Marco Meriggi, ‘Elites, Istruzione Tecnica, Professionismo Nuovo: Un Dibattito del Medio Ottocento’, in Giuliana Biagioli and Rossano Pazzagli (eds), Agricoltura come Manifattura: Istruzione Agraria, Professionalizzazione e Sviluppo Agricolo nell’Ottocento (Florence: Olschki, 2004), pp. 183–201; Michela Minesso, Tecnici e modernizzazione nel Veneto: la scuola dell’Università di Padova e la professione dell’ingegnere (1806–1915) (Trieste: LINT, 1992). 48. Maria Laura Soppelsa, ‘Scienza e storia della scienza’, in Girolamo Arnaldi and Pastore Stocchi (eds), Storia della Cultura Veneta, Vol. 6, Dall’età Napoleonica alla Prima Guerra Mondiale (Vicenza: Neri Pozza, 1986), p. 513. 49. Christian Carletti, ‘Top-Down Legislation Versus Local Traditions: Entrepreneurship and Innovation Strategies in the Lombardo-Veneto Kingdom’, Revue Economique, 64 (2013), pp. 55–68. 50. Mitchell G. Ash and Jan Surman, The Nationalization of Scientific Knowledge in the Habsburg Empire, 1848–1918 (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012); Deborah R. Coen, Vienna in the Age of Uncertainty: Science, Liberalism, and Private Life (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2008); Robert W. Rosner, Chemie in Österreich, 1740–1914: Lehre, Forschung, Industrie (Vienna: Böhlau Verlag, 2004); Werner Michler, Darwinismus und Literatur: naturwissenschaftliche und literarische Intelligenz in Österreich?: 1859–1914 (Vienna: Böhlau Verlag 1999). 51. Coen, Vienna in the Age of Uncertainty, p. 74. 52. Coen, Vienna in the Age of Uncertainty, pp. 58–9. 53. For an overview on the nineteenth century instruments and manufacturers see Christine Blondel, Françoise Parot, Anthony Turner and Mari Williams (eds), Studies in the History of Scientific Instruments (London: Turner Books, 1989); Gerard Turner, Nineteenth-century Scientific Instruments (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1983); Peter R. De Clercq (ed.), Nineteenth-century Scientific Instruments and Their Makers (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1985). 54. On Italian instrument makers, see Paolo Brenni and Massimo Misti, ‘Costruttori Italiani di Strumenti Scientifici nel XIX Secolo’, Nuncius, 1 (1986), pp. 141–78; Emilio Borchi, Renzo Macii and Flavio Vetrano, Strumenti di fisica e cultura scientifica nell’Ottocento in Italia (Florence: IP, 1995). 55. Salvatore Dal Negro, letter to the Rettorato, Padua 6 August 1828: ASUP, Rettorato, 1825, folder 42, n. 444. 56. Salvatore Dal Negro, letter to the Università di Padova, Padua 3 June 1826: ASUP, Rettorato 1825, folder 42, n. 372.

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57. Zantedeschi, ‘Del moto Rotatorio dell’Arco Luminoso’, p. 187. 58. For a recent perspective see Stefania Licini, ‘Bartolomeo Cabella e il suo Tecnomasio: Storia di un Fallimento’, Imprese e Storia, 35 (2007), pp. 77–93. 59. Francesco Zantedeschi, Memoria sul Simultaneo Passaggio delle Correnti Elettriche (Venice: Antonelli, 1855), pp. 6–7. 60. Francesco Zantedeschi, ‘Delle correnti elettriche simultanee che passano in direzioni opposte sul medesimo filo’, Ateneo Italiano. Revue des sciences physiques à Paris, 3 (1854), pp. 56–60. 61. ‘Académie des Sciences. Séance du 2 janvier 1854’, Cosmos, 4 (1854), pp. 26–7; ‘Phénomènes Résultant de l’Action Simultanée de deux Piles unies par les Pôles de Même Nom ou de Noms Contraires’, Cosmos, 4 (1854 ), pp. 213–18; ‘Nouvelles et Faits Divers’, Cosmos, 4 (1855), pp. 198–9. 62. See Fabre & Kunemann, letter to Francesco Zantedeschi, Paris 21 August 1855 and Francesco Zantedeschi, letter to Fabre & Kunemann, Paris 29 August 1855: BCV, folder 842.

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Mechanics ‘Made in Italy’: Innovation and Expertise Evolution. A Case Study from the Packaging Industry, 1960–1998 MATTEO SERAFINI CIS, University of Bologna

Abstract The chapter explores the approach to technological innovation and the evolution of technical expertise that characterized the establishment of the Italian instrumental mechanics at international level during the second half of the twentieth century. One of the most dynamic sectors of this industry is considered here, namely the production of packaging machinery. By focusing on G.D S.p.A., a leading company with headquarters in the Emilia Romagna region, and more precisely on the activity carried out by the technical design office, the aim is to offer an in-depth examination of the innovation and learning practices developed by the technical personnel of that office at firmlevel. The history of the G.D technical design office can be described in terms of an evolutionary inter-generational learning process, whose two cornerstones were respectively the definition and constant updating of a core technical pattern on which the machinery designed and produced by the company was based, and the improvement of the technical personnel’s problem-solving capabilities. Although the chapter deals with a specific case study, it is suggested that these were distinctive characteristics of other successful sectors of the Italian instrumental mechanics.

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MECHANICS ‘MADE IN ITALY’: A SUCCESSFUL SPECIALIZATION The metal-mechanical industry played a pivotal role in the post-Second World War development of Italy and despite the present crisis it remains one of the most important sectors of the national economy, especially in reference to employment, number of firms and exports.1 Apart from ‘heavy’ mechanics (i.e. iron industry and automotive), Italy established productions of capital goods that stand out worldwide. In this sense, although textiles, clothing, leather, furniture and jewels are seen as the traditional ‘Made in Italy’ manufactured products, this label can be extended to instrumental mechanics since it is one of the distinctive features both of the historical development of the Italian industry and of its present position in the international competition. Over the decades this sector has been made up of various specializations, which range from traditional sub-compartments (e.g. agricultural machines, machine tools) to productions for more particular technical tasks (e.g. packaging machinery, plastics processing devices). Overall Italian instrumental mechanics is concentrated in the most industrialized regions (i.e. Lombardy, Emilia-Romagna, Veneto, Piedmont) and has emerged through three phases intertwined to the general economic development of the country. The initial take-off – driven by the mechanization of agriculture and by civil engineering – happened in the first half of the twentieth century. Subsequently, during the so-called ‘Italian economic miracle’ (i.e. between the end of the Second World War and 1963) and the following period that includes the 1970s, the sector expanded considerably, characterized by new specializations answering the needs of developing industries. In the 1980s and 1990s the consolidation of its overall international position and an internal evolution that redefined the equilibrium among the various specializations characterized the compartment.2 The present article considers one of the most dynamic specializations of the Italian instrumental mechanics, i.e. the manufacture of packaging machinery. Two main issues will be discussed – namely the approach to technological innovation and the evolution of technical expertise – which are of concern for all the sub-sectors of the Italian instrumental mechanics and central within the present debate on its competitiveness in the global scenario. By focusing on a specific case study, the aim is to examine how the technical personnel faced the challenge of innovation during the second half of the twentieth century – that is when this compartment established itself at national and international level. The packaging machines – invisible to the final consumer – contributed to the development of mass consumption in the second post-war period. Already noted by Borgström for the food industry, the packages of a wide range of consumer goods have important transport, commercial and hygienic functions.3 The packaging machines are thus central in such production-consumption dynamics. The first steps of the Italian packaging production are connected to two Bolognese companies (i.e. ACMA and SASIB) in the 1920s and 1930s. However, the real development of the national packaging industry happened during the second half of the twentieth century. It was in that period that Italy became, through a catching-up process, the second leading global producer of automatic packaging machinery after Germany.4 Over the decades the sector experienced dynamics that in varying degree

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characterized the entire national instrumental mechanics – such as strong interactions with customers, the introduction of electronics, product diversification and integration, the reorganization of the corporate structures and the establishment of commercial and maintenance networks at international level.5 In terms of companies, workforce and exports most of the Italian packaging industry is located in Emilia-Romagna, especially in its capital, Bologna.6 This urban compartment emerged as a supplier to the growing demands of different national and international manufactures – most notably, from the food, pharmaceutical, chemical and tobacco ones. After ACMA and SASIB – whose very first customers were two local firms (one private and one public) operating respectively in the pharmaceutical and tobacco sector – two other Bolognese mechanical companies (i.e. Officine Casaralta and Officine Cevolani), during the Second World War, launched the manufacturing of machinery for canning military rations.7 Subsequently, this local industry grew between the mid-1940s and the 1980s through a gemmation process that led to four following generations of enterprises manufacturing a wide range of automatic machines with a high degree of customization.8 The new firms were generally founded by technicians previously employed in other local packaging companies, supplying the demands of markets other than those of their former employers. Furthermore, the first generations of technicians shared similar education tracks, usually based on the local technical high schools and their work experiences.9 In their development the Bolognese packaging companies could also exploit a local supply chain of small-sized firms in charge of most of all the manufacturing of the machines’ components – whereas the final producers retained functions internally such as design, assembly and testing and sales. In this sense – although it did not fit perfectly the analytical definition of Marshallian industrial district – the Bolognese packaging compartment was generally numbered among the Italian industrial districts on the basis of characteristics such as flexible production, local inter-firm relations (especially between small and medium enterprises) and a common social background.10 The economists highlighted, however, its peculiarities as local production system and the structural changes occurred since the 1980s (e.g. the emergence of industrial groups) that have transformed the shape of the Bolognese packaging industry.11 In the following two sections I will analyse the case of G.D S.p.A. – one of the oldest and most important companies of the Bolognese compartment, and one of the three world leaders in tobacco packaging.12 Although it would be improper to draw general considerations from an individual case, it will provide an opportunity for an in-depth examination of the innovation and learning practices developed by the technical personnel at firm-level – highlighting issues of concern for the entire Italian instrumental mechanics. Although I am aware that the company is formed by different technical communities – each one deserving proper attention – the focus is on G.D’s technical designers as machinery design is the distinctive technical activity of the packaging companies.13 Thus, this working group is identified, in the first place, by one of the activities that form the production cycle and the unit in charge of it within the corporate organization – that is G.D’s technical design office. Yet, the G.D designers form a technical community whose boundaries and identity evolved during its history, and that was capable of exploiting external relations for its own

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development. My analysis considers the innovation practices and the evolution of the expertise that characterized this corporate technical community in the period 1960–1998. In order to follow the G.D technicians and engineers in their concrete design activity,14 I used the history of one of the company’s main products (i.e. G.D’s cigarette packer) as an access point.

ENTERING THE TOBACCO PACKAGING INDUSTRY, 1960s–1970s G.D was founded in 1923 by Mario Ghirardi (financial backer and owner) and Guido Dall’Oglio (technical director) for the production of motorcycles that quickly became famous in motor racing. Yet, severe economic difficulties followed the initial success, bringing to a first change of ownership and limiting the production of motorcycles.15 G.D was then bought in 1939 by Enzo Seragnoli (1909–1983) – who had begun his successful entrepreneurial career with the grain trade, and whose family still controls the company and the industrial group built around it. At the end of the Second World War, the production was turned to packaging machinery, although it seems that a first automatic machine – for checking the intake of the fulminate of mercury in the holes of cartridges – had already been designed for the army during the war.16 Such a turn is connected to the recruitment, in 1941, of Ariosto Seragnoli (1913–1973) – cousin of Enzo and previous employee of ACMA, considered the incubator of the entire Bolognese packaging compartment. Ariosto worked in ACMA as an electrician and supplemented his salary with occasional repair work of radios and other mechanical (or electromechanical) devices. Apart from attending some courses in mechanical drawing, he was a self-taught technician.17 At the end of the war, when G.D was still a small-sized firm, the two cousins directed the firm towards packaging – with Ariosto as director of the technical design activities. After certain initial commercial difficulties due to some initial machines exploiting hydraulic mechanisms that showed insurmountable problems, Seragnoli in collaboration with a few others turned the design to more mechanical solutions. Thanks to new machines (especially the N model, 1950) the company began to carve out its own place specializing in the production of machinery for the confectionery industry.18 Thus, G.D started its packaging manufacture in direct competition with ACMA, from which in the early 1950s Ariosto recruited former colleagues in order to improve the company’s technical expertise in the new business.19 Although the production for the confectionery sector remained the main business throughout the 1950s, in those years G.D also made its first entry into the tobacco packaging compartment, producing a piece of machinery for the Italian state monopoly – which owned a plant in Bologna (i.e. the ‘Manifattura Tabacchi’).20 Therefore, a business that was to become global originated from local roots. Yet, the first important order (i.e. the cellophaner 4350/Pack delivered in 1962) came from W.D. & H.O. Wills (a company of the Imperial Tobacco Group, UK) after an international exhibition – to overwrap its ‘Woodbine’ cigarette packets.21 In its conquest of this new market G.D’s designers were able to develop a continuous and gradual learning process that led the company from the design of the devices performing the last and simpler production operations (i.e. cellophaner, cartoner,

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case packer) to that of the most important and complex machines (i.e. cigarette packer in the 1960s–1970s, cigarette maker in the 1980s–1990s, filter rod maker in the 2000s) – arriving to be the sole producer capable of manufacturing the entire cigarette production line used after the tobacco processing. In order to achieve such a result, G.D’s technical design office, over the years, had to learn to design not just single machines but an entire production system. The first collaborations with both local and international cigarette producers enabled Seragnoli and colleagues to access their production facilities – fundamental places for seeing directly the cigarette manufacturing cycle and thus learning about its needs and the technological level achieved until then by the (first-comer) machinery suppliers. These direct experiences contributed to identify techno-commercial opportunities thanks to which G.D strengthened its position.22 Thus, the expansion of this new business was first achieved through the introduction of G.D’s first packer for soft cigarette packets (i.e. X1, see Figure 1) – launched around 1972 after a design process that took a great part of the 1960s.23 The X1 was a ‘one-line’ machine (i.e. all the operations took place along the same line), subdivided in two main sections. In the first section the cigarette group was set up and the inner wrapping performed, whereas in the latter the packet was completed with the addition of the external one. In defining the X1’s working, Seragnoli overcame the technical level achieved until then by the other packer manufacturers – answering the same operational problems with new solutions.24 In doing so, he defined a machine that met the fundamental needs of cigarette producers better than the machines of the competitors. In that period, the main technical requests of the clients were high production speed and high care in handling the product (to avoid damage to the cigarettes).25 For this purpose the X1 was equipped, first of all, with a system (i.e. hopper and levers) that formed the group of cigarettes to be wrapped in a single packet layer by layer – unlike the traditional solution of singling out all the cigarettes at once. That enabled the cigarettes to be grouped in closer succession. Secondly, Seragnoli and collaborators devised an alternating motion (i.e. start and stop) packaging mechanism based on mechanical wheels transporting the cigarettes on their long side (the more

FIGURE 1: The first X1 with cigarette feeder. Kindly donated by Mr Bruno Belvederi to the author, n.d.

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resistant one) and that were capable to speed up the packaging process (see Figure 2). Instead of using the traditional fixed chucks around which the packets were set up, the wheels of the X1 were provided with pockets and mobile levers forming around the cigarettes and the wrapper a temporary rigid frame (a ‘mobile chuck’) on which the various pleats were performed. Along with these major innovations, other minor and more particular arrangements contributed to obtain a more rapid and more reliable packer than those of the competitors.26 Far from being a smooth process, the design of the X1 was confronted with obstacles addressed and solved by trial and error over a long period – as it is testified by the three prototypes the working group devised and tested before obtaining a packaging mechanism that achieved the desired performance. Before the end of the design process, the last prototype was tested at the factory of a cigarette producer who was to become the first buyer of the X1. As G.D could not collaborate with an important local client such as the Bolognese Manifattura Tabacchi – because of the exclusive contract the Italian state monopoly had with SASIB for the supply of soft cigarette packers – the G.D designers tested the X1 within a plant owned in West Berlin by Reemtsma – one of the major German cigarette producers in those years.27 The interaction with Reemtsma and its technical personnel led to a series of improvements that contributed not only to strengthening the working of the packer but also to enhance the expertise and the array of technical solutions at the disposal

FIGURE 2: The X1’s packaging mechanism. Patent no. IT 983255 (1974), fig. 1, copy provided by the Italian Patent and Trademark Office (UIBM) on 23 July 2013.

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of the G.D designers. In this sense, such interaction exemplifies the adaptation of a standard machinery to the specific needs of the clients, which is one of the central techno-commercial challenges for the designers of capital goods. On the other hand, the collaboration with Reemtsma underlines that the users of production machinery own valuable information concerning the machines manufactured and are gatekeepers of the (intended or unintended) circulation of knowledge among their suppliers. In fact, Reemtsma asked to modify the X1 in order to package a smaller number of cigarettes instead of the usual twenty. In West Germany the cigarette sale depended mainly on automatic dispensers capable of giving either one or half a mark change, and consequently a change in price forced the cigarette producers to change also the number of cigarettes per packet in order to comply with such a ratio. The modification made to satisfy Reemtsma turned out to be useful for managing whatsoever number of cigarettes per group and thus was incorporated as a standard arrangement both of the X1 and the subsequent models of G.D packer. Furthermore, G.D designers had to improve the X1 in order to meet the product quality standards requested by Reemtsma – which were much higher than the ones fixed by the confectionery companies with whom G.D was used to working. Finally, smaller but important improvements were achieved after the activation of the first exemplar of the X1 within the production line of Reemtsma. At this level, Reemtsma’s technical personnel – that is both the technicians in charge of machinery supervision and the machine operators (who in that period were usually women) – played a pivotal role, both through the regular use of the X1 (a good example of disembodied learning by using)28 and thanks to their past experiences on the cigarette packers of other manufacturers.29 In a short time G.D received a large amount of orders for the X1, whose value was to exceed its own commercial success. In fact, in designing the X1 Seragnoli and collaborators had defined a general technical pattern that G.D’s technical design office used until the end of the 1990s. The configuration of the X1 – that is the general shape and the fundamental arrangements that embody the operational principle (i.e. how the X1 worked as a packer)30 – immediately became for the community of G.D designers the pattern of reference for strengthening and extending their projects of cigarette packers. In this sense, this technical pattern was progressively applied, adapted, improved and updated by the various generations of G.D designers. Thus, the technical pattern became central within the expertise developed over the years by the G.D designers as a working community – influencing, at its turn, the direction of such development. The first adaptation of the technical pattern used for the X1 generated the X2 – the second G.D packer, designed for the production of the other most common kind of cigarette packets (i.e. the hinge-lid one).31 The hinge-lid packer was also characterized by high production speed (360 ppm against the usual 120–150) and high product handling capacity. The X2 – tested at the local Manifattura Tabacchi as it did not infringe the exclusive agreement between the state monopoly and SASIB mentioned above – was introduced in 1975, three years after the launching of the soft packer.32 The shorter design period that the definition of the X2 required compared to the X1 – although the setting-up of the hinge-lid packet needs more complex operations – testifies the extreme usefulness of the pattern represented by the X1 configuration. In fact, the X2 replicated the main technical arrangements of the X1

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(i.e. the one-line structure with two sections, the cigarette group setting-up system, the use of a packaging mechanism based on wheels forming a mobile chuck), with some modified or added mechanisms specific for the setting-up of the hinge-lid packet.33 Therefore, G.D designers exploited (re-adapting it) the technical pattern previously defined – extending its application through the definition of two standard configurations of their cigarette packer according to the kind of packet to be produced. The X1 and the X2 were achievements of the first two generations of G.D designers. In that period the technical design office was vertically organized – with Seragnoli as the ‘kingpin’, Riccardo Mattei (1926–2010) as the de facto director of the design activities, a few main collaborators in charge of the most important design tasks and others focusing on the definition of the machinery components. This vertical set-up represented both the usual working organization exploited for designing the single machine,34 and the subdivision of the G.D designers between the ranks of the technical design office. Thus, in those years a designer usually entered G.D’s office working on minor machinery and then rose through the ranks over a fairly long period during which he learnt to design (and was in charge of) gradually more complex sections of the machines.35 The X1 represented an extraordinary project for a technical design office committed, except for the cellophaner 4350/Pack, to design packaging machines for the confectionery sector. Therefore the soft packer represented both an entrepreneurial and a learning challenge requiring a dedicated organization. Consequently, Ariosto organized a design team that worked outside G.D’s plant to keep the project secret and to carry out the work independently of the routines of the technical design office. Furthermore, the X1 team had privileged (that is faster) access to the workshop when it had to order the parts necessary for the machine.36 Over the years the group counted at least eleven members. The central design nucleus consisted of three people: Ariosto Seragnoli (team leader), Gastone Dall’Osso (1919–2002) and Bruno Belvederi (1934–). The former defined the X1’s structure and the working scheme, whereas Dall’Osso and Belvederi developed the machine groups.37 Most of their collaborators were in charge of drawing the single components. Finally, the team was completed by a member dealing with the electric system and two fitters.38 The X2 team, instead, worked within G.D’s technical design office, signifying that the design of cigarette packers from an extraordinary project started to become part of the core (routine) work of the company’s technical community. In this sense, the introduction of both the X1 and the X2 represented a transition for the G.D designers, not only because these two machines started to change the technical focus of the community, but also because in that moment the office lost its technical pivot. In fact Seragnoli died in 1973, leaving the X1 at the first stage of its market penetration and a first general scheme of the hinge-lid packer. Thus the X2 was developed by his collaborators. The new central design nucleus was composed by Riccardo Mattei (who was appointed director of the office and supervisor of the X2 project), Dall’Osso and Antonio Gamberini (1934–) – who had already designed part of the 4350/Pack. Overall the working group – still vertically organized – was formed by at least 12 people, showing few overlaps with the personnel of the X1 team.39 The X1 and X2 teams give a picture of the training and the expertise of the first two generations of G.D designers. In general, the members of both the teams

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developed their technical skills through their working experience – in some cases begun in the workshop and not directly as a designer – and through courses in mechanics attended (occasionally as evening classes) at local technical high schools. That was true both for the main designers and their collaborators. I have already mentioned that Seragnoli was a self-taught technician who acquired his work experience at ACMA. Dall’Osso attended classes in mechanics at the most important technical school of Bologna, the Aldini-Valeriani Institute, but at the same time he gained experience also working as apprentice within local mechanical workshops. Belvederi was introduced to mechanical design by his father, who was a former G.D technician when the company produced motorbikes. Mattei, who did not have a diploma, started to work in G.D’s testing division and then rose through the ranks developing his expertise on the job. Gamberini entered G.D almost immediately after having graduated at the Aldini-Valeriani Institute – like Zanasi. Other X1 and X2 technicians such as Brizzi, Folli and Rabbi attended evening classes at the AldiniValeriani and the Fioravanti Institute while they worked for G.D.40 Within both the working groups only the electrician Armando Neri was a university graduate – however he did not have any tasks related to mechanical design. In the years in which the X1 and the X2 were devised, G.D designers exploited trial and error approaches for the accomplishment of fundamental design tasks such as the calculation of the motion laws and the design of the main mechanical components. In fact, the calculation capabilities of the first G.D designers were limited,41 and the mathematical functions that were known within the office could not describe with the necessary precision the complex movements made by the kinematic mechanisms. Therefore the motion laws of the machines – on the basis of which the kinematic mechanisms in charge of the packaging operations are programmed – were defined by trial and error, proceeding by empirical adaptations until the desired performance was obtained. Such an approach was used, for example, by Seragnoli and Belvederi for defining the motion law of the X1.42 Also the design of the kinematic mechanisms and the machinery’s central elements (i.e. cams, Maltese crosses, gears) were defined through a mix of geometric drawing methods and empirical arrangements, which required the contribution also of the workers who were in charge of manufacturing those parts in the workshop.43 Furthermore, it is important to point out that, because the drawings of the parts were two-dimensional, difficulties were experienced in visualizing the movements of complex mechanisms. In order to overcome the limits of their drawing tools, they utilized wooden models manufactured by the company’s carpenters.44 Thus the capacities of G.D’s technical design office rested principally on the knowledge and operational experience gained on the job – that is through a ‘learning by doing’ process.45 Part of this expertise was tacit – crystallized in the personal ability of using the available instruments and complying with the problems that were encountered and solved project after project. Another part, on the other hand, was codified (i.e. stored) in order to speed up the design activities and standardize their outputs as much as possible. For example, as the design procedures of the cams were complicated and required empirical arrangements the exemplars that first matched the expected characteristics were used as matrixes of the following items.46

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BECOMING A GLOBAL LEADER, 1980s–1990s Over thirty years G.D had turned from a small-sized firm to a growing company that in the mid-1970s counted about 800 employees and was able to supply packaging machinery to two different industrial sectors.47 Moreover, the three tobacco packaging machines that were on offer (i.e. 4350/Pack, X1, X2) enabled it to enter the rich niche of the tobacco industry in a leading position. In that period, G.D’s principal market for both its packaging productions was Europe, where the company had strengthened its commercial network substituting part of the external sales agents with commercial offices in Dusseldorf (Germany), London (UK) and Paris (France) – which acted also as service centres.48 In general, the cigarette production plants located in Europe had limited dimensions and highly qualified technical personnel, which played a central role as G.D’s collaborators in the adjustment and maintenance of its machines.49 It was at that point, when the position in Europe was already solid, that G.D started to direct its attention to the US market – the most important one because of the presence of world-leading cigarette producers such as Philip Morris, R.J. Reynolds and Brown & Williamson. Obtaining their orders meant securing the future development of the company – which since the 1980s started to abandon the manufacturing of packaging machinery for the confectionery industry, focusing increasingly on the tobacco sector. Apart from the challenge of managing the overseas post-sales assistance,50 G.D had to deal with the different approach to machinery characteristic of the US clients. In the second half of the 1970s G.D began to enter this market principally with the X2 and with an improved version of the X1 (X1 roll, 1979).51 However, soon G.D became aware of the fact that the US cigarette producers – whose production plants ran continuously – desired machines requiring simpler technical interventions, because they expected their technical personnel only to supervise the production phases without learning how to carry out complex maintenance, adjustment and repair works. Thus, their approach exposed some deficiencies in the G.D packers that had not emerged until then, precisely because of the more active involvement of the technical personnel of the European clients in the maintenance and adjustment work. Consequently, G.D designers were forced to design more ‘autonomous’ machines.52 The soft packer X500 – launched in 1987 after three years of revision and design work – was the first major result of the redefinition and adaptation process carried out with a view to consolidating G.D’s position in the US market.53 In planning the X500 the G.D designers exploited the same general configuration previously applied to the X1 and X1 roll, but used a clearer and more precise technical drawing, replacing some operation groups and adding new automatisms to improve the functionality. Like the previous models, the X500 was essentially a mechanical apparatus. However, its electric system was already beginning to include some of the efforts being made by the G.D designers in the 1980s to apply electronic components to their machines – initially limited as support to simplify some of their aspects. One of the factors that urged G.D designers towards electronics was the launching by SASIB, the other Bolognese tobacco packaging company, of machinery exploiting electric technical solutions to perform movements that G.D designers still conceived

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as achievable through mechanical means. This move was prompted by the transfer of electronic competences from Olivetti – which was controlled by the industrial group CIR (‘Compagnie Industriali Riunite’) that acquired SASIB in the late 1970s.54 Compared to both its predecessors the X500 ran at a higher production speed (500 ppm). The most important result was, however, that the new soft packer was much easier to manage, requiring only minor adjustments when in operation. The achievement of such goal reflects, at a broader level, the efforts begun in that decade by the G.D designers in order to improve their fundamental technical capacities and the beginning of their consequent transformation as corporate technical community.55 The X500 was designed by a team of about 20 people, subdivided into four groups – each one in charge of designing a specific part of the machine. Group leaders were Gamberini (project manager), Brizzi (1944–), Alessandro Minarelli (1951–) and Fiorenzo Draghetti. Gamberini and Brizzi represented the consolidated tradition of G.D technicians. Both already involved in the X2 project, they got ahead along the gradual career track that characterized the community of G.D designers. In fact, Gamberini had become the de facto director of the technical design office in the absence of Mattei, and Brizzi moved up through the ranks and came to be in charge of the main design tasks. Minarelli and Draghetti – hired respectively in 1977 and 1981 – represented, on the other hand, the launch of the first structural attempts made by G.D’s technical design office to absorb engineers, i.e. university graduates.56 Gamberini, who was one of the most enthusiastic advocates of the employment of engineers within the technical design office, insisted that, in order to improve further the tobacco packaging machines, a sound theoretical education complemented by a period of training under the supervision of the experienced G.D technicians was needed.57 Therefore, during the 1980s G.D’s technical design office started to tackle the problem of absorbing new personnel with a higher theoretical preparation in order to improve its design capacities, mixing old and new expertise in a continuous, evolutionary process. Obviously, this updating process entailed – and the G.D designers were aware of it58 – clearing the way for an (at least partial) redefinition of the career tracks within the technical design office – with the engineers able to go through the ranks more quickly than what had been experienced until then by the previous G.D designers. Thus, Minarelli and Draghetti were the first university graduates – both in mechanical engineering at the local University of Bologna – hired by G.D with mechanical design tasks. In confirmation of the necessity of mixing their higher theoretical preparation with the expertise developed over the years by the previous two generations of G.D designers, Minarelli and Draghetti spent an apprenticeship period of approximately two years under Dall’Osso’s supervision within the so-called ‘study-office’ (ufficio-studio) – created for them as the technical design office had not developed formal procedures yet for integrating engineers.59 Thus, in those years a third generation of G.D designers – formed both by technicians and engineers and characterized by technical expertise improved through an evolutionary consolidation – started to develop, which eventually acted as trait d’union between what G.D’s technical design office had been initially and what it would become in the following decades.

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The X500 team, however, benefited not only from new personnel with a more theoretical preparation, but also from the first initiatives launched in that decade to improve the design tools of the technical office. These efforts – carried out also in the 1990s – cleared the way for the creation of new working units within G.D’s technical sector that, over the previous period, had been formed substantially by the central technical design office, the formats office (focused on the customization of the machines) and the electric office.60 In fact, most of the mechanical components of the X500 were drawn using G.D’s first Computer-Aided Design packet (i.e. CADAM). CADAM ran on a host IBM mainframe computer and G.D organized a CAD division to manage it.61 The mechanical drawing techniques used with CADAM were the same applied with the previous drafting machine. Yet, CADAM quickened the drawing procedures and enabled graphic visualization and precision never achieved before.62 It is important to note, however, that if the CAD system soon became an important resource for the technical design office, its appropriation by the G.D designers was gradual and, in some cases, not smooth. Thus, the new drawing tool coexisted for a period with the old one.63 Secondly, and more importantly, the X500 team benefited from the first improvements in the calculation capacities applied to the definition of motion laws, kinematic mechanisms and the profile of the cams. In fact, during the 1980s some engineers and technicians developed first calculation programmes that defined simple typical kinematic mechanisms and cams – strengthening the standardization and codification both of the design operations and of their outputs.64 These programmes ran on a HP programmable desktop calculator, equipped with magnetic cards and chemical paper reels. Moreover, G.D’s engineers and technicians began to introduce new mathematical functions in order to obtain more precise and complex motion laws. The first improvements were achieved introducing the use of polynomial functions that allowed better management of the changes in speed and acceleration along the packaging track.65 Before the end of the 1980s, the efforts made to improve the calculation capacities were strengthened through the launch of a calculation working group within the CAD division; one of their first tasks was to copy and improve the first calculation programmes on the IBM host computer on which CADAM ran. Thus, during the 1980s, a CAD division and a calculation (CAL) team emerged in order to support the core community of G.D designers in improving its fundamental design (problem-solving) capabilities – overcoming the limits and issues experienced during the previous decades. These new technical units started to specialize in developing both design and calculation tools – acting as a sort of inner software house – and in the study of the machines’ core components such as the cams – thus participating actively in the design process. That meant also that the CAD and CAL units were not simply suppliers of tools with the specific task of simplifying as much as possible their use by the G.D designers who had different levels of preparation and acquaintance with computers. They were themselves users of these instruments, obtaining a direct experience that contributed to their improvement. The integration of these new specialized units with the technical design office was to be strengthened during the following decade. In the 1990s G.D grew further in dimensions and expanded its global presence, adding new branches located in Asia (i.e. China, Japan and Singapore) alongside those already present in Europe, the US

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and Brazil.66 Yet, the technical design functions remained tied to Bologna, depending on a community of technicians and engineers that continued to recruit new personnel locally and whose inner organization and expertise were further evolving – a fact that is evinced from the design of the X3000, one of the last packers based on the technical pattern devised more than twenty years earlier. In fact, in those years along with a series of machines with similar productive performance, the G.D designers worked to improve the production speed of their cigarette packers further. By the end of the 1990s, the output of their packers reached 700 packets per minute. These machines – developed more or less contemporarily – were the X700 for soft packets and the X3000 for the hinge-lid ones. The X3000 emerged through two steps: initially as the X2000, and then after the revision of that project to solve some deficiencies.67 The G.D designers exploited the technical pattern once again which had already been defined since the X1, benefiting also from a more essential use of electronics in terms of programmable electric engines, Programmable Logic Controllers (PLCs) and relative software.68 In doing so, they improved the technical pattern in order to create machines adapted to flexible productions. In this sense, the two main sections of the G.D packers were standardized in two separable modules, enabling the substitution only of the second section in order to obtain alternatively either a soft (X700) or a hinge-lid packer (X3000).69 Thus, thanks to such modularity, the two standard configurations of the G.D packer became concretely interchangeable. The X3000 was designed by representatives of three generations of G.D designers, pointing out their overlaps and the long turnover dynamics inside the technical office. Initially, Brizzi, Draghetti and Roberto Osti (i.e. second and third generations) redefined technical elements that had been controversial within the X2000. Subsequently Minarelli led a team of about twenty people that designed the entire machine. Among them there were four engineers and representatives of the fourth generation of G.D designers that was rising within the office.70 The X3000 team was assisted by the calculation working group that in the 1990s developed in an autonomous office after its launch inside the CAD division. From the initial three or four members, the calculation team had grown at the time of the X3000 to eleven members. Seven of them held a technical diploma, whereas the other four were engineering graduates. One of them was a graduate in mechanical engineering, but had specialized in the use of solid modelling software. The other three were all nuclear engineers – thus, with a very unusual background for a mechanical company like G.D – recruited for their preparation in mathematics and in the use of computers.71 For some years the new-born calculation office was also in charge of training a group of high-level technicians, initially selected on the basis of an abstract logic test commissioned to a psychologist. Before joining the technical design office, these new employees spent two years within the calculation team, being educated on the fundamental aspects concerning the main components of the packaging machines and contributing to the activities of the CAL unit.72 These are clear indications of how the expertise within G.D was changing and of the consequent attempts to create new inner training tracks. During the 1990s the CAL and CAD offices contributed to the further development of the capabilities of the G.D designers, improving the design and calculation tools

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that started to be devised in the previous decade. In doing so, these offices also exploited problem-solving collaborations with members of the local university. In fact, in defining the high-speed packers the technical design office had, at its disposal, new software for the study of the kinematic mechanisms, implementing a new geometric approach based on Assur’s sub-groups. The programme drew on a research project carried out at the Department of Applied Mechanics of the University of Bologna. At the same time, routines enabling a bi-dimensional simulation of the kinematic mechanisms within CADAM’s environment using the spatial coordinates provided by the new software were devised.73 The tools applied for the definition of the motion laws were also improved. New special polynomial functions were adopted, which allowed inserting intermediate conditions without altering the entire curve of the motion law. This upgrade was achieved by collaborating with a professor of numerical analysis working within the Department of Mathematics of the University of Bologna. G.D supported with financial grants some of his students and collaborators, who spent internship periods within the CAL office. The CAL office introduced also a stochastic mathematical optimizer with the help of a young graduate in informatics at the Department of Mathematics of the University of Bologna – who entered G.D after his graduation with a grant for an internship.74 These new efforts directed to improve the fundamental design capabilities led the CAL and CAD offices to be steadily more central to the design process. That contributed further to redefine the borders and the identity of the community of G.D designers, integrating within it new personnel who brought new expertise, approaches and working tools.

CONCLUSION During the second half of the twentieth century, G.D rose to the level of a leading multinational company within an international industry, that of the production of automatic packaging machinery. G.D’s success story is based, among other things, on the distinctive contribution offered by its technical sector. Here I considered the more specific role played by the members of its technical design office. The history of the G.D designers can be described in terms of an evolutionary intergenerational learning process. At the firm-level, the four generations of G.D designers who were active between the 1960s and the 1990s contributed first to entering a new technoindustrial sector (i.e. packaging), then to the diversification of the company’s products (from confectionery to tobacco packaging machinery), and finally, moving on from the production of new and ever more complex machines, to the manufacture of entire production systems. In order to achieve that result, the G.D designers developed various learning practices and channels, coped with a variety of external techno-commercial factors and evolved as a professional community. Two elements emerge as the cornerstones of the technological innovation strategy developed by the community of G.D designers in the period considered. The first one, as the case of the packer reveals, is the definition and exploitation of a core technical pattern concerning the kind of machinery to be designed, which was transmitted, applied, adapted, improved and updated over the years. In doing so, the G.D designers answered the requests of the clients, and built around the general

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pattern an array of more particular technical solutions that during the last years started to draw more widely on electronics. Thus, they improved their products through an incremental and evolutionary approach. Secondly, but equally importantly, the innovation carried out by the G.D designers rested also on the improvement of their fundamental problem-solving capacities. The 1960s and 1970s were devoted to the development of the first nucleus of knowledge regarding tobacco packaging machinery. Subsequently, in the 1980s and 1990s, G.D designers not only expanded the previous pool of technical solutions but also managed the evolutionary consolidation of their design skills. Such improvement was achieved by absorbing new expertise and tools brought in by new personnel and integrating them into the former technical tradition – a process that required both the old and new generations of designers to teach and learn from each other. The renovation of their expertise contributed to redefine the internal organization of the technical design sector and their identity as professional community. With regard to the debate reported in this volume by Vasta and Nuvolari on the innovation capacities of the Italian economic system, the present case study reveals issues that not only characterized the past of the Italian instrumental mechanics but that are of concern also for its present situation (and maybe for that of other Italian industries). In fact, the story of G.D can be regarded as an example of the success obtained by the Italian equipment firms – which are one of the components of the heterogeneous ‘small firms network’ which Malerba considers, in his moderate pessimist view, as the more effective part of the dualistic national innovation system over the past decades. Unlike the core national ‘R&D system’, these firms were able to carve out profitable and international positions exploiting an incremental innovation approach based on engineering skills, learning by doing, using or interacting, and by product customization.75 Today these firms and the part of the Italian innovation system to which they belong have to face the challenges posed by the growing international competition. The present study does not intend to discuss these and the other issues outlined in Nuvolari and Vasta’s essay (this volume) – it would be impossible to generalize on the basis of a particular case study. What this study – based on the historical qualitative analysis of G.D – exemplifies is the crucial role played by the corporate technical communities, drawing attention on their approaches to innovation and human capital formation. The focus on the learning processes of the corporate technical communities in general, and on their overall evolution as professional groups, can contribute to the understanding of the historical development of the innovative capabilities of the Italian industry, of its success stories and its failures, not only with an eye to the past but also to the present and the future.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I wish to thank G.D S.p.A. and its President Mrs Isabella Seragnoli for having trusted my project and allowed me to carry out this research. A special thanks goes also to all the people within G.D who generously assisted me in the process of collecting the fundamental information in their possession, and allowed me to benefit from their collective memory of the company and of its work communities. The responsibility of all the contents published in this chapter is completely mine and none of the

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positions expressed here can be ascribed to G.D S.p.A., its personnel or the people interviewed. Finally, on the academic side, I would like to thank Anna Guagnini and Giuliano Pancaldi for their guidance and support when I was carrying out this research as a PhD student and also afterwards. Stimulating comments were provided by Francesco Lissoni as discussant of my PhD thesis. A preliminary version of this research was presented in 2011 in the context of the seminar series of the Department of Social Studies of the University of Brescia and included in their working papers.

NOTES 1. See for example: Margherita Russo (ed.), L’industria meccanica in Italia: Analisi spaziale delle specializzazioni produttive 1951–2001 (Rome: Carocci editore, 2008); Istat, Rapporto sulla competitività dei settori produttivi (2013), http://www.istat.it/it/ files/2013/02/Rapporto-competitivit%C3%A0.pdf [accessed 8 November 2013]. 2. For an updated quantitative and qualitative overview of the Italian instrumental mechanics see Tito Menzani, La macchina nel tempo: La Meccanica strumentale italiana dalle origini all’affermazione in campo internazionale (Bologna: CLUEB, 2011). See also the bibliography cited by Menzani in the notes. 3. Georg Borgström, ‘Food Processing and Packaging’, in Marvin Kranzberg and Carol W. Pursell Jr. (eds), Technology in Western Civilization: Technology in the Twentieth Century (New York: Oxford University Press, 1967, vol. II), pp. 386–402. 4. In 2010, Germany and Italy controlled respectively 28.2 per cent and 25.7 per cent of the world exports. The main markets for Italy are China (10.7 per cent), US (7.4 per cent), France (7.1 per cent), Germany (5.1 per cent) (for all the data see UCIMA, UCIMA Book 2011: The Packaging Machinery Industry in 2010 (2011), pp. 25 and 28, http://www.ucima.it/ [accessed 15 August 2011]). 5. Menzani, La macchina nel tempo, pp. 47–51. 6. In Emilia-Romagna there is ‘the highest concentration of companies in the sector in the world. [. . .] The true production capital is Bologna’ (UCIMA, UCIMA Book 2011, p. 18). 7. Menzani, La macchina nel tempo, p. 114. 8. On the historical development of the Bolognese packaging industry, see: Vittorio Capecchi, ‘In Search of Flexibility: The Bologna Metalworking Industry, 1900–1992’, in Charles F. Sabel and Jonathan Zeitlin (eds), World of Possibilities: Flexibility and Mass Production in Western Industrialization (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), pp. 381–418; Aurelio Alaimo and Vittorio Capecchi, ‘L’industria delle macchine automatiche a Bologna: un caso di specializzazione flessibile’, in Pier Paolo D’Attorre and Vera Zamagni (eds), Distretti, imprese, classe operaia: L’industrializzazione dell’Emilia-Romagna (Milan: Feltrinelli, 1992), pp. 191–238; Roberto Curti and Maura Grandi (eds), Per niente fragile: Bologna capitale del packaging (Bologna: Compositori, 1997), based on an exhibition held in 1994 at the Museo del Patrimonio Industriale di Bologna (Industrial Heritage Museum of Bologna). For a figure synthesizing the genealogy of the main companies, see Andrea Lipparini, Imprese, relazioni tra imprese e posizionamento competitivo (Milan: Etas Libri, 1995), p. 102.

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9. For example, Curti and Grandi, Per niente fragile, pp. 162–3 highlighted that 27 of the 48 main technical designers of the 47 principal companies founded between 1924 and 1991 attended courses at the Aldini-Valeriani Institute, the most important technical high school of Bologna in that period. 10. See for example: Sebastiano Brusco, ‘The Emilian Model: Productive Decentralisation and Social Integration’, Cambridge Journal of Economics, 6 (1982), pp. 167–84; Capecchi, ‘In Search of Flexibility’. 11. See for example: Lipparini, Imprese, relazioni tra imprese; Sebastiano Brusco et al., ‘The Evolution of Industrial Districts in Emilia-Romagna’, in Francesco Cossentino, Frank Pyke and Werner Sengenberger (eds), Local and Regional Response to Global Pressure: The Case of Italy and Its Industrial Districts (Geneva: International Institute for Labour Studies, 1996); Francesco Brioschi, Maria Sole Brioschi and Giulio Cainelli, ‘From the Industrial District to the District Group: An Insight into the Evolution of Local Capitalism in Italy’, Regional Studies, 36 (2002), pp. 1037–52; Fiorenza Belussi, ‘The Generation of Contextual Knowledge through Communication Processes. The Case of the Packaging Machinery Industry in the Bologna District’, in Fiorenza Belussi, Giorgio Gottardi and Enzo Rullani (eds), The Technological Evolution of Industrial Districts (Boston: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 2003), pp. 341–65. 12. G.D has more than 2,500 employees, twelve foreign branches and in 2012 it reported a consolidated turnover of €624 million. G.D is also the leading company of the COESIA Group, an international industrial group comprising 14 enterprises (http://www.gidi.it/en/home/about_us [accessed 6 November 2013]). The company has two main competitors in Germany. It is active in a market composed of large private and public clients operating worldwide and ordering personalized products. 13. Within the Bolognese compartment, the companies carry out most of their design tasks internally (Lipparini, Imprese, relazioni tra imprese, fig. 10.4, p. 110; Belussi, ‘The generation of contextual knowledge’, tab. 7, p. 361). Design as process ‘typically involves tentative layout (or layouts) of the arrangement and dimensions of the artifice, checking of the candidate device by mathematical analysis or experimental test to see if it does the required job, and modification when (as commonly happens at first) it does not’; see Walter G. Vincenti, What Engineers Know and How They Know It: Analytical Studies from Aeronautical History (Baltimore and London: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1990), p. 7. 14. As my paper concerns an Italian case study, in talking about the G.D designers I will retain the Italian distinction between the terms tecnico (technician) and ingegnere (engineer). Thereby, with ‘technician’, I will refer to highly qualified technical personnel without a university degree. On the other hand, with ‘engineers’ I will distinguish those technicians who are university graduates. 15. For a history of the motorcycle period see Enrico Ruffini, Moto G.D L’aquila a due tempi (Milan: Giorgio Nada Editore, 1990). 16. Bruno Belvederi, interview by Tito Menzani, n.d., p. 2 (I wish to thank Dr. Menzani for having provided me the transcripts of the interviews he conducted with some of G.D’s technicians and for his precious support in retrieving other research materials).

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In Bologna the army had a plant (i.e. the Laboratorio Pirotecnico) that already during the First World War used ‘[. . .] special automatic machines for filling cartridges’ (p. 64 in Giuliano Pancaldi, ‘Wartime Chemistry in Italy: Industry, the Military, and the Professors’, in Jeffrey A. Johnson and Roy MacLeod (eds), Frontline and Factory: Comparative Perspectives on the Chemical Industry at War, 1914–1924 (Berlin, Paris and New York: Springer, 2006), pp. 61–74). 17. See Vera Zamagni and Tito Menzani, Mimeo, chap. 6, p. 9. Zamagni and Menzani wrote the history of G.D from the perspective of business studies. I wish to thank both of them for having allowed me to read their manuscript. 18. On this first packaging production see: Zamagni and Menzani, Mimeo, chap. 2, pp. 8–10 and 12, and chap 5, tab. 5.2, p. 3; G.D, Notiziario G.D, 34 (1979), p. 14 and 37–8 (1980), p. 14. The name of the first machine produced after the Second World War was 2002, an adjustable automatic hydraulic wrapping machine for chocolate bars and the like presented at the fair of Milan in September 1946 (see the company’s newsletter Notiziario G.D, 32–3 (1978), p. 13). 19. Seragnoli offered them higher wages and managed to recruit some of the best fitters of ACMA. See Gaetano Bortolotti, interview by Aurelio Alaimo and Vittorio Capecchi, 20 July 1987, Macchine Automatiche, folder 1, interview 4, pp. 29–30, Archive of the Industrial Heritage Museum (from here on AMPI), Bologna (I wish to thank Mr. Antonio Campigotto, curator of the Archive, for his kind support during the consultation of the oral history documents on the Bolognese packaging compartment). 20. See Zamagni and Menzani, Mimeo, chap. 3, p. 6; Curti and Grandi, Per niente fragile, p. 74. The state monopoly and its Bolognese plant had already determined the entry in the tobacco packaging of another local company (i.e. SASIB) in 1937 – which, during the Second World War, produced machines on the basis of the licences that the state monopoly acquired from the American Machine Foundry (AMF) in order to avoid the commercial embargo imposed on the fascist regime (Capecchi, ‘In Search of Flexibility’, pp. 388–9). 21. By 1970 95 per cent of the cellophaners used by the Wills company was manufactured by G.D and by the end of 1974 more than 1,000 4350/Packs had sold all over the world (G.D, Notiziario G.D, 8 (1970), p. 8 and 21–2 (1974), pp. 3–6). 22. In general, Seragnoli and collaborators collected information on techno-commercial opportunities not only by themselves, but also through the fitters and the sales staff (Walter Zanasi, interview by Alaimo, 15 December 1987, f. 1, i. 7, pp. 14–15, AMPI). 23. Belvederi, interview by Matteo Serafini, 26 November 2010; Umberto Rabbi, interview by Alaimo, 8 March 1988, f. 2, i. 27, pp. 1–3, AMPI. 24. In that period the main competitors of G.D were (in order of country): SASIB (Bologna, Italy), Molins (UK), AMF (USA), Schmermund, Focke, Hauni, and Nietman (West Germany). 25. The X1 ran 360 packets per minute (ppm) against the then-standard 200. 26. On the cigarette group setting up system see: Belvederi, interview by Serafini, 26 April 2010; patent applications no. IT19650001580 (1965) and IT19670001614

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(1967) (retrieved from http://worldwide.espacenet.com/?locale=en_EP [accessed 23 February 2013]). On the packaging mechanism see: Belvederi, interview by Serafini, 26 November 2010; patent applications no. IT19670001621 (1967) and IT19730003395 (1973) (retrieved from http://worldwide.espacenet.com/?locale=en_ EP [accessed 23 February 2013]). 27. Belvederi, interview by Serafini, 26 April and 26 November 2010. After the Second World War all the major US and European cigarette producers had plants in West Berlin thanks to the tax breaks offered for favouring the industrialization of the western part of the city (Marco Brizzi, interview by Serafini, 13 May 2010). 28. Nathan Rosenberg, Inside the Black Box: Technology and Economics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982), pp. 122–4. 29. Belvederi, interview by Serafini, 26 April and 26 November 2010. 30. The definition of the X1’s configuration (and consequently its characterization as broader reference pattern) follows that of ‘normal configuration’ expressed by Vincenti, What Engineers Know, p. 209. 31. For images regarding the X2 and the following machines, refer to G.D’s website: http://www.gidi.it/en/home/products. 32. G.D, Notiziario G.D 24–5 (1975), p. 5. 33. Brizzi, interview by Serafini, 13 May and 2 December 2010. The X2’s packaging mechanism was composed by seven wheels, whereas the X1 had four. The fifth wheel of the X2 was the most important addition made by the G.D designers to the packaging mechanism, as it set up the outer wrapper specific of the hinge-lid packet. 34. In general, Seragnoli and Mattei defined the plan of the machine, their main collaborators devised general technical solutions implementing the plan, and the other designers developed the details of these solutions (Gian Alberto Minelli, interview by Alaimo, 8 January 1988, f. 1, i. 8, pp. 11–13, AMPI; Zanasi, interview by Alaimo, 15 December 1987, f. 1, i. 7, pp. 7–8, AMPI). 35. Zanasi, interview by Alaimo, 15 December 1987, f. 1, i. 7, pp. 4–5, AMPI. 36. The team worked first in an annex of Ariosto’s home and then in an old warehouse (the so-called ‘Division B’) owned by Enzo Seragnoli (Belvederi, interview by Serafini, 26 November 2010). 37. In that period Dall’Osso worked part-time for G.D, as he was an employee of the local branch of the state railways (Belvederi, interview by Serafini, 26 November 2010). 38. Identified designers were: Umberto Rabbi, Bortolotti, Stupazzoni, Umberto Folli, Giannino Venturi. Armando Neri supervised the electric system. The fitters were the brothers Zucchini (Belvederi, interview by Serafini, 26 April and 26 November 2010; Brizzi, interview by Serafini, 13 May 2010). 39. The development of the single parts of the X2 was divided between at least six designers: Marco Brizzi, Bruno Grandi, Roberto Osti, Giorgio Vaccari, Giannino Venturi and Walter Zanasi. Belvederi contributed as external member, focusing on the aluminium foil embossing system. Neri was still in charge of developing the electric

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system (Brizzi, interview by Serafini, 13 May and 2 December 2010; Belvederi, interview by Serafini, 26 April and 26 November 2010). 40. Information retrieved from: Belvederi, interview by Serafini, 26 April and 26 November 2010; Brizzi, interview by Serafini, 13 May 2010; Bortolotti, interview by Alaimo, 20 July 1987, f. 1, i. 4, pp. 18–19, AMPI; Antonio Gamberini, interview by Alaimo, 10 May 1988, f. 3, i. 46, pp. 3–4, AMPI; Zanasi, interview by Alaimo, 15 December 1987, f. 1, i. 7, pp. 5–7, AMPI; Aldini-Valeriani-Siriani Institute, Students List, received 11 June 2010 (I wish to thank Mrs. Adalgisa Mingarelli, curator of the Aldini-Valeriani’s library, for her help in retrieving the information regarding some of the G.D technicians). 41. In the 1950s and 1960s G.D’s technical design office was aided in carrying out calculations by Secciani, an engineer teaching at the Aldini-Valeriani Institute and consulted also for issues regarding materials (Zanasi, interview by Alaimo, 15 December 1987, f. 1, i. 7, pp. 15–16, AMPI). It seems he was not involved in the X1 project. 42. Belvederi, interview by Serafini, 26 April and 26 November 2010. 43. For example, in order to design the profile of a cam the main reference points were first fixed with the drafting machine and then the complete profile was engraved directly on a piece of zinc reproducing the real motion of the lever around the cam. The mould thus obtained was finally polished manually to make it as smooth as possible (Belvederi, interview by Serafini, 26 November 2010; Brizzi, interview by Serafini, 2 December 2010). 44. Brizzi, interview by Serafini, 2 December 2010. 45. See Rosenberg, Inside the Black Box, pp. 121–2. 46. Belvederi, interview by Serafini, 26 April and 26 November 2010; Brizzi, interview by Serafini, 13 May and 2 December 2010. 47. Data about personnel retrieved from Zamagni and Menzani, Mimeo, chap. 6, tab. 6.2, p. 21. 48. See note 47, chap. 5, pp. 20–1. 49. The importance of these interactions is signalled also by the fact that, after having favoured in the previous years the informal meeting of its technicians with those of the clients hosting them at its plant for training period, G.D started, in 1976, to organize formal training courses in Bologna for the customers’ technical personnel. The courses were taught in English and German, and comprised both theoretical lessons and practical activities to attend the training courses. G.D invited its clients to send one engineer and one mechanic (G.D, Notiziario G.D, 24–5 (1975), p. 9; 26–7 (1976), p. 9; 39–40 (1981), p. 6). 50. For this purpose, in 1981 G.D inaugurated a subsidiary in Richmond, Virginia – where Philip Morris had one of its principal plants (G.D, Notiziario G.D, 37–8 (1980), p. 32 and 39–40 (1981), pp. 8–9). 51. The X1 roll exemplifies the gradual improvement and adaptation of a core product which represented an essential part of the activities of G.D’s technical design office. In fact, compared to the X1, the X1 roll showed higher overall production and

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efficiency, lower levels of noise, a better working capacity, and it was more versatile because it could wrap up according to more packet formats (G.D, ‘X1 roll Brochure’, n.d. [certainly after 1981, probably by the end of the 1980s], p. 2). 52. Alessandro Minarelli, interview by Serafini, 14 December 2010. 53. The first X500s were activated in the new plant that R.J. Reynolds had in Tobaccoville, North Carolina (Minarelli, interview by Serafini, 14 December 2010). 54. Minarelli, interview by Serafini, 14 December 2010. 55. In this regard, a clarification is necessary. As I deal with the G.D designers, I focus on the evolution of their technical capacities and its impact on G.D’s machines. Yet, the X500 benefited also from the improvements achieved in the manufacturing of the components thanks to the introduction of numerical control (NC) machine tools at the workshop level. It seems that the first NC machine tools were introduced in G.D around the mid-1970s, but, as a good part of the components manufacturing was outsourced to local suppliers, the improvements of G.D at this level depended on the more general upgrade of its Bolognese supply chain (Giovanni Polacchini, interview by Alaimo, 6 July 1987, f. 1, i. 2, p. 44, AMPI; Minarelli, interview by Serafini, 14 December 2010). 56. The information regarding the introduction of engineers by G.D is minimal and confused. Yet, the available sources agreed on two aspects. First of all, some engineers had already entered the company some years before Minarelli and Draghetti, undertaking especially management tasks (for example, within the workshop). Secondly, the real recruitment of engineers started in the 1980s (Polacchini, interview by Alaimo, 6 July 1987, f. 1, i. 2, p. 43, AMPI; Zanasi, interview by Alaimo, 15 December 1987, f. 1, i. 7, pp. 19–24, AMPI; Gamberini, interview by Alaimo, 10 May 1988, f. 3, i. 46, pp. 54–7, AMPI). 57. Gamberini, interview by Alaimo, 10 May 1988, f. 3, i. 46, pp. 54–7, AMPI. 58. Gamberini, interview by Alaimo, 10 May 1988, f. 3, i. 46, p. 57, AMPI. 59. Draghetti spent also a period within the workshop (Minarelli, interview by Serafini, 14 December 2010). 60. According to Zanasi (interview by Alaimo, 15 December 1987, f. 1, i. 7, p. 5), in 1987 these three offices had on their payroll about 130–140 employees overall. In the previous period there were other offices specializing in auxiliary tasks such as machine modifications, definition of user manuals and special machines (Minelli, interview by Alaimo, 8 January 1988, f. 1, i. 8, p. 6). 61. In that period, the CAD department was directed by Dall’Oca, an engineer. The computerization of the technical design office began later than the introduction (in the mid-1970s) of computers to manage the production process (G.D, Notiziario G.D, 28 (1976), pp. 12–13). 62. Guido Zanetti, interview by Serafini, 23 December 2010; Minarelli, interview by Serafini, 14 December 2010. 63. For example, when the X500 project was launched, CADAM’s introduction was in progress and not all the involved drawers had been able to attend training courses for learning how to use it. Thus, some X500’s components were defined with the drafting

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machine and then copied with CADAM to have the entire machine stored in the CAD database (Minarelli, interview by Serafini, 14 December 2010; Gamberini, interview by Alaimo, 10 May 1988, f. 3, i. 46, p. 38, AMPI). 64. It seems that the first person within G.D to think about the possibility of developing calculation programmes for the definition of the profile of the cams was Brina, a graduate in mechanics at the University of Bologna and employed within the formats office (Zanetti, interview by Serafini, 23 December 2010). 65. Zanetti, interview by Serafini, 23 December 2010. G.D engineers and technicians first explored the technical literature and the solutions adopted within the car industry, one of the first sectors implementing CAD packages, but they soon became aware that their kinematic mechanisms required solutions among the most complex and unusual ones (Valerio Fiorini, interview by Serafini, 22 March 2010). 66. In 1998 G.D had 1,728 employees (Menzani and Zamagni, Mimeo, chap. 6, tab. 6.2, p. 21). On the international structure of G.D see: G.D, G.D – Notizie dal Gruppo, 1 (June 1993), pp. 18–19; 2 (December 1993), p. 13; 4 (January 1995), pp. 14–15; 6 (January 1996), p. 9; 8 (June 1997), p. 14. 67. The X2000 was launched in the early-1990s, whereas the revision project spanned between 1995 and 1998. The prototype of the X3000 was tested in Southampton (UK) in a plant owned by British American Tobacco, whereas the first exemplar started to work in Turkey within the local facilities of Philip Morris (Minarelli, interview by Serafini, 14 December 2010). 68. In fact, the implementation of electronics within the G.D machines has grown since the 1990s, becoming essential during the last decade. 69. G.D, ‘X3000 Brochure’, n.d. [probably 1998], p. 5. 70. Minarelli, interview by Serafini, 14 December 2010. 71. Their arrival between the late 1980s and the early 1990s was favoured by the decline of the Italian nuclear industry, as a result of the 1987 referendum with which the country decided to abandon the use of nuclear energy (Zanetti, interview by Serafini, 23 December 2010). 72. Zanetti, interview by Serafini, 23 December 2010. The abstract logic tests were used principally for selecting candidates with a technical diploma, but sometimes they were used also to identify engineers who were particularly skilful. 73. Zanetti, interview by Serafini, 23 December 2010; Fiorini, interview by Serafini, 22 March 2010. 74. Zanetti, interview by Serafini, 23 December 2010. 75. Franco Malerba, ‘The National System of Innovation: Italy’, in Richard R. Nelson (ed.), National Innovation Systems: A Comparative Analysis (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993), pp. 230–59.

PART FOUR

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Telecommunications Italian Style: The Shaping of the Constitutive Choices (1850–1914) SIMONE FARI University of Granada GABRIELE BALBI Università della Svizzera Italiana GIUSEPPE RICHERI Università della Svizzera Italiana

Abstract This chapter analyses the ‘Italian style’ in the history of telecommunications, focusing on the national ‘constitutive choices’ made by governments between the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and adopting a comparative and transnational perspective in order to identify similarities and differences on the international scene. The first part provides a survey of the existing literature on the origin and development of Italian telecommunications; the authors argue that, despite the abundance of sources, the historical analysis still remains rather limited. In the second part the peculiarities of Italian telecommunications during its early stages of development (between 1850 and 1914) are identified and described. Three main issues are discussed: first, the development of a ‘telegraph paradigm’ later adapted to other telecommunication systems; second, that of monopoly, above all state monopoly, as the management model that was adopted in that period; finally, the persisting technological backwardness, in sharp contrast with the high qualitative level of technicians

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and managers. In the conclusion this chapter discusses how some of these early characteristics – described by the authors as constitutive choices – influenced the history of Italian telecommunications as a whole and created a clearly recognizable national style.

FOREWORD The idea of ‘national style’ in political, technical and social approaches to communication has been heatedly debated by scholars since the 1980s when it became a buzz term following the publication of two books: that of Thomas Hughes in the United States1 and Yves Stourdzé in France.2 The premise is that each country defines its own model for the construction and development of networks (i.e. power or water supply systems or telecommunication networks) which, once stabilized in the first years of construction, remains unchanged in the following periods for two main reasons. Firsty, because, after the initial stage has been completed, complex systems3 tend to be locked in by external social and economic effects; after this phase, which Hughes calls momentum, it would be extremely costly from an economic, political and even social point of view to modify structures and habits.4 Secondly, initial choices matter: as Paul Starr notes,5 political constitutive choices made in the early stages of development of a new technology, and of telecommunications above all, have a significant impact on its subsequent evolution. This approach, based on a ‘national style’, has faced opposition, especially from comparative and transnational methodologies. The transnational approach, especially, considers relationships and trade among countries, or with specific areas of them, as a reason for developing forms of national systems that cannot be explained from an exclusively internal perspective.6 Moreover, in recent years, several comparative studies have looked at how common patterns emerged in different countries, requiring for example a Europe-wide approach to telecommunications.7 This chapter attempts to consider both approaches (national style and transnational/comparative models) or, in other words, it aims to analyse the ‘Italian style’ in telecommunications, considering both the constitutive choices characterizing Italian point-to-point communication between the nineteenth and twentieth centuries and maintaining a comparative and transnational perspective in order to identify similarities and differences on the international scene. The first part of this chapter provides a brief, but revealing, review of the existing literature on the history of Italian telecommunications, which leads to a surprising but well-founded conclusion: despite the abundance of sources, scientific analysis of Italian telecommunications has been limited. Then we aim to identify and describe the peculiarities of Italian telecommunications during its early stages of development between 1850 and 1914 and, specifically: 1) the development of a ‘telegraph paradigm’ later adapted to other telecommunication systems; 2) the monopoly, above all state monopoly, as the referring management model; 3) the backwardness of the technology in contrast with the high qualitative level of technicians and managers. The chapter will then discuss how some of these original characteristics have influenced the history of Italian telecommunications as a whole, creating a national style.

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SCARCE LITERATURE, ABUNDANT SOURCES The roots of Italian telecommunications are a fragmentary chapter in the history of the nation. It could even be said that the lack of scientific works that take a longterm perspective, and of institutions specialized in the study of telecommunications, is in itself a characteristic of the history and historiography in this field, especially if we compare this scarcity with other European and non-European countries where there are both systematic publications8 and research centres.9 In Italy, this historiographical vacuum has triggered a cascade effect whereby the scarcity of longterm analyses has discouraged debate on the question and, instead, encouraged an anecdotal and segmented production often venturing into many fields other than media and technological studies. For example, Bruno Bottiglieri has published three major works on the Italian companies that operated in the telecommunications sector in the twentieth century: Stet,10 Sip11 and Italcable.12 Elsewhere, Giovanni Paoloni and Marina Giannetto have mainly studied origins and evolution of public administrations (mainly the Ministry of Posts and Telegraphs) that managed telecommunication services over the years.13 Although these contributions are important in order to understand the evolution of telecommunications, it is clear that they represent digressions in this sector, superficially explored, by scholars from other fields of research. Indeed, the works of Bottiglieri can be easily classified as business history and those of Paoloni and Giannetto as public administration history. At present there are just three systematic works on the history of Italian telecommunications: Le telecomunicazioni italiane 1861–1961, by Albino Antinori published in 1963 to commemorate the centenary;14 the recent Storia delle telecomunicazioni, a compendium work published in 2011 and edited by Virginio Cantoni, Gabriele Falciasecca and Giuseppe Pelosi;15 and an article written by Peppino Ortoleva in 2000, entitled ‘Telecomunicazioni: un modello italiano?’ (Telecommunications, an Italian model?).16 These are the only works that take into account the entire history of the Italian telecommunication. However, Antinori’s book is outdated and was written in the ‘commemorative perspective’; the second book, rather than giving new interpretations or historical sources, provides a longterm reconstruction mainly based on the technology used and trying, in some way, to summarize some of the previous studies carried out in this field. Ortoleva’s paper, on the contrary, aims to identify turning points in the history of Italian telecommunications, providing a methodologically useful background. The striking difference compared to other countries might lead one to think that Italian historical sources regarding telecommunications are scarce and fragmentary, but basically the same types of sources found abroad have been conserved in Italy too. The only difference being that, given the historiographical vacuum mentioned above, they are mostly unpublished and therefore not readily available. Alongside the historical sources that are traditionally used in contemporary history (parliamentary debates and acts, laws and decrees, newspapers and magazines), the Italian history of telecommunications can be reconstructed through some archival documents conserved in different places and in some cases not easy to access. Being the original telegraph system managed as a government monopoly, consequently most of the documentation can be found in the National Archive in Rome, filed

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according to the Ministries that oversaw the service in the various periods.17 Being especially telegraphy and wireless tools of war, another interesting archive is the Historical Office of Major State in Rome and the historical archives of Military Genius where the role of Italian telecommunications during various conflicts can be retraced. As regards telephony, which was managed by private companies until nationalization in 1907 and then again from 1925 after the Fascist re-privatization, most of the data are difficult to find, but four places should be mentioned: TelecomItalia historical archives preserving documentation of SIP; banks’ archives, and especially the Archivio storico di Banca Intesa, or namely the institutions that financed telephone companies; the so called Official Bulletin of joint-stock and limited companies (Bollettino Ufficiale delle società per azioni, BUSA) that is difficult to access and very fragmented, but it can reveal much of the financial evolution of the telephone companies.18 What said for the telegraph may be applied to wireless telegraphy, but in addition valuable sources are also kept in the archive of the Guglielmo Marconi Foundation of Bologna, especially on Marconi’s activities and on Italian wireless telegraphy in general. As regards print sources (manuals, magazines, grey literature, ephemera), the Library of the Ministry of Communications in Rome19 has the largest collection, although part of it can be consulted in other libraries throughout the country and, above all, at the National Library in Florence. Finally, it should be noted that there are also international sources from which it is possible to get information about the evolution of telecommunications in Italy. The most important concentration of international sources is probably in Geneva, at the library and archives of the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), direct descendent of the International Telegraph Union, founded in 1865.20 A second relevant place for understanding Marconi Company activities worldwide is the Marconi Collection preserved at the Bodleian Library at Oxford University; here many new insights about the British Marconi and Italy can be found.

THE TELEGRAPH PARADIGM 1. The Telegraph as Nation Builder Between the nineteenth and twentieth centuries telecommunication systems that developed after telegraphy (specifically the telephone and radio telegraph) adopted its organization and management models, configuring a kind of ‘telegraph paradigm’. The technical, political and social impact of a technological paradigm is well-known and acknowledged in the history of telecommunications and in all forms of communication there is very often an early stage in which new media imitates the old ones.21 Moreover, in every country, the telegraph paradigm, as the first mass telecommunications system in contemporary times, significantly affected the development of subsequent communication technologies. However, the Italian case differs from others because of the existence of a more deeply entrenched telegraph paradigm among ruling classes (both political and entrepreneurial), which led to a ‘chronic’ backwardness of Italian telephony and radiotelegraphy. This backwardness was even more emphasized by the fact that both telephony and radiotelegraphy were introduced in Italy early but did not develop adequately.

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The first telegraph lines and offices appeared throughout Italy from 1846 onwards,22 but a real telegraph paradigm was established and took significant hold only in the first fifteen years following the political unification of the Kingdom of Italy (1861). In this period telegraphy became the dominant long-distance communication service able to reach all the provinces of the new kingdom. The low infrastructure and management costs of the telegraph network, compared to those of the postal and railway service, persuaded the new Italian political class to promote investments in the expansion and improvement of the telegraph lines. Between 1861 and 1875 the number of telegraph offices and lines more than doubled, while the telegraph tariff dropped by more than one third, resulting in a doubling of the number of messages sent.23 Alongside these quantitative indicators there was the qualitative improvement in the lines and offices following the replacement of old material with new, more efficient components, the training of new personnel and retraining of older operators, the moving of the telegraph lines from roadsides to along the railroad lines, offering greater guarantees of control and rapid repairs.24 Furthermore, investments made by the state were highly profitable: the extraordinary costs linked to the expansion and improvement of the lines was less than half of the amount of the profits made by the telegraph administration between 1861 and 1875.25 The low infrastructure costs of the telegraph represented a necessary, albeit insufficient, explanation for such a huge expansion and improvement of the service. There were three main reasons for the government’s action: 1) the absence of a national long-distance communication system; 2) the need to maintain public order in the southern regions of Italy; 3) the centralization of political and administrative power. In the early 1860s Italy, due in part to its recent unification, differed from other European countries because it had no rapid and long-distance communication system at all. France and Spain, for example, had introduced a national optical telegraphy network enabling communications among the main cities in the country.26 The United Kingdom, in the 1840s – before the introduction of the telegraph service – had set up the ‘Penny Post’, a cheap postal service ensuring that every village in the kingdom could rapidly contact others.27 On the contrary, the new Kingdom of Italy had inherited badly interconnected and sparse telegraph networks, a railway system with isolated and unproductive lines, postal administrations that were based on non-uniform legal, organizational and production principles and which could not count on modern means of transport (steam trains and steamships). In other words, if the aim was to enable the various regions to contact each other, whether for economic, political or military reasons, an investment had to be made in the creation of a national communication network, and the telegraph network appeared to be most economical and, at the same time, efficient solution. The central government also promoted the expansion and improvement of the telegraph network to defend and reinforce its power. For example, following the unification of Italy, in the southern regions central power had to tackle the problem of ‘banditry’, i.e. unorganized bands of outlaws who more or less declared allegiance to the old Bourbon government. The new Italian government had to send in troops to back up the police force to tackle this serious problem of public order which endangered the stability of the new state. Given the lack of communications (roads

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and railways), the construction of telegraph networks and the opening of telegraph offices for reasons of public order (and real urgency) was vital for the purpose of organizing and mobilizing the troops in the areas where episodes of rebellion and insubordination occurred.28 Besides the contingent problem of banditry, the government and parliament were also committed to reinforcing central power over regional authorities, an essential condition for a newly established state. From an administrative, and partly also a political, point of view, unification translated into a sort of annexation of new territories by the House of Savoy: the laws as well as the administrative, military and political organization were quite simply extended to the ‘new regions’.29 Therefore, in order for a centripetal mechanism of power to function correctly, central authority needed a means of rapid point-to-point communication that enabled a flow of orders from centre to periphery and a flow of feedback from periphery to centre. This close relationship between telegraphy and the assertion of central power over the periphery can also be seen in the cases of Spain, Switzerland and the British Empire.30 Summing up, it can be said that the Italian telegraph network in the 1860s and 1870s fulfilled the function of nation builder often attributed to the railway service of the early years of the following century.31 This contributed in a decisive way to the consolidation, in the minds of legislators and government, of the telegraph paradigm.

2. Steps Forward: ‘Speaking’ and Wireless Telegraph The dominance of the telegraph paradigm naturally influenced the new forms of telecommunication: the telephone and the wireless telegraph. As regards the former, continuity with the telegraph was clear even from the name: a few months after Alexander Graham Bell registered his patent in 1876, experiments were made in Italy with what was known as the ‘speaking telegraph’,32 bearing witness to the similarity between the two in the collective imagination. However, it was from a political point of view that the paradigm had its most important impact. Naturally, in many European countries the telephone service had to contend with the telegraph,33 but in Italy the correlation between the two was more deeply rooted and, above all, persistent. The telephone was mainly regulated by the same laws that governed telegraphy, although the telephone was subject to a regime of private concessions with a strict government control: indeed, the executive reserved the right to suspend these concessions if income from the telegraph dropped and to oversee the regulations and tariffs proposed by private companies.34 In 1883 the Council of State, making reference to a Piedmont law of 1853 which had made the telegraph a state monopoly, even suggested that telephone management be kept under the exclusive responsibility of the government due to the similarity between the two communication tools.35 Finally, between 1888 and 1889, two draft laws were presented in which the socalled ‘telegraph product guarantee’ was set up: whatever private company operated a long-distance network would have to guarantee the ‘income which, at the date of the concession, enters government accounts for telegrams exchanged between towns that now want to be connected by telephone’,36 thus making any investment by the private sector in long-distance networks uneconomic. In other words, the desire to

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protect the telegraph against possible and future competition made by the telephone guided the government’s actions in the period running up to the First World War. It was, however, during parliamentary debates of 1891 and 1892 regarding the nationalization of the telephone service that the telegraph paradigm clearly emerged. The main argument of the opponents of the telephone’s nationalization was the denial of its public service nature and the examples that corroborated this thesis concerned differences between telephony and telegraphy: they seemed to have in common solely the nature of a means of transmission of thought and telegraphy appeared to be superior in many ways. Above all, the telephone appeared to be a slower communication system because it could not ‘shorten the transmission of thoughts with conventional signals as the telegraph could’.37 Secondly, unlike the telegraph whose dispatch could be transmitted by an operator without the simultaneous presence of the sender and receiver, the telephone required the joint presence of the two communicators and, therefore, long waiting times and a reduced degree of certainty in the success of the communication. In other words, one of the greatest strengths and innovative features of telephony, the fact of enabling interactive and synchronous communication, appeared to be a weakness. Finally, a thing that was a great concern at that time, the new means did not keep a written record of the conversations exchanged. Even in the arguments in favour of nationalization relationships between the telegraph and telephone played an important role. Telephony, and especially the long-distance network (called interurbana), became ‘merely a branch of telegraphy’ because the latter was used primarily to communicate between different cities in the kingdom. This proximity made the telephone to all intents and purposes a public service and, therefore, justified the nationalization: ‘telephony and telegraphy are two similar services . . . they could be called “two branches of a same tree”, because one deals with the transmission of the spoken word and the other with the transmission of the written word; therefore two similar services that complement each other.’38 The State should have nationalized in order to avoid any possible competition between the two systems. Therefore, either for the opponents or for the supporters of nationalization, the telephone was considered from a telegraphic perspective and this produced two opposing theories: on the one hand, the differences between the two technologies suggested it should not be nationalized, while on the other, it was these similarities that recommended it. In other words, the new medium was assessed based on the logic, structures and operating methods of the old medium, the telegraph. Above all, the persistence of a telegraph paradigm contributed to determining a second characteristic of Italian telephony between the nineteenth and twentieth centuries: the so-called ‘natural uncertainty’ as it was defined in parliament, or better, the government’s inability to take coherent and long-term decisions regarding the telephone. Again, the draft law already mentioned was a key example: when the path towards state management seemed to have been clearly set out, it was blocked by the fall of the government and, around one year later, a new ministry promulgated a law which took a completely different position.39 The wireless telegraph was seen as the ‘natural’ descendant of the electric telegraph, even in its name because wireless designated, above all, an absence: the

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lack of electric telegraph’s wires or cables.40 Furthermore, in Italy as in other countries, Marconi’s telegraph was used mainly in places where the electrical system could not be used for technological reasons and due to its high costs. It was therefore a sort of substitute for or, better still, completion of the telegraph network for communications between moving means of transportation (such as ships) which could not be connected through wires or for long-distance communications where laying subsea cables was extremely expensive. This subsidiary function of the wireless telegraph was a central theme in Italian parliamentary debates too. Of the many possible uses, radiotelegraphy was seen as a technology that could ‘improve our insufficient telegraph lines’41 overland for commercial purposes, linking Italian cities that did not have efficient telegraphic connections; it could be used more easily than the traditional wired systems on battlefields, to improve communications without the need for fixed networks;42 finally, it represented an alternative means of communication for Italian emigrants in Argentina, for example, who could not use cable services because they were too expensive and who, at the same time, wanted to communicate faster than by letter.43 Once again, for politicians the new means of telecommunication was not completely ‘autonomous’ but was seen as a descendant or newer embodiment of the old telegraph.

3. The Monopoly Before the First World War, Italian telecommunications’ management model was scarcely debated and the public monopoly became the standard. The Italian telegraph service was managed as a public monopoly from its origins, following a model used in all of the pre-unification states of the peninsula. The telephone service was considered a state monopoly but was assigned in concession to private companies from its origins until 1907, when it was partially nationalized: this nationalization was envisaged in order to prevent a single private company, which had by then established itself, from dominating the market. The management of undersea cables, a sector which was often considered to be separate from overland telegraphy, was regulated by agreements signed on a case by case basis; however, the final result was mixed management until the 1880s: the less important and shorter cables were managed directly by the telegraph administration while the more strategically important ones were firmly in the hands of private companies with British capital. In the mid-1880s, law provisions entrusted the management of most of the undersea cables, under a private monopoly regime, to the Milanese Pirelli Company. Finally, from its origins, wireless telegraphy was managed under a private monopoly by the British Marconi Company. In choosing monopoly Italy followed the management models adopted by the other European countries. In fact, both in the case of the telegraph and the telephone most European countries ended up directly managing the service, unlike the US, for example, where telecommunications were always managed as a free market. In Europe, the adoption of monopolies, whether state or private, was supported and defended by the economic concept of ‘natural’ monopoly.44 In the case of network services (telecommunications, energy, water and gas distribution, transport), the monopoly was the most efficient (and therefore ‘natural’) solution because: 1) it avoids pointless

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duplications of lines, saving of resources; 2) it favours economies of scale; 3) if it is managed, or at least supervised, by the state, it guarantees equality among users. While the ‘natural monopoly’ can be seen as a ‘classic’ economic factor at that time, the reasons behind its adoption in Italian telecommunications must be studied and analysed on a case by case basis, even if national defence, maintenance of public order and ingrained mistrust of foreign influence played a fundamental role. Certainly, the ‘nation building’ relevance contributed to maintaining the telegraph service firmly in the hands of the state, as inherited from the pre-unification states.45 These latter, in the 1840s and 1850s, had decided to directly manage the telegraph service in order to use it for military purposes and the maintenance of public order. For example, in 1846 in the Grand Duchy of Tuscany, the scientist Carlo Matteucci requested a grant for the building and management of telegraph lines but Grand Duke Leopold II responded by proclaiming a public monopoly for reasons of ‘national security’.46 Moreover, in the territories under Austrian rule or influence (Lombardy-Venetia and the Duchies of Modena and Parma) the importance of a public order control function is underscored not only by the promptness with which the service was introduced, but also by the fact that it was initially prohibited to the public and that it was managed by officers of Austrian ‘nationality’.47 More closely linked to the military defence of the borders was the decision to entrust the Pirelli Company with management of the undersea telegraph cables of greatest strategic importance both in the homeland and in the small colony of Eritrea.48 Italy is geographically exposed to attack from the sea in the event of war: it was therefore essential to make available all means of communications possible with the islands located at the limits of territorial waters. Since these communications took place through undersea cables, and these could easily be cut by the crew that laid them, it was certainly not prudent to keep on entrusting cables to British companies. Moreover, at that time, a military defence system – torpedo mines, which made use of the same technology used to lay the undersea cables – began to develop. These were mines triggered by an electrical impulse which reached them by cable. In this case too, it would have been imprudent to entrust the task of developing this sophisticated national defence system to a foreign company. It was therefore no accident that the Minister for the Navy, Benedetto Brin, played a key role in favouring Pirelli over other foreign companies.49 As already seen, telephony was included among public monopolies but its management was entrusted to private companies from the late 1870s until 1907, when a law was passed to nationalize it, after a failed attempt of nationalization in 1892. The reasons for the nationalization of the telephone system were numerous. Firstly, a solution had to be found to the ‘marked inequalities between region and region; indeed, we have regions which already have many telephone networks and lines while other regions, especially those in the south, have almost none!’50 Extending the telephone service to the entire country was a task for state bodies and went beyond private companies’ interests which, until that moment, had managed the service, investing only in the areas considered most profitable. Secondly, nationalization was justified both by the system’s fragmentation and by establishment over the previous decade of a dominant position by a company held by foreign capital, the ‘General company of telephones and electrical applications’, which

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managed the most important, profitable and strategic networks for national security.51 Nationalization was therefore also necessary in order to take the telephone service out of the hands of foreign companies. Thirdly, again on telegraph paradigm line, the telephone’s nationalization would contribute to protecting the investments, and above all the profitability of the telegraph, placing the two telecommunication systems under single management. Let us mention just two of the many other reasons: the ‘huge wave of public opinion’52 in favour of the process and the desire to standardize telephone tariffs, which until then had been managed on a local basis by private companies. The telephone monopoly was therefore justified by many different reasons: political-governmental (north–south equality and standardization of the system), strategic-military (controlling the network was of national importance), financial (protection of the telegraph and profitability of the telephone) and, finally, social (satisfying the demand for telephones throughout the country). The wireless telegraph, like the telephone, was a privately managed public monopoly; unlike the telephone, however, its management was entrusted to a single corporation, the British-owned Marconi Company. In fact it was Marconi Company itself, to be fair, that bound the country to an exclusive use of its patents in exchange for their free concession for military purposes and then for administration. A condition that appeared highly favourable, which Marconi stipulated only for Italy, but which simultaneously blocked the possibility of technological development of the new medium and, above all, created a situation of crisis for the country’s international policies.53 As a result of these and other dealings, Marconi was assigned an exclusive monopoly of commercial management until 1922, when things changed and the Italian government granted deals to the German Telefunken and French Société General. Before the First World War, despite claiming Italian identity, the subsidiary Compagnia Marconi faithfully followed the directives and strategies of the British parent company and, therefore, the Italian radiotelegraph system was a monopoly run by a foreign company. One of the most interesting political reasons to justify both Marconi’s role and, more in general, the need for a monopolistic type of management was expressed during the debate which led to the first law regulating radiotelegraphy in 1910. Wireless telegraph had to be controlled by the state and managed by as few companies as possible because of two technical weaknesses: the possible overlapping of radio signals (and thus the necessary presence of a central body to regulate them) and, above all, the possibility of violating radiotelegraphic secrecy. Until that moment, despite reassurances by Marconi, radiotelegraph equipment presented a serious telecommunications shortcoming: lack of privacy. Messages sent over the airwaves could be captured by subjects other than the sender. The lack of the guarantee of secrecy in correspondence (an important issue in Italy also for the wired-telegraph and the telephone) thus justified a state monopoly, the only model that could continuously control stations.54

4. Backwardness of ‘Native’ Technology Versus High Level of Managers/Technicians During the studied period, the Italian telecommunications sector was strongly dependent on imported technologies. Until the mid-1880s, the only components of

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the telegraph networks that were not produced abroad were the ceramic insulators, made by Giulio Richard Company in Milan and Manifattura Ginori in Florence, as well as the wooden poles purchased and weathered by local producers. The wires, telegraph machines, piles and all materials for connections in the offices (switches, etc.) were manufactured by British, French and Swiss companies, using patents of inventors who were not Italian.55 Towards the end of the century the same thing happened for new technologies of telecommunications: telephony and radiotelegraphy were based on imported capital, patents and technology. As regards telephone equipment, a dominant position was held, also on the Boards of Directors of Italian companies, by the Belgian Bell Telephone Manufacturing Company, which represented the interests of the US parent company in Europe. The exchanges were all manufactured abroad, even when the government nationalized the networks in 1907, with a prominent position held by the German Siemens. For manufacture and laying of cables, however, the government used two Italian companies, Pirelli from Milan and Vittorio Tedeschi from Turin.56 Wireless telegraphy saw the absolute monopoly of the British Marconi Company as regards both the reception and transmission equipment and, as already seen, the government even expressly undertook to use only those instruments. Coming from abroad, the technology used by the Italian telecommunications services was the same as that of the more advanced countries at that time. For example, in the 1860s and 1870s the Italian telegraph administration was one of the first to introduce and use multiple telegraphs that allowed the transmission of several telegrams at the same time (Hughes, Stearns and Meyer telegraphs).57 In the same way, technologies used by the majority of early telephone companies at the end of the nineteenth century could be considered state-of-the-art, as was the early introduction of the automatic exchanges: this was the talk of technical and political circles in the first years of the twentieth century and first experimented in 1913 with an automatic Siemens exchange installed in Rome.58 As has been claimed about the electricity sector, the conclusion could easily be reached that the operators and managers of Italian telecommunications were not real innovators but intelligent locators and importers of technology.59 However, this was the consequence, and not the cause, of two contradictory factors: 1) a backward industrial background which, having few companies in the ‘technological’ sectors (chemicals and electricity),60 was unable to meet the demand of the telegraph administration; 2) highly qualified managers and technical personnel in the national telegraph service. The high technical and cultural level of the personnel in the telegraph sector compared to other civil servants has already been documented in the literature.61 However, what is less well-known is that, at least during the 1870s and 1880s, this was the fruit of long-term investment which, along with investments in the expansion and improvement of lines, was explained as reinforcement of a service to which a ‘nation building’ role had been attributed. The Italian education system did not have an established tradition in scientific subjects which were, however, fundamental for the telegraph sector. For this reason the telegraph administration autonomously organized telegraph schools for its employees; but above all it was its director, Ernesto D’Amico, who promoted the creation of a system that guaranteed

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continuous training for personnel. D’Amico organized refresher courses at all levels, conference tours to inform personnel of technological and organizational developments and introduced a system of moral and economic incentives to reward the most productive employees.62 These initiatives were also promoted in the telegraph administrations of other European countries but in Italy they had greater strategic importance because they represented a long-term investment aimed at meeting the needs of a service which, in that historical moment, was considered essential. This ambition to improve the system probably reached its peak between 1870 and 1875 when D’Amico, as representative of the Italian administration, proposed the establishment of a telegraph school for high level managers to the other members of the International Telegraph Union. The Italian director’s project was not approved but it does bear direct witness to the investment, also in terms of human capital, that the telegraph administration was making to radically improve its service.63 At present there is no method that can be used to compare the quality of Italian telegraph personnel with those of other European countries. All the indicators available provide partial answers: the average productivity of Italian telegraph operators (number of telegrams sent per operator and the average income per operator) was just below that of the other continental European countries;64 Italian technicians and managers published articles in international trade journals (Annales Télégraphiques,65 Journal Télégraphiques66); Italian delegates (managers or inspectors)67 often took part in international telegraph conferences (periodically organized by the International Telegraph Union) making interesting proposals which were appreciated by the other delegations. These quantitative and qualitative indicators could suggest that, despite the absence of a suitable educational or productive background, the Italian telegraph personnel were highly qualified and competent. Confirming this general evaluation we can cite some of the many outstanding examples: 1) Carlo Matteucci, world famous expert in electricity and one of the first to introduce telegraphy in Europe in 1846;68 2) Ernesto D’Amico, director of Italian telegraphy during its twenty most important years (1865–1885) and main promoter of investments in lines and personnel; 3) Giovanni Pirelli, leading Italian businessman in the chemicals sector and founder of the first non-British company able to produce and lay subsea telegraph cables;69 5) Giovan Battista Marzi, licensee of a telephone at the young age of 23,70 experimenter of radiotelephony and inventor of the first Italian – and perhaps international – automatic exchange in 1886;71 6) Guglielmo Marconi, self-taught scientist considered to be the father of radiotelegraphy;72 7) Alessandro Artom, a student of Galileo Ferraris in Turin, who was actively involved in telephony and radiotelegraphy experiments. These examples of excellence have often been seen as isolated cases but, considering the observations made above, they should be considered more as the tip of the iceberg as regards quality of the Italian human capital. The men mentioned above could count on a network of international contacts through which they disseminated their ideas and from which they received suggestions and information which placed them at the heart of European dialogue.73 All the men mentioned had an excellent relationship with the liberal ruling classes. Two of them, D’Amico and Pirelli, are part of the tradition of the great importers of technology: the former

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introduced telegraphs, organizational techniques and models already used abroad,74 the latter drew inspiration from the experience of French chemists and British engineers. Matteucci and Marconi were two great innovators: the first ‘invented’ the technique of the single wire telegraph (that directly used grounding)75 which spread rapidly around the world thanks to the savings it could generate; the second is universally known as the first entrepreneur in the radiotelegraphy sector.76 Alessandro Artom, moreover, was raised in a family involved in the Italian Risorgimento (one of his uncles was very close to Cavour) and he was always involved in teaching and experimental projects; indeed from about 1900 to 1925 he offered free lessons on ‘Telephony and Telegraphy’ to make up for the absence of academic teaching in the sector.77 Finally, while holding very different positions, the men mentioned above can be considered versatile figures: Matteucci was a man of science and education but was also the director of the Tuscany telegraphic service for almost fifteen years; D’Amico was the top manager of the Italian telegraph administration with a background as a civil servant and, yet, he was highly sensitive to technical and organizational innovations in the sector; Marconi and Pirelli were above all businessmen but their contribution to science is evident; Marzi was an experimenter and inventor but also an entrepreneur; Artom was a scientist, teacher and experimenter who was also involved with the Italian armed forces in the Second World War. To sum up, as seen above, the high quality of telecommunications personnel can also be explained in terms of consolidation of the telegraph paradigm because this encouraged long-term investments in physical and human capital for nation building purposes. However, the presence of excellent personnel operating in an industrial context which was unable to absorb its direct stimuli, justified the marked inclination to import technologies rather than innovation and explains why, despite excellent individual performance and high level basic preparation, the Italian telecommunications sector did not manage to get any further than ‘best among the followers’ for the sixty years considered in this chapter.78

CONSOLIDATION OF THE CONSTITUTIVE CHOICES A central theme of this chapter is that original characteristics of Italian telecommunications created a sort of long-term ‘Italian style’ able to affect and guide the development of the country’s telecommunications during the twentieth century. Five examples of constitutive choices which were extremely tricky and represented a characterizing element of Italian telecommunications are illustrated below. First of all, as in the analysed period the telegraph was the standard against which other means of telecommunication had to contend, so too during the twentieth century at least two ‘dominant’ technologies can be identified: the fixed and the mobile phone. The first became the most important Italian telecommunication system from the Fascist privatization of 1924 until the 1990s. The Fascist Party placed the telephone at the heart of its Italian telecommunications reorganization project in the 1920s, relegating the electric telegraph to a secondary role. After the Second World War, Italian telephony became emblematic of the country’s reconstruction and social-economic rise; consider the key role played by a company

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such as the SIP (later renamed Telecom Italia) compared to similar private companies in other countries. The mobile telephone, from the early 1990s until the start of the twenty-first century, became the main economic driver of Italian telecommunications thanks to the political far-sightedness which favoured its diffusion. Unlike other historical periods, national policies rapidly embraced the new medium and rationally established phases and timeframes needed for the development of mobile technology; this was one of the main reasons for the widespread success of the mobile telephone in the country, making Italy, for the first time in its history, a world leader in terms of the adoption of a telecommunications technology. It could indeed be claimed that the mobile telephone represented a sort of third nation building means of communication (after the telegraph as already considered and the television from the 1950s).79 The presence of a single, dominant, or paradigmatic, telecommunications system for each period of Italy’s history, which all other systems had to more or less follow, certainly did not favour the development of synergies among the various networks: indeed, according to some scholars the difficulty of interconnecting and managing the infrastructure at national level (from transport, to the power grid, to the nuclear power stations) was a distinctive element of all the Italian technological systems.80 A second long-term aspect of Italian telecommunications, already identified in these very early stages, was the key role of politics in their management. While during the nineteenth century politicians saw in the telegraph a means of communication able to unify the nation, in the same way, after the Second World War, and above all from the 1970s onwards, the telephone was seen on many occasions as a strategic national tool. Still as regards the importance of political intervention in the development of Italian telecommunications, even if in a negative respect, the pernicious influence of the chronic uncertainty and instability of the parliaments on the entire sector should not be overlooked: political fragility prevented the taken decisions from being implemented and, according to some scholars, this is the factor that characterizes the political approach to the telecommunications sector throughout the twentieth century and, above all, during the republican period.81 A significant case can be found in the years 1975 to 1985: the loss of the majority in parliament by the centre-leftists led to the failure of the ‘Finalized Plan for Electronics’, drawn up for the specific purpose of implementing a rational reorganization of the Italian telecommunications sector.82 A third long-term feature of the Italian telecommunications system is the ‘collusion’ between politics and business. We have already seen an example in the case of the telephone and wireless telegraph but according to some authors it has characterized the entire history of telecommunications in Italy and bears witness to the ‘pervasiveness of politicization’ in the sector.83 Three of the many possible examples should be mentioned: the already mentioned privatization of telephony promoted by the Fascist Party in 1924 was due, on one hand, to the more general policy of reconstruction of public finances implemented by the regime and, on the other hand, to the express desire to favour some companies, above all in the hydroelectric sector, from which the party had received substantial economic aid at the outset of its political activity;84 throughout the entire history of SIP, well-known political personalities held top positions in the company, guiding strategic choices;85

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finally, in a more recent case, political influence was used in the appointment of board directors in the first regional companies that aimed to compete against Telecom Italia following the deregulation of the sector in 1998.86 Naturally, this collusion favoured the formation of some important enterprises that dominated the market (such as Pirelli, Marconi Company, Italcable, Stet, Sip and Telecom Italia) and which were closely connected to political power. A fourth element is the presence, between the nineteenth and twentieth century, of advanced technological know-how, or ‘human capital’, in a poorly evolved, if not backward, technological setting. The mix of innovation and backwardness, according to Peppino Ortoleva, is an element that belongs to the entire history of Italian telecommunications, so one cannot speak solely of ‘backwardness’ or ‘modernity’ but of a ‘continuous succession and interweaving of moments of acceleration and moments of slow-down, of advanced experiments and stages of prolonged stagnation’.87 This ambivalence, for example, marked the Italian telephone system throughout the twentieth century: consider, for example, that in 1970, a period in which the ‘average quality of each service requested and supplied’ was still decidedly inadequate,88 Italy shared with Germany and the Netherlands the record for full direct dialling by the user. A fifth and final element emerging in the analysed years is the need for, and importance of, foreign technologies and capital for the development of the sector. For example, Bruno Bottiglieri pointed out that ‘the Italian telephone equipment industry is historically a sector under full foreign technological influence and corporate control’:89 think of the presence and dominance on the Italian market of the US companies Autelco and Face Standard, the Swedish companies Fatme and Ericsson, the Dutch company Philips and the German company Siemens. On the other hand, the international groups have always looked with interest at the Italian telecommunications market. Immediately after the end of the Second World War, for example, the US company ITT made a bid to take over the entire Italian telephone network but the proposal – even though it was supported by some influential members of parliament – was rejected by the majority, which demonstrated its fear of foreign interference in such a highly strategic sector as that of telecommunications.90

CONCLUSION During the early stages of their development, from 1850 to 1914, electric telegraphy, telephony and wireless telegraphy had at least three elements in common: 1) the development of a telegraph paradigm adopted also by subsequent telecommunications; 2) the push towards the monopoly, whether by government or private companies, as a management model; 3) the backwardness of the technology compared to the high quality of the operators and managers. These elements, along with some others specific to each medium (primarily the role of the telegraph as nation builder), did not disappear after the First World War. Demonstrating that the constitutive choices made in the communication sector have been able to trace a route towards a sort of national style, some elements have been quite surprisingly re-presented in subsequent stages of the history of Italian telecommunications. The Italian style of telecommunications is therefore one which is technology-driven (where, for each

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historical period, there is a single reference technology); one which is politically guided (and influenced); one which has seen real episodes of collusion between politics and business; one which is rich in advanced human and technical capital set in a general background of sector backwardness; and, finally, one which is mostly dominated by foreign capital.

NOTES 1. Thomas P. Hughes, Networks of Power: Electrification in Western Society, 1880–1930 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1983). 2. Yves Stourdzè, Pour une Poignée d’Électrons. Pouvoir et Communication (Paris: Fayard, 1987). 3. On Large Technical System or Macro-système Technique see Thomas P. Hughes, Networks of Power and Alain Gras, Les Macro-systèmes Techniques (Paris: Puf, 1997). On the importance of these and other approaches to the study of telecommunications see Gabriele Balbi ‘Studying the Social History of Telecommunications. Between Anglophone and Continental Traditions’, Media History, 15/1 (2009), pp. 85–101. 4. On path dependence theories see the classic work Paul A. David, ‘Clio and the Economics of QWERTY’, American Economic Review, 75 (1985), pp. 332–7. On path dependence and telecommunications see Kurt Jackobsen, ‘Institutional Change and Path Dependence in Danish Telecom Development’, paper presented at the Conference ‘Cross-Connections: Communications, Society and Change’, Science Museum, London, 11–13 November 2005. On the concept of momentum see Hughes, Networks of Power. 5. Paul Starr, The Creation of the Media. Political Origins of Modern Communications (New York: Basic Books, 2004). 6. Alexander Badenoch and Andreas Fickers (eds), Materializing Europe: Transnational Infrastructures and the Project of Europe (Basingstoke, Hampshire and New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010). 7. Andreas Fickers and Pascal Griset, Eventing Europe: Electronic Information and Communication Spaces in Europe, 1850–2000 (London: Palgrave/MacMillan, forthcoming). 8. Some of the most famous works are: Ann Mozley Moyal, Clear Across Australia: A History of Telecommunications (Melbourne: Nelson, 1984); Catherine BerthoLavenir (ed.), Histoire des Télécommunications en France (Toulouse: Eres, 1984); Henry British Lins de Barros (ed.), História da Industria de Telecomunicações no Brasil (Rio de Janeiro: Associaçao Brasilera de Telecomunicaçoes, 1989); Ángel Bahamonde Magro, Gaspar Martínez Llorente and Luis Enrique Otero Carvajal, Las Comunicaciones en la Construcción del Estado Contemporáneo: 1700–1936 (Madrid: Ministerio de Obras Públicas, Transportes y Medio Ambiente, 1993); Kevin T. Livingston, The Wired Nation Continent. The Communication Revolution and Federating Australia (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996); Erik Baark, Lightning Wires: The Telegraph and China’s Technological Modernization, 1860–1890 (Wesport: Greenwood Press, 1997); Alfred Chandler Jr. and James Cortada, A Nation

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Transformed by Information: How Information has Shaped the United States from Colonial Times to the Present (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000); Kathie Roth and Jean-Guy Rens, The Invisible Empire: A History of the Telecommunications Industry in Canada, 1846–1956 (Montreal: McGill-Queens University Press, 2001); Ángel Bahamonde Magro, Gaspar Martínez Llorente and Luis Enrique Otero Carvajal, Las Telecomunicaciones en España. Del Telégrafo Óptico a la Sociedad de la Información (Madrid: Ministerio de Ciencia y Tecnología, 2002); Christopher Sterling, Phillis Bernt and Martin B. H. Weiss, Shaping American Telecommunications: A History of Technology, Policy and Economics (Mahwah, NY: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 2006); Richard John, Network Nation. Inventing American Telecommunications (Cambridge: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2010). 9. By way of example, consider the most famous European cases: Great Britain, France and Spain. In France, the Centre National d’Etudes des Telecommunications, created at the end of the Second World War, attracted numerous scholars of the history of telecommunications. This enabled the production of systematic works of marked scientific value on the history of French telecommunications; see, in particular: Bertho and Lavenir, Histoire des Télécommunications en France; Catherine BerthoLavenir, La Démocratie et les Médias au 20e Siècle (Paris: A. Colin, 2000); Frédéric Barbier and Catherine Bertho Lavenir, Histoire des Medias: de Diderot à Internet (Paris: A. Colin, 2003); Patrice Flichy, Une histoire de la communication moderne: espace public et vie privée (Paris: Decouverte, 1991); Pascal Griset, Les Révolutions de la Communication XIXe–XXe siècles (Paris: Hachette, 1991); Pascal Griset, 1944– 1994, 50 Ans d’Innovation au Centre National d’Etudes des Télécommunications (Paris: France Télécom, 1995); Pascal Griset, Technologie, Entreprise et Souveraineté: Les Télécommunications Transatlantiques de la France (1869–1954) (Paris: Editions Rive-Droite, 1996). In Spain and Great Britain, instead, it was the professional associations of telecommunication engineers that promoted the collection and conservation of documents regarding the origins of telecommunications and encouraged scientific research and the publication of works in this field. Indeed, in Spain, besides the work carried out by university lecturers (the works edited by Ángel Bahamonde Magro with Luis Enrique Otero Carvajal and by Angel Calvo are of great interest), the history of telecommunications is promoted, in all its facets, by the National Board of Telecommunication Engineers. In particular, this board promoted the creation of a Foro Historico de las Telecomunicaciones, which can be consulted easily on the Internet. The Foro’s website, besides being easy to navigate, offers researchers and others a good deal of documental and bibliographic material and a whole series of links to other websites on the history of telecommunications: http:// www.coit.es/foro [accessed 9 May 2013]. The Foro collaborates actively with the Museo Postal y Telegrafico in Madrid which, besides numerous vintage telegraph and telephone equipment, also has a specialized library. For some publications by Bahamonde Magro and Otero Carvajal see the previous footnote; for Calvo the most recent is: Angel Calvo Calvo, Historia de Telefonica: 1924–1975. Primeras Décadas: Tecnología, Economía y Política (Barcelona: Editorial Ariel, 2010). In Great Britain the IET (Institution of Engineering and Technology) was established in spring 2006 from the merger of other two professional associations of engineers:

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the IEE, Institution of Electrical Engineers, and the IIE, Institution of Incorporated Engineers) besides having an up-to-date library, also has an archive with all the documents and publications regarding electrical engineers and telecommunications from the nineteenth century to the present day. The IET also promotes the publication of works regarding the history of telecommunications, above all of an international nature. See for example: Robert M. Black, The History of Electric Wires and Cables (London: IEE, 1982); Russell Burns, British Television. The Formative Years (London: IEE, 1986); James Wood, History of International Broadcasting (London: IEE, 1993); Ken Beauchamp, History of Telegraphy (London: IEE, 2001); Anton A. Huurdeman, The Worldwide History of Telecommunications (London: IEE, 2003); Russell Burns, Communications: An International History of the Formative Years (London: IEE, 2004). 10. Bruno Bottiglieri, STET. Strategia e Struttura nelle Telecomunicazioni (Milan: Franco Angeli, 1987). 11. Bruno Bottiglieri, SIP. Impresa, Tecnologia e Stato nelle Telecomunicazioni Italiane (Milan: Franco Angeli, 1993). 12. Bruno Bottiglieri, SIP. Un’Impresa Italiana nello Sviluppo Internazionale delle Telecomunicazioni (Milan: Franco Angeli, 1995). 13. Marina Giannetto, ‘Il Ministero delle Poste e Telegrafi: L’Organizzazione’, in Istituto per la Scienza dell’Amministrazione Pubblica, Le Riforme Crispine, I, Amministrazione Statale (Milan: Giuffrè, 1990), pp. 519–81; Paola Ferrara and Marina Giannetto, ‘Il Ministero della Cultura Popolare. Il Ministero delle Poste e Telegrafi’, in Guido Melis (ed.), L’Amministrazione Centrale dall’Unità alla Repubblica. Le Strutture e i Dirigenti (Bologna: Il Mulino, 1992), pp. 153–269; Marina Giannetto, ‘Il Lavoro nell’Amministrazione Postale e Telegrafica tra Otto e Novecento: Il Problema della Produttività tra Cultura dei Tecnici, Sindacalismo Burocratico e Riforma Amministrativa’, in Angelo Varni and Guido Melis (ed.), Le Fatiche di Monsù Travet. Per una Storia del Lavoro Pubblico in Italia (Turin: Rosenberg & Sellier, 1997), pp. 81–129; Marina Giannetto, ‘I Tecnici delle Comunicazioni fra Età Liberale e Fascismo’, in Angelo Varni and Guido Melis (eds), Burocrazie non Burocratiche. Il Lavoro dei Tecnici nelle Amministrazioni tra Otto e Novecento (Turin: Rosenberg & Sellier, 1999), pp. 15–55; Giovanni Paoloni, Marconi, la politica e le istituzioni Scientifiche Italiane negli Anni Trenta (Rome: Marsilio, 1995); Giovanni Paoloni, ‘Dall’Unità al Periodo Giolittiano’, in Valerio Castronovo, Le Poste in Italia. Da Amministrazione Pubblica a Sistema d’Impresa (Bari: Laterza, 2003), pp. 3–77; Giovanni Paoloni, ‘Il Servizio dei Telegrafi nell’Italia Post-unitaria. Aspetti Istituzionali’, in Andrea Giuntini (ed.), Sul Filo della Comunicazione. La Telegrafia nell’Ottocento fra Economia, Politica e Tecnologia (Prato: Istituto di Studi Storici Postali, 2004); Giuseppe Arcuri, ‘Il Ministero delle Poste e Telegrafi: L’Istituzione’, in Istituto per la Scienza dell’Amministrazione Pubblica, Le Riforme Crispine, pp. 487–518. 14. Albino Antinori, Le Telecomunicazioni Italiane 1861–1961 (Rome: Edizioni dell’Ateneo, 1963). 15. Virginio Cantoni, Gabriele Falciasecca and Giuseppe Pelosi (eds), Storia delle Telecomunicazioni (Florence: Firenze University Press, 2011).

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16. Peppino Ortoleva, ‘Telecomunicazioni: Un Modello Italiano?’, Memoria e Ricerca, 5 (2000), pp. 107–18. 17. From 1861 to 1889, there was a Telegraph Administration, which was relatively autonomous, but subordinate to the Ministry of Public Works; from 1889 to the First World War the telegraph service was managed directly by the new Ministry of Posts and Telegraphs. With the advent of fascism, all telecommunications and overland communications were coordinated by the Ministry of Communications. It is important to note that most of the documentation regarding the telegraph service has no consultation tools. 18. The BUSA is conserved, in a fragmentary way, at diverse Italian libraries but it is difficult to find a complete collection of it which, until a few years ago, was conserved at the Chamber of Commerce of Florence. On the importance of this research tool in reconstructing the history of the first telephone companies in Italy, see Gabriele Balbi, ‘Tra Stato e Mercato. Le Prime Società Telefoniche Italiane, 1878–1915’, Contemporanea. Rivista di Storia dell’800 e del ’900, 3 (2009), pp. 447–70. 19. To investigate the origins and catalogue of the library, see: http://www. bibliocomunicazioni.it [accessed 9 May 2013]. 20. For more information about the ITU archive and library see: Simone Fari, ‘L’Archivio e la Biblioteca dell’Unione Internazionale delle Telecomunicazioni’, Archivio per la Storia Postale. Comunicazioni e Società, 4/16–18, pp. 95–112. 21. Gabriele Balbi, ‘Old and New Media. A Media Historical Approach to Theorize their Relationships’, in Susanne Kinnebrock, Christian Schwarzenegger and Thomas Birkner (eds.), Theorien des Medienwandeis (Cologne: Halem, 2014). 22. On the origins of Italian telegraphy: Ernesto D’Amico, Sulla Telegrafia Italiana. Ragionamento di Ernesto D’Amico Ispettore Capo della Medesima (Turin: Tipografia Letteraria, 1863); Giulio Guderzo, Vie e Mezzi di Comunicazione in Piemonte dal 1831 al 1861. I Servizi di Posta (Turin: Museo Nazionale del Risorgimento, 1961); Alessandra Pecori, ‘Alle Origini delle Telecomunicazioni. La Telegrafia nel Granducato di Toscana (1847–1865)’, Thesis, University of Florence, 1996/1997; Giovanni Paoloni, ‘Telegrafi e Telecomunicazioni dagli Stati Preunitari al Regno d’Italia’, in Giovanni Paoloni, Le Poste in Italia. 1. Alle Origini del Servizio 1861–1889 (Bari: Laterza, 2005), pp. 1–41; Urbano Cavina, La Telegrafia Elettrica e le Origini del Morse (Uffici e Linee nell’Italia Preunitaria) (Albino: Sandit, 2008). 23. A detailed re-processing of statistical data concerning the telegraph network, the number of offices, telegraph traffic and the economic indicators of the telegraph service is provided in Fari, Una Penisola in Comunicazione. 24. Fari, Una Penisola in Comunicazione, pp. 89–189. 25. Fari, Una Penisola in Comunicazione, p. 186. 26. For France Bertho-Lavenir, Histoire des Télécommunications en France, for Spain Sebastián Olivè Roig, Historia de la Telegrafía óptica en España (Madrid: Ministerio de Trasporte, Turismo y Comunicaciones, 1990). 27. Charles Richard Perry, The Victorian Post Office. The Growth of a Bureaucracy (Woodbridge: The Royal Historical Society–The Boydell Press, 1992).

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28. Fari, Una Penisola in Comunicazione, pp. 40 and 106. 29. Guido Melis, Storia dell’Amministrazione Italiana 1861–1993 (Bologna: Il Mulino, 1996), pp. 31–46. 30. For Spain: Angel Bahamonde Magro, Gaspar Martinez Lorente and Luis Enrique Otero Carvajal (eds), Las Comunicaciones en la Construcción del Estado Contemporáneo en España: 1700–1936. El Correo, el Telégrafo y el Teléfono (Madrid: Ministerio de Obras Públicas, Transportes y Medio Ambiente, 1993), p. 123; for Switzerland: Spartaco Calvo, Gabriele Balbi, Simone Fari and Giuseppe Richeri, ‘La Voie Suisse aux Télécommunications. Politique, Économie, Technologie et Société (1850–1915)’, Revue Suisse d’Histoire, 61/4 (2011), pp. 435–53; for the United Kingdom: Daniel R. Headrick, The Tools of Empire: Technology and European Imperialism in the Nineteenth Century (New York: Oxford University Press, 1981). 31. Stefano Maggi, Le Ferrovie (Bologna: Il Mulino, 2008). 32. On the telephone as a ‘speaking telegraph’ see Balbi, Le Origini del Telefono in Italia, chapter 1. 33. For France see Catherine Bertho-Lavenir, ‘The Telephone in France 1879–1979: National Characteristics and International Influences’, in Renate Mayntz and Thomas P. Hughes (eds), The Development of Large Technical Systems (Frankfurt: Campus, 1988); for Germany Frank Thomas, ‘The Politics of Growth. The German Telephone System’ in Mayntz and Hughes, The Development of Large Technical Systems, pp. 180–3; for the United Kingdom see Arthur Hazlewood, ‘The Origin of the State Telephone Service in Britain’, Oxford Economic Papers, 5/1 (1953), p. 14; for the Netherlands see Onno De Wit, Telefonie in Nederland 1877–1940 (Den Haag: Cramwinckel, 1998), p. 331; for Spain see Angel Calvo Calvo, ‘The Spanish Telephone Sector (1876–1924): A Case of Technological Backwardness’, History and Technology, 18/2 (2002), p. 80; for Sweden see Arne Kaijser, ‘From Local Networks to National Systems. A Comparison of the Emergence of Electricity and Telephony in Sweden’, in François Cardot (ed.), 1880–1980. Un Siècle d’Électricité dans le Monde (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1987), p. 9; for Switzerland see Eli Noam, Telecommunications in Europe (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992), p. 186. 34. See Balbi, Le Origini del Telefono in Italia, p. 19. All of the following citations, extracted mainly from parliamentary deeds, can be found in the same volume and so the page numbers where all the bibliographic indications can be found will be given. 35. Balbi, Le Origini del Telefono in Italia, p. 20. 36. Balbi, Le Origini del Telefono in Italia, p. 22. 37. Balbi, Le Origini del Telefono in Italia, p. 55. 38. Balbi, Le Origini del Telefono in Italia, pp. 58–9. 39. Balbi, Le Origini del Telefono in Italia, above all chapter 2. 40. For a study of the word wireless and its historical evolution see Gabriele Balbi, ‘Wireless. Nascita, Morte e Resurrezione di un’Idea’, in Davide Borrelli (ed.), Media che Cambiano, Parole che Restano (Milan: Franco Angeli, 2013).

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41. AP, Legisl. XXI, 2nd session, Discussions, Battelli, C, 20 February 1903, p. 5703. 42. AP, Legisl. XXIII, session 1909–10, Report of the general accounting council no. 647-A on Draft Law no. 647 presented in the meeting of 30 November 1910, meeting of 13 December 1910, p. 1. 43. AP, Legisl. XXI, 2nd session, Discussions, Battelli, C, 20 February 1903, p. 5708. 44. William W. Sharkey, The Theory of Natural Monopoly (Cambridge, MA and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1982). 45. The choice of the public monopoly in order to use the telegraph as a nation builder is illustrated, for Switzerland, in Verdiana Grossi, ‘Technologie et Diplomatie Suisse au XIXe Siècle: le Cas des Télégraphe’, Relations Internationales, 39 (1984), pp. 287–307. The same concepts are taken up and analysed more in depth in Calvo, Balbi, Fari and Richeri, ‘La Voie Suisse aux Télécommunications’. 46. Memorie del Cavaliere G. Baldasseroni (Bologna: Forni Editore, 1967), pp. 195–6. 47. Cavina, La Telegrafia Elettrica e le Origini del Morse. 48. Simone Fari, ‘Uccide più la Parola che la Spada. Telecomunicazioni e Questioni Militari nell’Italia del XIX Secolo’, Ricerche Storiche, 36/1 (2006), pp. 5–28. 49. National Archive, Rome, Acts of the Prime Minister’s Office (APC), Depretis 1884, no. 148, Undersea Telegraphs: Pirelli X C. Milan. At the very end of the nineteenth century Brin, in his ministerial capacity and with a view to promote the industrial development of Italy, on several occasion succeeded in obtaining financial support for the army and the navy. See Luigi De Rosa, ‘Incidenza delle Spese Militari sullo Sviluppo Economico Italiano’, in Atti del I Convegno di Storia Militare (Rome: Ministry of Defence, 1969), pp. 183–209. 50. See Balbi, Le Origini del Telefono in Italia, p. 122. 51. See Balbi, Tra Stato e Mercato. 52. Balbi, Le Origini del Telefono, p. 123. 53. Gabriele Balbi, ‘Marconi’s Diktats. How Italian International Wireless Policy was Shaped by a Private Company, 1903–1911’, HISTELCON (History of Electrotechnology Conference), Session 3 ‘Telecommunications 2’, Pavia, 5–7 September 2012. 54. AP, CD, Legisl. XXIII, 1st session, Discussions, Bignami, C., 5 May 1910, p. 6642. 55. A list of the suppliers to the Italian telegraph administration can be found in: Archivio UIT, Geneva, Correspondance du Bureau International des Administrations Télégraphiques, f. prot. n. 51/3 of 24 January 1870. Moreover, detailed information about suppliers is gradually given the annual volumes of Relazioni Statistiche dei Telegrafi del Regno d’Italia. A summary of this information is given in Fari, Una Penisola in Comunicazione, pp. 137 and 228–30. 56. See Balbi, Le Origini del Telefono in Italia, pp. 111 and 134. 57. Simone Fari, ‘Technology on the Wire. Technological Changes in the First Thirty Years of the Italian Telegraph Experience: Achievements and Difficulties’, in Andrea Giuntini (ed.), Communication and its Lines. Telegraphy in the 19th Century among Economy, Politics and Technology (Prato: Istituto di Studi Storici Postali, 2004), pp. 135–58.

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58. Balbi, Le Origini del Telefono in Italia, p. 171. 59. Renato Giannetti, La Conquista della Forza: Risorse, Tecnologia ed Economia nell’Industria Elettrica Italiana (1883–1940) (Milan: Franco Angeli, 1985). 60. Michelangelo Vasta, Innovazione Tecnologica e Capitale Umano in Italia (1880– 1914). Le Traiettorie della Seconda Rivoluzione Industriale (Bologna: Il Mulino, 1999). 61. Giannetto, Il Lavoro nell’Amministrazione Postale e Telegrafica tra Otto e Novecento and Giannetto, I Tecnici delle Comunicazioni fra Età Liberale e Fascismo. 62. Fari, Una penisola in Comunicazione, pp. 130–6. 63. Simone Fari, Gabriele Balbi and Giuseppe Richeri, ‘A Common Technical Culture of Telegraphy: The Telegraph Union and the Significance of Technological Standardization, 1865–1875’, HISTELCON (History of Electro-technology Conference), Session 3 ‘Telecommunications 2’, Pavia, 5–7 September 2012. 64. Bureau International des Administrations Télégraphiques, Statistiques Générales de la Télégraphie Internationale, vols 1868–1879 and vols 1880–1889. 65. Annales Télégraphiques, Parigi, published from 1855 to 1897. 66. Journal Télégraphique, Berna, published by Bureau Internationale des Administrations Télégraphiques from 1869 to 1914. 67. The minutes of the conferences are conserved in the archives of the International Telecommunication Union. For a summary of Italian activities in the International Telegraph Union: Fari, Una Penisola in Comunicazione, pp. 429–503. 68. Nicomede Bianchi, Carlo Matteucci e l’Italia del suo Tempo (Rome–Turin–Florence: Fratelli Bocca, 1874). 69. Francesca Polese, Alla Ricerca di un’Industria Nuova. Il viaggio all’Estero del Giovane Pirelli e le Origini di una Grande Impresa (1870–1877) (Venice: Marsilio, 2004). 70. As partially happened in the electricity sector, the engineers in the telephone companies held a key role not only in the design and development of the system but also in its business management. The figure of the engineer-businessman emerged in Italy in the years straddling the nineteenth and twentieth centuries also thanks to the fruitful dialogue between politicians and technicians. In this stage, huge amounts of money were not needed to invest in the telephone sector because the networks were mainly urban: in this way the technicians could realize a long-cherished dream and ‘achieve economic autonomy, freeing themselves from the role of mere executors of others programmes (of private shareholders, companies or mixed banks) to become, in a certain sense, their own masters’; Luciano Segreto, ‘Imprenditori e Finanzieri’, in Giorgio Mori (ed.), Storia dell’Industria Elettrica in Italia. 1. Le Origini. 1882–1914 (Rome–Bari: Laterza, 1992), p. 311. On this question see other two contributions contained in the volume edited by Giorgio Mori: Bruno Bezza, ‘Manager e tecnici’ and Carlo G. Lacaita, ‘Politecnici, Ingegneri e Industria Elettrica’; and Gian Carlo Calcagno, ‘Les Ingénieurs et la Gestion des Processus de Modernisation en Italie a la fin du XIX Siècle et au Début du XX Siècle’, in Jean-Philippe Bouilloud and BernardPian Lecuyeur (eds), L’Invention de la Gestion: Histoire et Pratiques (Paris: L’Harmattan, 1994).

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71. Antinori, Le Telecomunicazioni Italiane, p. 18. 72. The bibliography of Marconi, especially on the technical expertise of the Bolognese inventor, is enormous. Refer to Gabriele Falciasecca and Barbara Valotti (eds), Guglielmo Marconi. Genio, Storia e Modernità (Milan: Editoriale Giorgio Mondadori, 2003) for a general overview and, again, the catalogue of publications available on the topic from the Fondazione Marconi website, http://www.fgm.it/it/catalogo.html [accessed 9 May 2013]. 73. Robert Fox and Anna Guagnini, ‘Starry Eyes and Harsh Realities: Education, Research, and the Electrical Engineer in Europe, 1880–1914’, The Journal of European Economic History, 23/1 (1994). 74. Emanuele Jona, Cavi Telegrafici Sottomarini, Costruzione, Immersione, Riparazione (Milan: Hoepli, 1896). 75. Telegraph lines were a practical application of the electric circuit. An electric circuit must be closed, so the first telegraph lines had at least two wires, one outgoing and one returning. However, Matteucci introduced a circuit with just one line, using the ground as the line closing the circuit, exploiting the high electrical conductivity of the earth. Matteucci’s innovation halved the quantity of wire used in telegraph lines. Carlo Matteucci, Manuale di Telegrafia Eettrica (Pisa: Tipografia Bencini, 1850). 76. Anna Guagnini, ‘Dall’Invenzione all’Impresa. Marconi e la Wireless Telegraph & Signal Company’, in Storia, Scienza e Società. Ricerche sulla Scienza in Italia nell’Età moderna e Contemporanea (Bologna: CIS, Dipartimento di Filosofia, University of Bologna, 2006), pp. 175–212. 77. For bibliographic information about Artom, see http://areeweb.polito.it/strutture/ cemed/museovirtuale/storia/2-02/2-2-01/2-2-0104.htm [accessed 9 May 2013]. 78. Bureau International des Administrations Télégraphiques, Statistiques Générales de la Télégraphie Internationale, vols from 1868 to 1915. 79. On the history and success of the mobile telephone in Italy see Gabriele Balbi, ‘Dappertutto Telefonini. Per una Storia Sociale della Telefonia Mobile in Italia’, Intersezioni, 3 (2008), pp. 465–90. 80. Andrea Giuntini, ‘Nascita, Sviluppo e Tracollo della Rete Infrastrutturale’ and Renato Giannetti, ‘Il Progresso Tecnologico’, in Franco Amatori, Duccio Bigazzi, Renato Giannetti and Luciano Segreto (eds), Storia d’Italia. L’Industria. I Problemi e lo Sviluppo Economico (Milan: Einaudi-Il Sole 24 Ore, 2005), pp. 551–616 and 387–440. 81. James Foreman-Peck and Daniel Manning, ‘Telecommunications in Italy’, in James Foreman-Peck and Jürgen Mueller (eds) European Telecommunication Organisations (Baden-Baden: Nomos Verlagsgesellschaft, 1988), pp. 181–201. 82. Giuseppe Richeri, ‘The Difficulties Involved in the Control and Organization of Telecommunication in Italy’, Media, Culture and Society, 7/3 (1985), pp. 49–70. 83. Eli Noam, Telecommunications in Europe (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992), p. 241.

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84. Bottiglieri, STET, p. 57. On industrial financing of fascism see Renzo De Felice, Mussolini il Fascista, vol. I, La Conquista del Potere, 1921–1924 (Turin: Einaudi, 1966), p. 678. 85. Richeri, The Difficulties Involved, p. 61. 86. Elserino Piol, Il Sogno di un’Impresa. Dall’Olivetti al Venture Capital: Una Vita nell’Information Technology (Milan: Il Sole 24 Ore, 2004), p. 307. 87. Ortoleva, Telecomunicazioni: Un Modello Italiano?, p. 112. 88. Giancarlo Lizzeri and Francois de Brabant, L’ Industria delle Telecomunicazioni in Italia (Milan: Franco Angeli, 1979), p. 25. 89. Bottiglieri, STET, p. 250. 90. Bottiglieri, STET, p. 247.

Beyond the Myth of the Self-taught Inventor: The Learning Process and Formative Years of Young Guglielmo Marconi BARBARA VALOTTI Museo Marconi – Fondazione Guglielmo Marconi

Abstract This essay offers a detailed reconstruction of the context in which Marconi grew up and of the process which, as early as 1895, led a young ‘passionate amateur student of electricity’ to focus his efforts on wireless telegraphy. The reconstruction is based on original documents kept in Italian archives and on the analysis of his sources of information on the most recent scientific and technological developments of applied electricity. These documents allow us to achieve a better understanding of his approach to experimental work and to invention, and of how he developed the skills and know-how which allowed him to achieve his first successful transmission of signals by means of electricity. They also throw new light on the social and cultural milieu in which his business attitude was formed. According to this interpretation, what Marconi brought to London in 1896 was not only a ‘black box’ and a steadfast belief in the potential of his invention, but also a strong and deeply rooted entrepreneurial spirit.

FOREWORD One of the most striking features of the career of Guglielmo Marconi, inventor, entrepreneur and technological innovator is the youthful age at which he achieved 259

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his outstanding results that between 1895 and 1902 made him the pioneer of a new technology – wireless telegraphy – and, through his successes in those years, put him on the front pages of the most important international newspapers. He carried out his first experiments in wireless telegraphy in 1895, when he was 21, and immediately embarked upon a rapid series of successes from the first radiotelegraphic link across the Channel in 1899 to the first sports radio reporting in 1898 on occasion of the Kingstown Regatta in Ireland and at the America’s Cup in 1899 (during which he followed the race aboard a steamship and sent radiotelegraphic messages to the newspapers which were able to publish the results in good time), culminating in the first transatlantic experiments when he was only 27 in December 1901. In an account of Marconi’s ‘crowning triumph’, published in McClure’s Magazine, Ray Stannard Baker remarked on ‘the inventor’s youthful appearance. Though he is only twentyseven years old, his experience as an inventor covers many years, for he began experimenting in wireless telegraphy before he was twenty. At twenty-one he came to London from his Italian home, and convinced the British Post Office Department that he had an important idea; at twenty-three he was famous the world over’.1 In the light of this early success, it is particularly interesting to consider his education. Significantly, during an interview with Giornale d’Italia in 1903, Marconi flatly denied the often-reported antagonism of his father towards his aspiring inventor son. He added that ‘not only did he not thwart my efforts, he encouraged them. Indeed my first experiments . . . were made with the resources that my father gave of his own accord. I do not know why the press wanted to weave a myth about my youth.’2 To the journalist who suggested that meeting and overcoming those alleged obstacles ‘would make your work of genius even more remarkable’, Marconi retorted: But they are at odds with the truth and I don’t want to accept laurels that I have not earned. For the sake of the respect I owe my father, I beg you to state explicitly that I have received every assistance from my family and without that help I would certainly not have been able to make my discovery known or to make progress with it. Central to the recurring elements in the myth around the early years of this extraordinary character are the paternal antagonism towards the son’s aspirations to become an inventor set against the attentive support of his mother, and the condescension of the first biographies about his lack of formal education. In fact Marconi, who in 1909 became the first Italian Nobel laureate in physics, never earned his diploma. Factors that are more nebulous, but very intriguing are his relationship with a celebrated professor at the University of Bologna, Augusto Righi and his choice of Britain as a base for his career as an inventor and entrepreneur which begs the question of why he did not choose Italy and raises the suspicion that the Italian government might have driven such an important inventor to leave the country with his invention. The aim of this essay is to show that many of these elements are clichés, typical of the mythology around the figure of the heroic inventor. An accurate reconstruction of the development of Guglielmo Marconi is made possible by a series of family documents found about twenty years ago that have become indispensable to a study

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FIGURE 1: The cover of the Italian magazine La Domenica del Corriere, published in January 1903, representing Marconi as a hero after his successful transoceanic tests. Source: Fondazione Corriere della Sera.

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that focuses on the context in which that boy grew up and the dynamics through which a young ‘passionate amateur student of electricity’ had an intuition that led him to develop an invention that marked a true revolution in the field of telecommunications.3

BEGINNINGS Guglielmo Marconi was born at Bologna on 25 April 1874. His father Giuseppe was a rich land owner involved in a variety of commercial activities, while his mother, Annie Jameson was a young but very determined Irish woman who took a great interest in the education of her children. Regarding the characteristics that the inventor inherited from his parents, Marconi’s eldest daughter defined them very effectively: ‘from his father, that independence of spirit which is the mark of mountain men, the aloneness that is often dour, the ability to make do with what is available. From his mother, a will as stubborn as his father’s, but matched with poetry and music and grace.’4 The childhood of Guglielmo Marconi was marked by frequent moves, first to Britain (the family spent at least two years in Bedford) and afterwards to Tuscany. It should be emphasized that among the fundamental elements of his link with Britain, the linguistic one is central. Annie Jameson – who to judge from the family papers was perfectly bilingual – passed on that ability to her sons. Moreover, Signora Marconi played a fundamental role in the decisions and choices relating to their education and instruction. After the birth of the couple’s first child Alfonso, born in 1865, the couple found themselves at odds, which led Annie to dictate conditions that were certainly strong by the Italian custom of that time. In a letter to her husband, Annie asks him to make sure that his son will be able to ‘learn the good principles of my religion and that he not come into contact with the gross superstition that is commonly taught to small children in Italy’.5 In another letter she makes her husband swear that ‘he will not let his son be educated by the priests’.6 From the middle of the 1880s Giuseppe made the Villa Griffone his primary residence, while Annie and their sons spent the winter in Tuscany, first at Florence and then at Livorno. Livorno was an important city for Guglielmo’s education. There, having overcome the health problems that had worried his parents since he was ten years old, he attended the Istituto Nazionale from 1885 to 1889. During these years he developed not only a deep passion for the sea (which would stay with him for the rest of his life and because of which the marine applications of his wireless telegraph would be a source of particular pride), but also an intense interest in the electrical sciences, which among other things left him with little patience for his normal studies. What stands out in this dynamic and is worth pointing out, is that the family, rather than being discouraged by scholastic results that showed areas of weakness – in a couple of school reports from 1885 and 1887 modest scores in Italian predominate, given that the young Marconi had trouble pronouncing the language in which he was being brought up – decided to indulge the boy’s interests. This allowed him to study with private tutors in the field for which he had such a passion. One of these, Giotto Bizzarrini, has left a very interesting account, which gives us a portrait of the young aspiring inventor at the age of 18:

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In 1892, the family of Guglielmo Marconi returned to Livorno. It was then that Alfonso came to see me and asked me to give Guglielmo private lessons in the sciences. I remember that Alfonso told me, ‘Guglielmo is always fiddling with chemistry flasks, with Wolf ’s bottles, with a telegraph device, with a Ruhmkorff coil and he has installed zinc strips on the roof of the house; but he is in need of a little technical direction and especially some mathematic grounding.’ I accepted the invitation willingly. At the same time, Signora Annie Jameson presented her son, to the late and exceedingly worthy Professor Vincenzo Rosa, professor of physics at the Liceo Niccolini at Livorno and Rosa too, undertook the task of instructing the individual who was to become the master of space. If I’m not mistaken, Rosa’s lessons – or at least some of them – took place in the physics department of the Liceo, a department that was very well equipped. I didn’t have the time to go either to Marconi’s house or to my own, as both were so far from the school where I taught. I solved the problem by renting a house in the Via Vittorio Emanuele, no. 36, where the Society of Teachers was located. The room was rented to me by the school caretaker, Celestino Bellandi, an ex-fire chief. I went there from 12.00 to 1.00, Guglielmo arriving always some minutes before me and Bellandi, opening the door for me would say, ‘Your scholar is already here; do you know that he has the air of a great thinker? He will be something!’ The intuition was correct. I don’t remember how long I taught Guglielmo Marconi. I recall that Guglielmo, at odds with the official programme, did nothing but ask questions. Our lessons were real conversations on scientific matters. Guglielmo demonstrated an instinctive passion for the study of electrical applications and an exceptional capacity for scientific work. He never spoke of things that did not interest him scientifically. I recall once he came to the lesson with a scrap sheet of zinc and he told me that he needed to produce a reaction with sulphuric acid to produce a small amount of hydrogen. It can’t be doubted that he also harboured a marked passion for chemistry. It’s a fact that Guglielmo Marconi at 18 years of age, that is to say, during his second stay in Livorno, had begun research into the electrical oscillations produced by atmospheric discharges.7 This portrait is certainly interesting, but until a few years ago no manuscripts had been found that offered direct evidence and details of the activities of this young electrical enthusiast. This serious gap was filled in 1994, with the discovery of a series of notebooks and loose papers, annotated by the inventor of wireless telegraphy between 1890 and 1894.8 The three most interesting notebooks contain basic notes on electricity, drafts of letters addressed to family and to suppliers of materials needed for his electrical experiments, records of expenses and notes on his laboratory work. His ambitions in relation to his activity are clearly revealed in the draft of a letter addressed to his brother from Livorno. I’ve been very slow to send my news, but I hope you will forgive me. I have been constantly occupied with studying, especially mathematics, in which I am taking three lessons a week with Professor Bizzarrini from the Institute . . .

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I have consulted the rules for obtaining a diploma from the Technical Institute or from the Liceo, as Professor Righi suggested. . . . For a diploma from the Technical Institute (Department of Physics), you need 15 subjects, for the Liceo, 11. Candidates from a private school or educated at home have to undergo a more rigorous examination. I will try to do everything possible to pass these exams and I’ll also need to have a teacher at the Griffone this summer for all the necessary subjects. Perhaps, it wouldn’t be difficult to find a student from the university who would be suitable. My special electrical studies are going well, with satisfactory results on both the theoretical and practical sides and I am certain that my most recent device could be patented. Professor Righi will also be able to confirm this to you after I have explained it all to him. With various subjects to study and my work I am busy more than ten hours a day, which I find very tiring.9 We are therefore far from the legend of the isolated autodidact whose genius would have sprung almost from nowhere and through sudden inspiration. This letter provides precious information: young Marconi’s commitment to his studies, though he never obtained his diploma; his relationship with Augusto Righi, who advised Marconi on his studies, experiments and attempts at inventions and his work on his experiments in electricity, clearly distinct from his school studies. The reference in the letter to the practical aspects and possible commercial value of his experiments is of great importance. In other sections of his notebooks Marconi writes of his intentions to file for a patent. This intention, which he pursued from the age of eighteen and his desire to commercially exploit his inventions – three years before his wireless experiments – are of great significance in understanding Marconi’s later work.

THE FIRST TECHNOLOGICAL PROJECT One of the notebooks recovered among the family papers can be regarded as a laboratory notebook. Written in the summer of 1892, it shows a young Marconi busy preparing for entry in the ‘International competition for a new electric battery, with a prize of 2,000 Italian Lire’ promoted by the illustrated weekly magazine L’Elettricità and first announced on 20 December 1891. The competition was successful and was publicized in many foreign scientific magazines. The 20 March 1892 issue of L’Elettricità reported that the competition had appeared in Electrical World, a New York journal: ‘the real industrial point of view to which the competition refers’ and the objective of ‘stimulating inventors to practical research on small sources of electricity’ were emphasised, since ‘the need [was] felt for something similar for a wide range of applications’. The theme was reprised in the edition of 7 August 1892 and the next day Marconi noted the date and the theme in his laboratory notebook. In the roughly ten pages that bear witness to this project, there are drawings, sketches, mathematical calculations and data relevant to electrical measurements.10 Some partially burnt pages cut short

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the interesting record of Marconi’s work on an experimental battery and we cannot know how this ambitious project turned out. This new information is nevertheless extremely interesting, in so far as it shows the young Marconi busy in one of the most important fields of research of the age, choosing to take part in an international scientific competition and well aware of the costs of his research (in a note, in fact, apart from comments on the cost of materials, entries appear for labour; interest and depreciation; and unforeseen costs). Of particular significance in the new material is the interest young Marconi showed in the results of scientific research, concrete technological applications and the possible commercial exploitation of these latter. Young Marconi’s ‘daring’, his ability to throw himself by dint of hard work and resolve into the scientific and technological community of his time, should also be pointed out. The strategy Marconi adopted in the technological competition he was considering entering reveals important character traits that will crop up in later years. The interplay between scientific, technological and entrepreneurial interests is confirmed in the new documents as crucial to the strategy of innovation that would lead him to wireless telegraphy. Important elements that led Marconi – in very different ways – to develop that strategy are his reading and his scientific contacts at that time.

FIGURE 2: The page of young Marconi’s beige notebook with a sketch of a thermoelectric motor. Source: Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei, Roma.

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IN SEARCH OF THE RIGHT PATH: THE TEACHERS AND LETTERS OF THE YOUNG MARCONI Among the controversial questions of Guglielmo Marconi’s early years his relationship with Augusto Righi is widely known. Righi was a celebrated professor of physics at the University of Bologna, who in the 1890s undertook important research in the field of electromagnetism. Often labelled as Marconi’s mentor, in reality he denied this role from the first interviews published on the subject, in which he tells of visits by the teenaged Marconi (who had been introduced by mutual acquaintances), to ask advice and to tell him ‘of the experiments that he was ingeniously putting together with rudimentary equipment . . ., of the new experiments that he was planning from which emerged the abiding passion with which he dedicated himself to questions of applied science’. Among the new evidence on the matter, the draft of the letter by Marconi, who had undertaken to obtain a diploma, ‘as Prof. Righi had desired’, reveals a fundamental piece of advice given him by the professor, whom the young man used to turn to get his opinion on his ‘special electrical studies’. All is confirmed in two letters sent by Righi to his illustrious British colleague Oliver Lodge, who contacted him in 1897, very irritated by the popularity that that young man was winning in Britain. In the second of these letters, dated 25 June 1897, Righi wrote: If I am not mistaken, you are asking me for new information on Mr. Marconi. This is all that I can say. I knew him four years ago. The family is very rich, his father is from Bologna and his mother is English. The young Marconi has a strong desire to become an inventor. On several occasions he has questioned me on ideas and inventions that, though ingenious, would be difficult to realise. I have advised him to undertake formal studies and to follow a university course. . . . Mr. Marconi has seen my experiments and I have given him explanations regarding them. I have not seen him for two years and it is really in this period and unbeknownst to me, that he has developed his alleged invention. Young as he as he is, you should not blame him, if he behaved less than courteously to me. He has been badly advised, that’s all. His real merit is that of being the first, I believe, to have the idea of using electric waves for signals at a distance.11 The extract makes clear once and for all the terms of this relationship that allowed Marconi to acquire important knowledge, but at the same time did not go beyond the natural advice that a university professor could give to the curious aspiring inventor. Further, it sheds light on a fundamental aspect of Marconi’s 1895 invention. The young man was careful not to share what was his most ambitious project, probably because he was sure of having at last something very promising, which he could never bear to see deprecated, much less put second to achieving a diploma. The secrecy with which he protected his invention reveals the ambitions and the entrepreneurial skills of the young man, of which Professor Righi would probably not have approved. In the following years the only person whom Marconi acknowledged as having played an important role in his education was Vincenzo Rosa, who in the early 1890s was a physics teacher at the Liceo Niccolini at Livorno.

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He recalled it in particular during the conference held on the occasion of his Nobel Prize, during which he declared: In sketching the history of my association with radiotelegraphy, I might mention that I never studied physics or electrotechnics in the regular manner, although as a boy I was deeply interested in those subjects. I did, however, attend one course of lectures on physics under the late Professor Rosa at Livorno, and I was, I think I might say, fairly well acquainted with the publications of that time dealing with scientific subjects including the works of Hertz, Branly, and Righi.12 Unfortunately, the information that we have at our disposal on their relationship is rather sparse. The only direct evidence is contained in a notebook annotated by Marconi in the spring of 1892, in which we find the draft of a letter in which he was asking for ‘1 hose faucet and . . . U-tubes that – he writes – I have to give to Prof. Rosa of this Liceo’. This point allows us to confirm the presence of Marconi in the laboratory of the Liceo in which Vincenzo Rosa worked. Marconi was not a student at the school, but – thanks to the professor – he was able to frequent the physics laboratory. Unfortunately, this institute, which is still in existence, has not preserved evidence of Rosa’s activities (the records for the years in which he taught there have been destroyed). If the relationships with Righi and Rosa were for different reasons discontinuous, from the notebooks of the young Marconi and from some other papers on which his father Giuseppe noted with extreme accuracy his daily expenditure, it is possible to identify an important element of continuity in Marconi’s education: his reading of the weekly journal, L’Elettricità. There are in fact points taken from several articles published in the journal; there is a note of the payment for the subscription for it and it should not be forgotten that the first relevant technical project of the young Marconi originated from a competition promoted by the editors of L’Elettricità. The journal – founded in Milan in 1882 – was of a popularizing character, primarily (but not exclusively) concerned with the practical applications of electricity, and provided amateurs in the field with up-to-date information on what was taking place in Europe and the United States.13 Undoubtedly this contributed to the formation of the personality of the young inventor and met his growing needs. Several columns of the magazine illustrate this essential point: the section ‘Rivista delle Riviste’ reported the most interesting news from international journals; another column reported the list of patents issued by the Italian government ‘for inventions and improvements reflecting electricity and its applications’; a substantial section was devoted to reviews of newly published books, and the readers who were interested in such publications could purchase them by writing to the editor. In addition to information on the most interesting texts, the magazine often published a summary of the catalogue of the Società Elettrica Industriale; from this firm, which supplied electrical equipment to some of the ministries and various universities and apparently had a close relationship with the journal, the readers could buy every kind of material and electrical apparatus. From the documentation we have on Marconi’s activities in the years 1892 to 1893, we know that he used this supplier on several occasions. In 1893, the journal founded an Electrical Laboratory, to which readers could send requests for electrical measurements and tests of apparatus, and where various

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FIGURE 3: The front page of the weekly magazine L’Elettricità, one of Marconi’s sources of information. This issue, published in 1892, reports on Heinrich Hertz’ experiments. Source: Museo Marconi, Fondazione Guglielmo Marconi.

experiments could be carried out on payment of fees whose amount depended on the work involved. One of Marconi’s favourite sections of the journal was certainly the one entitled, ‘Practical standards for the construction of electrical apparatus’. In that section the author, Giulio Pardini, provided advice for ‘enabling the amateur, the student, to put together a good electrical cupboard, developing at the same time the passion for practical work that, more than theory, often leads to discoveries’. In his advice, he underlined how this approach was not taught in schools, where theory dominated. Marconi probably took useful suggestions from these practical standards that referred to instruments for the ‘production of energy, chemical and thermal actions, magnetic measuring equipment, electro-magnets, electrically operated bells, induction devices, telephones and microphones, electric lamps, household (electrical) systems, etc’. It is certain that the concepts and suggestions contained in L’Elettricità formed a constant part of the young Marconi’s experimental activity in the laboratory which became ever more intense. From 1893 he spent most of his time working at the Villa Griffone, where he continued to cultivate his interest in batteries, and it is probably in that period that he devised a thermoelectric motor.14 His link with the magazine is confirmed by a document discovered among the Marconi papers and dated, not

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by chance, 14 November 1893. It is an invoice from the Società Elettrica Industriale, which documents the young inventor’s purchase of a ‘liquid for soldering without acid’. According to the research carried out by Maurizio Bigazzi, the request for this particular substance suggests that at the end of 1893 Marconi began to conduct experiments with equipment employing electromagnetic waves. Research into electromagnetism received a good deal of coverage during the course of 1894, not least because of the death of the most celebrated experimenter in the field, the German physicist Heinrich Hertz who had died at the beginning of that year. We do not know if there was a specific article which might have pushed Marconi to work towards a rudimentary system of radiotelegraphy, but certainly the constant reading of the journal, from which the young man might have gleaned advice and working methods in a continual attempt to keep himself up to date on what was happening in the field nationally and internationally, makes L’Elettricità a fundamental element in Marconi’s development. Nevertheless, an article published in the autumn of 1893 seems to us extraordinarily interesting, given the invention that less than two years later set in motion the brilliant career of the young reader of the journal. Electricity seems destined to rule supreme, not only in the optical domain but also in the thermodynamic one. Light rays cannot pass through walls or even a thick fog; but electric rays with an oscillation between 30 and 60 cm would easily pass through walls, clouds and fogs, which in this way would become transparent. The slow vibrations of the ether would allow the marvellous concept of wireless telegraphy without underwater cables, without any of the expensive installations of our time.15 Needless to say, it is impossible to ascertain whether this article was a fundamental source of inspiration for Marconi; however it must be noticed that this would confirm what Marconi stated on several occasions, namely that he began to work on wireless communication at the age of 19. Certainly, the months that followed saw the aspiring young inventor ever more taken up in his investigation, working with extraordinary determination and intensity in his laboratory in the attic of the Villa Griffone, the family home. More than a year later an article discussed the problem of safety at sea – an issue that was particularly poignant in the light of a tragedy involving the liner Elba in which 400 people died.16 The article invited scientists and engineers to engage in research on safety at sea; ‘No task could be more useful . . . than the one aimed at wresting from the sea at least some of its victims and the successful scientists would deserve to have their names inscribed in the glorious book of mankind’s benefactors’. It is tempting to imagine that one of the people who might have read the article was a young Bolognese man with a passion for electrical engineering and the ambition to become an inventor. At the time the article was published Marconi was secretly working on his first wireless telegraphy device and a few years later he would find a solution to the problem of safety at sea, inventing instruments which seemed like ‘magic’ because they allowed communication by means of invisible waves without cables, ideal for ships in navigation far from land. Although determined and ambitious, the twenty-year-old, who probably had read that magazine article, could never have guessed that his invention would achieve such outstanding success, receive the recognition of the Nobel Prize and be

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acknowledged by newspapers throughout the world. Yet, in a newspaper that was published by a strange coincidence a few hours after the Titanic disaster on 14 April 1912, Marconi, by then an international celebrity, declared to his interviewer, Miss Carew: I know you’ll think me a tremendous egotist, that I’m awfully self-assured, but I am going to confess to you that I always believed in myself, dreamed I was going to be somebody – make the world talk. I assume every boy believes that of himself. But I believe I believed it harder than most boys do.17 In that interview, Marconi said that there had not been a scientist in particular from whom he might have drawn inspiration, but he underlined the fact that he had always been ‘tremendously interested in the experiments’ and to the question ‘Did you dream the wireless from the beginning?’ Marconi replied: No; I don’t think I did. I had in mind always the idea of bringing countries closer in touch with each other, uniting remote spots and centres of life, but it was all so vague. As nearly as I can put that far-off ambition into words, it seemed to be that I wanted to engage in some form of scientific work that would keep me travelling.18 Even though we have never found the notes that would allow us to reconstruct with precision the experiments that led Marconi to realize his first system for wireless telegraphy, the path that led him to work in that direction seem well contextualized. In the light of the foregoing, the famous ‘experiment on the hill’ (the first natural obstacle overcome by radio waves was in fact the Celestini Hill opposite the window of Marconi’s laboratory on the top floor of the Villa Griffone) was the last link in a long chain undertaken by the aspiring young inventor who at the age of 21 completed experiments that were particularly important, so setting himself on the path to become a pioneer in the field of radio communication. In truth, several years later Marconi did not shy away from the stereotype of an invention characterized by a flash of inspiration: in a couple of statements in fact he recalled a particularly inspiring moment experienced on the Oropa mountains. While he gives two conflicting dates for this episode, it is important to stress how the summer stay in the Alps is put in a context that is quite clear. A few clues present in the documents that have been found lead us to date it to the summer of 1895, during which the young man wrote in a letter to his cousin that he was about to leave for Andorno, where he would join his half brother for a short holiday, and he would take advantage of the journey to buy materials in Milan on his way back to Bologna. In any case, the context is rather clear. What emerges from Marconi’s education, that is to say, the reading that he did, the private lessons that he attended, his relationships with his professors and suppliers of electrical materials, the money invested in his experiments, allows us to conclude that this young man – often described as an autodidact, without scientific knowledge, who invented wireless telegraphy almost by chance – had in reality for years kept up to date with the results of research at the forefront of the field. He was very familiar with electrical experiments, which he carried out with tenacity and – when necessary – in utmost secrecy. He made the industrial application and commercial exploitation of his discoveries the primary aim of his

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research. These elements were decisive for the strategy that he adopted in the years 1894 to 1895, with the aim of communicating by means of electromagnetic waves and perfecting the invention that made him famous. The financial support for conducting this intense activity was far from irrelevant: the family papers in the Archivio Guglielmo Marconi in Rome make it possible to identify his father as a constant source of financial support (in the list of expenses regularly recorded by Giuseppe, there are entries for the costs of books, journals and materials ‘for Guglielmo’) and it is clear that the support became ever more considerable. In February 1896, Giuseppe noted items of expenditure of some hundreds of Italian Lire (in the past they had been in the order of tens of Lire) ‘for the journey to London’ for Annie and Guglielmo.19 In the course of the next few months, he sent his son some thousands of Lire. This support would prove – perhaps a little surprisingly in view of Giuseppe’s probable initial incomprehension of a child who was always closed up in his laboratory – the best of his investments. Guglielmo was well aware of the fundamental economic support that his father was giving him and this is well demonstrated in a series of letters of extraordinary interest that he sent to Giuseppe, who had remained at the Griffone, in the months immediately following his move to London.20 These letters contain valuable information on the harmony between the two on financial matters and on the origins of Marconi as inventor and entrepreneur in the financial capital of the world at that time. They throw light on a very controversial event, namely Marconi’s decision to develop his invention in Britain.

FIGURE 4: Young Marconi’s laboratory in the attic of Villa Griffone. Source: Museo Marconi, Fondazione Guglielmo Marconi.

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THE CHOICE OF BRITAIN Among the inadequately verified assertions about the life of Marconi, there is no doubt that the one that has received most attention is the alleged lack of interest shown by the Italian authorities in his system of radiotelegraphy in the months immediately following the experiments of 1895. In reality, no document has been found that might prove any contact attempted by Marconi, while various signs point to a different situation. In the same interview of May 1903 quoted above there is a passage that has been unjustly neglected: [Journalist] Is it true that before commencing your experiments in Britain you turned to the Italian government who refused you support? [Marconi] It’s false; I asked for nothing and therefore it was not possible to refuse me anything. After the first experiments, I found myself in London with our ambassador General Ferrero. He encouraged me to continue the tests in Britain, which seemed to him the easiest place in which to set up a strong company that would furnish me with the means for the large scale experiments that I intended.21 Naturally, it is possible to object that Marconi doesn’t explain how he found himself in London, a city to which he had moved a few months after his first experiments in wireless telegraphy, which had been carried out at the Villa Griffone. Regarding his choice of London, Marconi declared, ‘I decided to move to Britain with the intention of launching the invention on a grand scale. I chose London for various reasons, principally because I had many relatives and friends there and Great Britain was at that period at the height of its financial and industrial development.’ Britain, as we have seen, had been the place where various Marconi family events had been played out and if one adds the position of that nation at the head of a vast empire – and so very much interested in strengthening its networks of communication – it appears evident that Marconi’s choice was fully justified. What is more, the young inventor knew that in London he could count on the support of various relatives in his pursuit of two important objectives: to secure for his invention legal and scientific recognition and to find the best conditions for the commercial exploitation of his system of radiotelegraphy. In this respect, it should be noted that seven among the nine partners of the company that Marconi founded a little more than a year after his arrival were Irish grain merchants.22 Also in London, by a very fortunate coincidence, General Ferrero had recently been appointed Italian Ambassador. Ferrero had been the commander of the Bologna’s Military Division from November 1893 to February 1895.23 In a letter he wrote in March 1896 to his father (the first after his arrival in London), the young man recounted that he had met General Ferrero who advised him ‘as a friend to not reveal any secrets’ at least until he had been awarded the patent and expressed some harsh judgements on the Italian government, which, Marconi said, had surprised him. The analysis of these documents allows us to put forward a very different hypothesis about the relationship between Marconi and Italy: a relationship sought not through a letter to a minister, but rather through Ambassador Ferrero – most likely already a family acquaintance – in a city which, albeit foreign, was not so to the Marconi family and which in the

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last years of the nineteenth century was the financial capital of the world. It was without doubt the most fitting stage for the combination of elements, scientific, technological, entrepreneurial and financial, that characterized the extraordinary career of the father of radio communications. The roots of that – to put it mildly – happy combination are very present in his family background and his education, marked by cosmopolitanism rather than provincialism, by a robust spirit of practicality and entrepreneurship, rather than by petty parsimony, by contacts and reading at a high level, rather than by a sterile isolation.

CONCLUSION As Hugh G. J. Aitken put it, the fundamental elements which Marconi brought with him to Britain were ‘first, the confidence that he could create a system of signalling by Hertzian waves that would have commercial and military, not merely scientific, value; and, second, an unshakable determination to do precisely that. These qualities were new, vital, and catalytic’.24 Persistence, daring, technical skills, a flair for public relations, and a strong belief in the success of wireless telegraphy allowed him not to be intimidated by the obstacles that had to be overcome in order to achieve it. Certainly a number of distinguished members of the British Academy at the time did not see it in that light; however even George Fitzgerald, the eminent Irish physicist (and close friend of Oliver Lodge), who in 1896 labelled him derisively as ‘an Italian adventurer’,25 one year later had to admit that ‘this young chap . . . deserves a great deal of credit for his persistency, enthusiasm, and pluck and must be really a very clever young fellow’.26 It is also certain that the young Italian found himself in the position of being the right man in the right place at the right time. The location (London) and the moment in history were undoubtedly the right ones for that kind of invention – both from a commercial and a military standpoint. In 1892 a Royal Commission was appointed to examine new methods of establishing communications between the telegraphic stations along the coasts of Britain and off-shore stations (including light-vessels); and already in its first report the feasibility of noncontinuous methods of communication was considered, namely the possibility of transmitting and receiving signals between installations not connected by wires.27 It is not by chance that someone like William H. Preece, engineer in chief of the Royal Post Office and well aware of the importance of telegraphy but also of its limitations, was already deeply engaged in experiment on ‘non-continuous’ communication. That said, it is also undeniable that one component of this extremely favourable combination of personal qualities and contingent circumstances on which Marconi’s success story was based is the practical knowledge he developed as a result of the peculiar learning process that characterized his formative period. Undoubtedly, as it has been often pointed out, his peculiar family background allowed him to devote unlimited time to the acquisition of practical experience; however it was a kind of hands-on learning that was not unguided by some form of instruction. His access to the development of research in the field of electricity was not formal education, which was decidedly irregular, but was rather based on the avid reading of magazines and journals whose primary aim was the diffusion of scientific and technical knowledge; and he did so according to criteria that were essentially functional to his

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practical interests. It was this form of self-guided approach that allowed him to read between the lines what was invisible to more competent and expert researchers.

NOTES 1. Ray Stannard Baker ‘Marconi’s Achievement. Telegraphing Across the Ocean Without Wires’, McClure’s Magazine, February 1902, pp. 291–9. 2. Giornale d’Italia, 20 May 1903. 3. He declared himself ‘an ardent student of electricity’ in an interview with Strand Magazine (March 1897). His interviewer was struck by his perfect English and his manners which he characterized thus: ‘Guglielmo Marconi, whose name will doubtless be often heard in the years which lie before us, is a young Anglo-Italian. He was born in Bologna, Italy, and will be twenty-two years old next April. . . . He is a tall, slender young man, who looks at least thirty, and has a calm, serious manner and a grave precision of speech which further give the idea of many more years than are his. He is completely modest, makes no claims whatever as a scientist, and simply says that he has observed certain facts and invented instruments to meet them’. H.J.W. Dam, ‘The New Telegraphy. An Interview with Signor Marconi’, The Strand Magazine, 13 (1897), pp. 273–80, esp. p. 276. 4. Degna Marconi, My Father Marconi (London: Frederick Muller Limited, 1962), p. 8. 5. Annie Jameson to Giuseppe Marconi, 19 February 1873, Scat. 37, Archivio Guglielmo Marconi, Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei, Rome (from now on cited as AGM). 6. Annie Jameson to Giuseppe Marconi, 4 June 1873 (AGM). 7. Letter by Giotto Bizzarini to Umberto di Marco, published in Giovan Battista Marini-Bettolo, ‘Ricordo di Guglielmo Marconi’, in Accademia Nazionale delle Scienze detta dei XL, Omaggio a Guglielmo Marconi, Uno dei XL (Rome: Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei, 1988), pp. 33–4. Marini-Bettolo does not indicate precisely the date of the letter (which is in his possession), but states that it was written soon after Marconi’s death. 8. On the discovery of this documentation, now held in the Archivio Guglielmo Marconi, Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei, Rome, see Giovanni Paoloni ‘Genio e Regolatezza. Il Giovane Marconi e l’Invenzione della Radio’, Prometeo, 13 (1995), pp. 140–52, esp. p. 149. 9. Draft letter written by Marconi in the Blue Notebook Scat. 37 (AGM). 10. A detailed analysis of young Marconi’s project (probably never implemented) has been carried out by Maurizio Bigazzi, scientific advisor to the Fondazione Guglielmo Marconi. Bigazzi has been able to recreate the first ambitious experiments devised by young Marconi, whose aim was to build an improved electrochemical battery. Maurizio Bigazzi, ‘Gli esperimenti del giovane Marconi’, Alta Frequenza, 7 (1995), pp. 36–9. 11. Augusto Righi to Oliver Lodge, 25 June 25 1897 (Lodge Collection, University College, London). 12. Guglielmo Marconi’s Nobel Lecture: ‘Wireless Telegraphic Communication’, in Nobel Lectures Physics 1901–1921 (Amsterdam: Elsevier Publishing Company, 1967).

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13. Roberto Maiocchi, ‘La Ricerca in Campo Elettrotecnico’, in Giorgio Mori (ed.), Storia dell’Industria Elettrica in Italia Vol. 1, Le origini. 1882–1914 (Bari: Laterza, 1992), pp. 155–99, esp. pp. 165–6. 14. Maurizio Bigazzi has developed a prototype of this motor on the basis of a particularly suggestive sketch in the Beige Notebook, Scat. 37 (AGM). This apparatus is on display at the Marconi Museum at the Villa Griffone. 15. ‘L’Avvenire dell’Elettricità’, L’Elettricità, 12 (29 October 1893), pp. 697–8. 16. ‘Collisioni in Mare’, L’Elettricità, 14 (10 March 1895), pp. 154–5. 17. ‘Kate Carew, ‘Attuned to Wireless Waves, Gets Marconi’s Message’, New York Tribune, 14 April 1912. 18. See note 17. 19. Scat 39, AGM. 20. The transcripts of these letters are in AGM; some of the original letters are in the Henry Willar Lende Collection (San Antonio, Texas): see GEC Review, 12 (1997), pp. 94–106. 21. Giornale d’Italia, 20 May 1903. 22. For an analysis of the entrepreneurial aspects of Marconi’s career, see Anna Guagnini, ‘Guglielmo Marconi Inventore e Imprenditore’, in Anna Guagnini and Giuliano Pancaldi (eds), Cento Anni di Radio (Torino: Seat, 1995), pp. 357–418. 23. See the information collected by Manfredo Gervasi and published in ‘Una Lettera Inedita di Marconi sui Primi Esperimenti in Inghilterra’, Giornale di Fisica, 15 (1974), pp. 307–23. 24. Hugh G.J. Aitken, Syntony and Spark (New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1976), p. 202. 25. George F. Fitzgerald to Oliver Heaviside, quoted in Sungook Hong, Wireless. From Marconi’s Black Box to the Audion (Cambridge and London: MIT Press, 2001), p. 38. 26. Fitzgerald to Lodge, 21 June 97, MS ADD 89/35 (III) Lodge Collection, University College Archive, London. 27. First Report of the Royal Commission Appointed to Inquire and Report what Lighthouses and Light-vessels it is Desirable to Connect with the Telegraphic System of the United Kingdom by Electrical Communication (London: HMSO, 1894 [C.-6844]), p. 8. I thank Anna Guagnini for drawing this information to my attention.

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Technology Transfer, Economic Strategies and Politics in the Building of the First Italian Submarine Telegraph ANDREA GIUNTINI University of Modena and Reggio Emilia

Abstract In the second half of the nineteenth century Italy was a latecomer, and a peripheral one, in the new advanced technology of submarine telegraph cables. Although unable to compete with the European countries that dominated this field, it played an important role until the beginning of the 1870s, primarily as a result of its strategic geographical position in the middle of the Mediterranean Sea: in fact Italy was a natural crossroad for the cables connecting Great Britain and France with the Middle East and North Africa. Already before the unification, and in the immediate aftermath of that process, Italy began to be provided with an appreciable number of submarine cables, and to exploit the transfer of technology and entrepreneurship. These advancements took place also by virtue of the adaptability and of the shrewdness of the Italian government which, having realized the commercial value of this novel technology, tried to maximize this very attractive opportunity by concluding several favourable agreements with the foreign companies that controlled underwater telegraphy. The first cable was laid as early as 1854, close to Corsica, as a part of the long line connecting France to Algeria. After the unification, Italy strove successfully to develop its own telegraphy network.

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THE LUCK OF A LATECOMER Although Italy was unable to compete with the great European powers from a technological, economic and entrepreneurial point of view, it nevertheless did play a marginal role in the context of international submarine telegraphy in the years that, broadly speaking, ranged from the laying of the first submarine cable between Dover and Calais in 1851 to 1870. This was possible because of Italy’s geographical location, which gave her a considerable natural advantage. Occupying the centre of the Mediterranean Sea, the country stood as the natural crossroads for the telegraph communications originating from Western Europe and directed toward Africa and Asia: it was an ideal landing place for the undersea cables that Great Britain and other European countries wanted to lay down in order to be connected with their colonies. Within a few years, starting before the unification, Italy thus ended up accruing a substantial allocation of submarine cables, despite its unquestionable overall weakness in this technology. All this took place also by virtue of the adaptability and of the shrewdness of its government which, realizing the scope of the novelty, tried to maximize this very attractive opportunity by concluding several agreements with foreign companies that were leaders in the management of submarine telegraphy. In the subsequent period Italy benefited from the experience of those years, constantly keeping pace with the development of the telecommunications. Particularly important was the role played by Guglielmo Marconi in the development of the system of enterprises and submarine cables during the Fascist period. It was the creation of that system that allowed Italy to make remarkable progress in that sector, and helped to form a national model.1

THE EIGHTH WONDER OF THE WORLD Underwater telegraphy represented one of the most intriguing technological challenges of the nineteenth century, having a tremendous impact on European society.2 Thanks to the cables laid in the depths of the sea the first international telecommunications network was created. The idea of connecting all the continents, and of making it possible to communicate in a few hours what, a few years earlier would have taken weeks, seemed incredible even for the most enthusiastic believers in the progress of technology. It was an extraordinary technological adventure sustained in equal degree by financial capital and scientific knowledge. The story of this technology also reflects pointedly the hegemony of the Western world in the era of imperialism, and in particular of Great Britain, which exploited the submarine telegraphy to conquer and strengthen its colonial, political and economic power.3 The economic impact of the system was extraordinary: the telegraph gave unprecedented dynamism to commercial and financial transactions, favouring the integration of world markets.4 It offered to entrepreneurs, merchants, maritime carriers, shipping companies, bankers, insurers, financiers and brokers a completely new way to carry out their daily operations. For a businessman the prospect of communicating at such speed was astonishing. In addition to reducing the risks linked to prolonged bargaining, the telegraph could also eliminate unnecessary

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intermediations. The knowledge of price variations around the world markets in real time helped fashion modern commercial practices. The use of the telegraph allowed the publication of exchange rates and price lists which were uniform for the first time in history. Together with the adoption of the gold standard, the transformations in international finance introduced an ante litteram global financial system. The international arbitrage, purchase and sale of currency and securities by exploiting the margins of fluctuation, became a prevalent practice by virtue of the telegraph.5 Thanks to terrestrial and then to submarine telegraphy first the media underwent a dramatic change. The birth of the first press agencies marked a momentous turn in the development of this sector. Reuters in London, Wolff in Berlin, Havas in Paris – the first to launch a news report – and Associated Press in New York became the masters of world-wide information, with increasing power in their hands.6

A WINNING COMBINATION OF SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY The submarine telegraph cables represented an innovation typically belonging to the second industrial revolution. Terrestrial telegraphy having already reached the phase of full maturity, the research in this field turned towards the solution of the new problems induced by the new area of submarine telegraphy between the 1840s and 1850s. The submarine telegraph was the first scientific-industrial system because of the ties that were established between research and practical application. As the explorations and conquests made new materials available, the research on the subject and the attempt to apply them to practical purposes, both economic and political, developed further.7 The need to transmit electrical pulses over a distance of thousands of kilometres, which could be translated into signals through a cable placed in deep waters, generated technical and scientific questions distinctly different from those raised by ground telegraphic service. From around 1850 to 1866, the technology of the cables was developed through intense study and extensive experimentation, both concerning the transmission of pulses and the setting up and laying of the cables as well as the electrical measures and standards. The continuous research drove toward the laboratory practice, extending also to other areas and forming the basis of the birth of specialized technical schools,8 and contributed significantly to the emergence of a new generation of specialized engineers.9 If electricity became, around the turn of the century, a fundamental sector of engineering education as it was taught in university-level institutions, it did so mostly thanks to telegraphy.10 In those years, some of the best scholars engaged in research on electricity studied this rapidly developing technology; in doing so, they favoured the consolidation of a technology regarded, until a few years earlier, as definitely immature. Many scientists participated in the development of the system of underwater telegraphy, especially in Great Britain and the United States. The treatise published in 1868 by Josiah Latimer Clark11 became the bible for those who were involved in submarine telegraphy. Even the fundamental text of James Clerk Maxwell12 acknowledged the crucial role played by research and experimentation on the cables for the progress of nineteenth-century physics. However the physicist

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who contributed more than anybody else to bring scientific research to bear on technological innovation in this particular field was William Thomson, later to become Lord Kelvin.13 As one of the directors of the Atlantic Telegraph, in 1854 he demonstrated, on the basis of the experiments carried out by Michael Faraday that the key factors to ensure a good transmission of signal along an under-water cable were resistance and inductive capacity. At the core of this scientific line of research were the studies on the conductivity of copper wires, whose electric resistance differed greatly thus affecting the quality of the signal. Slight impurities were enough to reduce considerably the conductive capacity of the wires. Thomson’s scientific background and his achievements in a leading-edge field such as telegraphy allowed him, between 185414 and 1858, to become ‘a central public figure’, abandoning ‘the anonymity of the theoretical scientist’.15 In fact it was Thomson who understood that it was more important to focus on reception than on transmission, and that electrical measurement was fundamental as a means of quality control to be specified as such in every contract. This was contrary to the opinion of Edward Orange Wildman Whitehouse,16 who abandoned his medical practice to devote himself entirely to telegraphy. Whitehouse, who, according to Donard de Cogan, was a ‘testimony to the technological enthusiasm of the mid-Victorian era’, granted the utmost importance to the speed of the signal. The determination of standards changed completely the perspective in this field, both for the manufacturers of cables and the technicians who laid them down. At the end of the 1850s telegraph experimentation had proceeded in terms of capacity to obtain electrical measures ‘far more often and on a larger scale than physicists ever had’.17 The electrical standards were established precisely on the basis of the data obtained as a result of the failure of the transatlantic cable of 1858 and of that of the Red Sea; these events spurred the decisive effort to solve the problems that had caused the two incidents. Before that date, the specifications concerning the weight and the size of the cables were indicated in the contracts signed by the manufacturers of cables. Sometimes reference was made, rather vaguely, to the chemical purity of the conductor; however the details about the electrical characteristics were never defined with precision.

FROM THE INSTALLATION PHASE TO THE INVESTMENTS OF THE LARGE COMPANIES Designing, building, installing the cable under water and then putting it into operation was a very complicated and expensive task. It was necessary to sound the sea beds with the utmost attention and to choose those which were flat, as they are less likely to cause damage; to properly prepare the cable, carry it, taking into account that it weighed several tons, and lay it down with pulleys. Furthermore, it was also important to avoid the leaking of electrical current, so as to allow the signal to reach its destination. The success of the installation depended on the diverse but fundamental contributions of chemists, engineers, electricians, maritime personnel, geologists. The installation required the intervention of large and agile ships equipped with the necessary instruments. Initially vessels originally destined to the transportation of goods and people were used; later the major telegraph companies began to build

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ships specifically designed for the laying of the cables. The most famous and the largest of all these specialized ships was the Great Eastern, designed and built in 1853 by Isambard Kingdom Brunel, the famous manufacturer of the Great Western Railway, one of the most prominent British railway lines. Due to the high costs of the management of cables, the market of underwater telegraphy could only be exploited by large and powerful enterprises possessing substantial capital, usually collected in the British market. The sector was dominated by large cable manufacturers such as Siemens & Halske, W. T. Henley & Company, R. S. Newall & Company, Glass, Elliot & Company, and the Telegraph Construction and Maintenance Company. Equally powerful were the companies that ran the telegraphic service: many of them operated as champions of national interests, and were therefore supported (in some cases to a large extent) by their respective states. Unlike what occurred on land, the submarine telegraph cables were almost everywhere managed by private groups, with the active participation of engineers, scientists and researchers in that sector who were attracted by concrete prospects of enrichment. When the ground telegraph network of the United Kingdom was nationalized in 1868, the released capital overflowed into the submarine sector, providing a substantial amount of investment in a field in which the expectations of profits were markedly growing.

THE CABLE IN THE CHANNEL: THE ORIGIN OF SUBMARINE TELEGRAPHY The first cable was laid on 28 August 1850 between Southerland and Cap Gris-Nez in the English Channel; however its life was very short, allegedly because it was hauled by the anchor of a fisherman who cut it off. The great adventure of submarine cables began with an apparently banal incident; yet it was not so rare that such adversities, together with the damages caused by currents and by the greed of fish and crustaceans, proved to be ruinous for the life and working of the cables laid in the sea and oceanic depths. The first submarine experiments had began almost simultaneously with the diffusion of ground telegraphy. In 1839, Brooke O’Shaughnessy, supervisor of the electric telegraph for India, had tried an underwater telegraph communication in the Hooghly River, in the delta of the Ganges. The attempt inevitably failed due to the lack of technological preparation. Three years later, the founder of the most renowned telegraph system of the time, Samuel Morse, repeated the same experiment in the harbour of New York. In 1846 Samuel Colt, famous for his invention of the revolver, together with George Robinson, tried to lay an undersea telegraph cable between Manhattan and Brooklyn and between Long Island and Coney Island – without much success. The Channel lent itself beautifully as an experimental laboratory because the distance was not that great and because a cable under its waters would be of great utility, connecting Paris and London, the two main capitals of Western Europe. The first to study a project of this kind, in 1840, was Charles Wheatstone,18 one of the founding fathers of electric telegraphy, who, four years later, carried out some promising tests in the Swansea Bay. Eventually, in 1850, the two Brett brothers,

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Jacob and John Watkins, engineers from Bristol, managed to collect the necessary capital for launching an enterprise of this kind. Having set up the General Oceanic and Subterranean Electric Printing Telegraph Company, the two entrepreneurs convinced the British authorities to give them permission to install a cable and run it for ten years. The practice substantially resembled that which was in use in the railways at that time. The cable was formed by a single copper wire coated with gutta-percha, a natural insulating material discovered shortly earlier and immediately adopted in underwater telegraphy.19 Having failed the first attempt, a second one was launched in October 1851, which was successful. The cable was formed by four copper wires coated with iron and wrapped in jute and pitch, with an outer insulating layer of gutta-percha, but much more robust than the previous one. This breakthrough coincided, significantly, with the great exhibition of Crystal Palace. Starting from the following year, the two stock exchanges of Paris and London communicated in less than an hour.

THE EXPANSION OF SUBMARINE TELEGRAPHY Between 1850 and 1870, underwater telegraphy had completed its period of apprenticeship and reached its definitive maturity. Once the channel that divided Great Britain and France was won over, technicians and companies turned their attention towards other equally difficult challenges. A second cable was laid between Dover and Calais by the Telegraphy Company, founded by Thomas Crampton, a railway engineer. The protagonist of this undertaking was another renowned technician, Charles Wollaston, who asked the firm Heimann & Küper to prepare a coating for the wire much more resistant than that used by the Brett brothers. The cable introduced by Crampton, thirty times heavier than the one laid for the first time in the Channel, anticipated the technology that was necessary in order to deal with the Atlantic depths and distances. In 1852 another cable connected Great Britain with Ireland, Portpatrick with Donaghadee, by exploiting the same technology used in the English Channel. The subsequent year, Belgium established a telegraph connection with England, starting from Middelkerke and arriving at Ramsgate. In the same years, the Electric and International Telegraph Company obtained the exclusive rights of submarine telegraph connections with the Netherlands. Other communications were established in the following years; the longest one, 350 miles, linked Great Britain with Denmark, which in turn was connected in 1854, on the one side, with Sweden through the cable between Copenhagen and Flensburg and, on the other side, to Hamburg, Germany. In 1855 a cable crossed the Sund, the straight between Denmark and Sweden, uniting Denmark and Sweden; the latter, in its turn, was connected to Norway. Five years later the cable was extended to Haaparanta, as a result of which Denmark was linked to Russia through the Gulf of Bothnia. Before 1857, the year of the first attempt of transatlantic communication, the cables laid under the sea reached 1,400 miles in total. Overall, between 1854 and 1869, thirty-seven cables were activated across the world. One of the submarine cables that aroused great admiration at the time was that made during the Crimean War, which contributed also to the first extension of the telegraphic system in the Balkans and in Eastern Europe. Responding to military reasons, the submarine cable, laid by the English Newall Company through the

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Black Sea and the Danube in the Romanian territory, improved the coordination of operations among the allies.20

THE SPREAD OF SUBMARINE TELEGRAPHY IN ITALY The echo of the novelty of submarine telegraphs, as of any other technological innovation, also spread in Italy, thanks to the intense circulation of ideas and the effective transfer of technology in operation at that time in a small but eager circle of technical elites.21 Underwater telegraphy was brought to Italy by private companies who were called to lay the cables, all produced abroad. As happened with the railways in the previous years, Italians acquired the new techniques and learned the importance of the new mode of communication quickly, but in this case, unlike the railways, they were a long way from becoming self-sufficient. The dependence lasted for a long time, in practice until the 1880s, when the entrance into this technological sector of the Italian company Pirelli and of a highly qualified expert in Emanuele Jona, technical director of the company, marked a new chapter in the development of technological knowledge and practice at national level.22 Since the 1850s, scientists and technicians who worked in this sector had already started disseminating ideas and reflections on telegraphy.23 Among the most competent voices were those of Carlo Matteucci and Ernesto D’Amico, who worked in the telegraph public sector. They were regarded with high esteem, proving to be no seconds to the major European technicians. The former, a pioneer in the field, had installed the first ground telegraph in Tuscany in the 1840s. His Manuale was the text which generations of telegraphers would be studying.24 Published for the first time at the beginning of the Italian unification, the manual also addressed the issue of underwater telegraphy, identifying its problems – ‘the rashness of the enterprises, the lack of previous experience, the greed of big gains’ – and underlining the ‘daunting uncertainty’ also because of the ravenous attitude of the private companies, for which Matteucci had little sympathy. The other major figure in Italian telegraphy was Ernesto D’Amico. Born in 1826, more an operator than a scientist compared to Matteucci, he was in charge of the Sicilian telegraphs for a long period before becoming general director of Italian telegraphy. His book Sulla telegrafia italiana (1863) was as important as that of Matteucci25 in Italy. The penetration of telegraph knowledge and practices was further facilitated by foreign authors, first of all and especially French rather than the English. One of the first authors to be translated was Louis Figuier, by Giuseppe Carloni.26 Roughly in the same years the works of Jules Gavarret27 and Edouard Blavier28 came to be in circulation. Among the English authors, the manual published by James Culley, chief engineer of the British telegraphs, intended especially for the telegraph employees, was introduced in Italy by Lamberto Cappanera.29

THE FIRST ITALIAN LINE After 1851, when underwater telegraphy technology was regarded as a standardized technology, the attention of Great Britain and of France began to focus on the Mediterranean Sea; clearly both countries were keen to establish communication

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lines with their colonies – Great Britain with India and France with Algeria.30 This explains the interest in the passage through the Italian States, which led quickly to the first initiative in 1853, when the Société du Telegraphe Electrique Sous-marin de la Mediterranée pour la Poste avec l’Algerie et les Indes, founded by John Watkins Brett and financially supported by the government of Paris, launched the project of a submarine communication with Algeria, with the Indian Ocean in perspective. The company had a capital of 7.5 million Francs, divided into 30,000 shares, to which other bonds would be added in the case of extension of the line from Tunis to the East. Within the board of directors there were prominent names of the European railway and telegraphy, especially from England and France, which included the director Claude Ernest Lami de Nozan, the Count of Morny, Jean Hastermann, administrator of the French railway company Grand Central et d’Orleans, Samuel Laing, William Chaplin and James Carmichael, director of the submarine telegraph line between France and England. The company signed two separate agreements with the French and the Piedmontese administrations for a period of fifty years. The text of the agreement with the French agency concerned the construction within two years of the cables, their installation and subsequent maintenance, and the management of the service on the entire line from France to the Algerian colony. The project envisaged by Brett included the continuation through Tunis, Malta and towards the East through Egypt; however, this project was abandoned. The Brett brothers actually tried to install a cable between the island of Crete and Alexandria, but they failed. As for the agreement with the Piedmontese government, the company committed itself to realize also the laying of a cable between the town of Santa Croce (on the border between Tuscany and Piedmont) and Cap Corse. The line was laid down in July 1854 by the manufacturers of the cable, the Gutta Percha Company: it was the third submarine cable in the world. In order to accomplish this task, two rented British ships were used: the Harbinger, subsequently requisitioned by the British government which needed it for the transport of troops in the East, and then the Persiano, which was seriously damaged by a storm. At that time none of the Italian ships was equipped for the laying of cables; the first one, named Città di Milano and belonging to the Pirelli Company, would come up thirty years later. The operations were by no means simple because of the depth of the waters: up to 640 metres, much more than in the English Channel. The first Italian cable, which was nonetheless completed and laid down in a short time, was similar to that which united Dover and Calais. Manufactured by Glass Elliott & Company, the largest supplier of Mediterranean cables in the second half of the 1850s, the 800-ton cable was made of six wires wrapped in several layers of gutta-percha and gathered in a bundle by means of a layer of tarred hemp, the whole thing protected by an outer sheathing of iron wires ‘so as to form a sort of case’, as Matteucci wrote in his Manuale. Every time it broke, an accident that happened frequently, it was necessary to send it to be repaired in Great Britain, since repair shops did not exist in Italy; inevitably the consequence was a serious loss of time. In its turn, the Piedmontese government committed itself to connect with a ground telegraph line Genoa and Santa Croce. Against this obligation, the government promised to pay the company 150,000 Lire per annum for fifty years, corresponding to a guarantee of 5 per cent on the capital. In addition, on payment of a fee of 16,000 Lire, the Savoy administration gained the control, but not the obligation of

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maintenance, over the Sardinian ground lines; these were also completed in 1854 together with the connection between Bonifacio and Santa Teresa on the Sardinian coast. The fact that the French granted a guarantee of 4 per cent on a much more limited amount, 4.5 million Lire, is a telling indicator of the importance that the Piedmontese government attributed to this initiative. The granting of the guarantee was, in practice, indispensable. It was presumable that for several years the revenues produced by the cable would not have been sufficient to remunerate the costs of the installation, thereby necessitating state intervention. It was a widespread and substantially accepted logic, ultimately very similar to that in operation in the railroad sector. There was also the agreement that at the end of the stipulated fifty years, the property would have passed to the Savoy government.

THE CONSTRUCTION OF THE VARIOUS LENGTHS Installing the cable in the last stretch, the longest one, up to the African continent, between Cagliari, in the south of Sardinia, and Bona, in Algeria, was extremely difficult not only because of the depth of the sea and the very strong currents, but also probably because the length of the cable was unprecedented for the technology of the time. Several attempts were carried out to lay the cable, but it always broke almost immediately. The problem, therefore, was not the transmission of signals, rather the resistance of the cable. The line started to operate in 1857,31 but for a very short period: already three years late the cable, damaged beyond repair, was abandoned on the sea bed from which it was hauled later on. Pascal Griset, highlighting the organizational defects of the enterprise, argued that the failure was due primarily to the ‘incroyable degré d’impreparation des expeditions’ and to ‘negligences multiples, lourdes de consequences’.32 In order to save money, the constructors did not even prepare a sufficient quantity of cables and ended up losing 256 miles of cable which was costed at £70,000. Probably the collapse was not only due to technological reasons. There were also troubles concerning the handling of the company. For example, in June 1857, during an ordinary meeting of the board of directors, some shareholders criticized how the company was managed and denounced cases of embezzlement and fraud of which Brett’s company was accused. The Piedmontese shareholders turned in vain to their own Ministry of Commerce, in an attempt to recover the investment.33 The failure decisively worsened the relations between the two administrations involved and the dealer, Brett, who in the April of 1859 was forced to hand over the charge of the telegraph company to Claude Ernest Lami de Nozan, its former director.34 By applying the rules of the agreement, the French government declared the agreement null and void with the company that had failed to fulfil what it had promised. For the French it was a remarkable setback, as the line to Algeria was their first big submarine enterprise which miserably failed. Then, in April 1860, the French government signed a new agreement with Glass Elliot & Company for a line between Toulon and a location at the north of Algiers, the bay of Salpêtrière, using a cable – made in London by Lionel Gisborne – of 750 km in length and at an estimated cost of 1.9 million Francs. The laying took place in August 1860, but it also failed because of a sudden storm near Menorca.35 It took two years to make the cable work, and in

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1862 eventually sent the first dispatches;36 however soon after it stopped working. The French did not give up, given the crucial importance, political as well as military, of communicating with its Mediterranean colony. As Headrick wrote, ‘Government’s urge to communicate raced ahead of the capabilities of the new technology’. At that point France resigned itself obtorto collo to exploit an indirect connection, a Spanish ground line, which linked Cartagena, via Port Vendres and Minorca, to Orano. Only after many attempts, all successful initially but soon doomed to failure, at the end of 1864 they obtained what they had tenaciously sought by entrusting Siemens and Halske with the tasks of manufacturing and laying of the cable. The cable between Algiers and Minorca, laid in 1861, was actually able to transmit eight words per minute, until a storm destroyed it on 25 September 1862. The cable represented an important chapter in technological advancement also for Spain, which laid its first cables in the Mediterranean Sea just in order to reach the Balearic Islands. This service was opened only in 1870. The Italians could not apply the same clauses of the French, so they continued the relationship with the company, which was not in default for the Italian section of the cable. The forfeiture of the agreement was asked for later, in 1864, because of the interruption of the submarine communication between Liguria and Corsica, which was replaced two years later by a new one. The text of the contract stated that the Italian government was to take possession of the line. At that point a long judicial contention arose, continuing well into 1868,37 between the Italian Ministry of Agriculture, Industry and Trade and what remained of Brett’s company which managed to obtain nothing except the forfeiture of the agreement.

THE BOURBONS AND THE ADRIATIC CABLE Italy was the protagonist of a further initiative, when in 1859 the administration of the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies in southern Italy established an undersea telegraph length, which resulted from the first moment of economic and strategic importance; it was the line between Otranto (Apulia) and Valona in Turkish Albania. Two years later, when the unification was already completed, a second cable made by W. T. Henley & Company connected Otranto with Corfu. Undoubtedly in this case as well the operation was possible due to the knowledge and equipment in the possession of a foreign company, which had already accumulated significant experience over the years. The agreement concluded with the Ottomans stated that the Neapolitan State undertook to transport, lay down and activate the cable, becoming the sole responsible authority in the case of failure or malfunction. The Turkish administration was exempt from any responsibility, except extending the ground telegraph line from Valona in three directions: towards the territories of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, Constantinople and then, from there, towards Persia and the Russian telegraph network. Through the Adriatic cable, the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies could connect directly with capitals as far as Vienna and Petersburg. The Bourbons, and subsequently the Italian government, benefited greatly from the agreement because, thanks to the fact that the cable was placed on a flat and relatively smooth sea bed, it worked without causing too many technical problems, providing the Italian authorities huge profits. Although a part of the route was

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operated via the mail service, this cable was the first to allow a telegraph connection between Europe and the East. For this reason, in 1864, the Italian telegraph administration signed a new agreement again, forcing the Ottoman government to finish building the connections between Constantinople and the Persian Gulf, where the telegraph line would be connected to Basra with the submarine cable that arrived in Karachi, and from there to Bombay. In this way, for many years the Italians managed to direct the dispatches coming from Northern Europe and directed to the East on the Adriatic line. They took advantage of the fact that the international agreements made it mandatory to use the less expensive route for each telegram, and passing through Otranto was actually cheaper than any other alternative. The cable worked well, as described earlier, and it provided firstly the Neapolitan administration and then the Italian one huge profits, due to the importance of the line.

THE BRITISH MOVE The British project for the Red Sea required crossing the Mediterranean Sea. The British relied entirely on Malta, the point on the map crucial to reach Suez more comfortably. Connecting with the small Mediterranean island, a British outpost outstretched toward the East, was meant to establish a connection entirely under their own control. For this reason, already in 1859 the British had encouraged the construction of a cable between Sicily and Malta, which would be followed by others in the years to come. In the estimates of the British it was more convenient, at least in this period, to cut the Italian peninsula lengthwise and arrive by land as close to Malta as possible, rather than focusing on Gibraltar, as it would happen later. In fact, this first solution allowed them to avoid the risks of the long and challenging marine crossing which they would have faced had they embraced the second option. From Malta it was then necessary to reach Egypt. The Malta and Alexandria Telegraph Company managed eventually, in 1861, to realize the crucial connection, which from Alexandria went, on the one side, towards Suez and, on the other, towards Algeria and Tunisia. Thus for some years Italy became the crossroads of the main stream of British correspondence from and to the Asian and African colonies, and, as long as the British did not reach Malta from the west on their own, Italy imagined, perhaps too ambitiously, operating as a focal point of the telegraph communications for the East. The Telegraph Construction and Maintenance Company did not hesitate to prefer the construction of a long ground line from Susa, in the northern part of Piedmont to Modica, in Sicily, establishing four cables in the Strait of Messina between 1867 and 1868, which presented the greatest technical obstacle. The first cable to Sicily was laid down on 25 January 1858 and remained active for more than nine months. Overall nineteen cables were interrupted during these years because of the very strong currents characteristic of the Strait. The issue was finally solved in 1863, the same year in which the first cable between Sicily and Sardinia was laid down, a stretch equally turbulent because of the currents and the depth of the sea-bed. The agreement concluded by the Italian government with the British company was greatly favourable. In fact, the Italian government enjoyed the revenues coming from the fees established for the use of the line, which represented a relevant economic benefit. Furthermore, the Italians were free from any commitment to the maintenance of the

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line. In 1872, the British Anglo-Mediterranean Telegraph Company, which replaced the Construction and Maintenance Company, ceded the line to the Italian State, undertaking to build within three years a submarine line between Brindisi (in Italy) and Alexandria (in Egypt).

GAME OVER When, in 1869, Falmouth, Gibraltar and Malta Telegraph Company laid down a cable from Porthcurno, the westernmost point of the British Isles – which was a station of cables and then base of a radio station38 – to Lisbon, Gibraltar, Malta and finally to Egypt, a total of 2,281 miles, Great Britain was able to achieve its goal. The project for the Red Sea and India meant the crossing of the Mediterranean Sea, in the centre of which the British identified Malta, which was in its own colonial possession, the pivotal point to reach Suez easily and then the East. On 25 March 1870 another important underwater telegraph line was opened, which connected Suez to Bombay, passing through Aden. Thanks to this connection, the telegrams coming to Malta could be directed not only towards Egypt, but also towards India through the line of Alexandria–Suez–Bombay. Thus, using the small Mediterranean island, the British outpost outstretched towards the East, thereby signifying their complete independence and establishment of a connection entirely under their own control. In this way, Great Britain avoided crossings that were potentially hazardous, such as that of Italy, preferring a country like Portugal, which always had been a faithful friend of the British, and interested among other things in having an international telegraph connection. At that point Italy returned to its position of secondary power in the field of telegraphy, compared to the major European countries. The ephemeral Italian golden age thus ended, but the experience that was gained during that period was to bear its fruits later when new State, aware of the importance of telegraphy, engaged with renewed conviction and more maturity in the attempt to establish a modern submarine network.

A NEW SEASON FOR ITALIAN TELEGRAPHY The attention of the new State regarding the submarine telegraph communications was high since the beginning, but because the know-how of its technical experts was more theoretical than practical Italy could not operate autonomously. Among the first connections that were activated, the most relevant were the cables that enabled the communications between the continent and the two largest islands, Sardinia and Sicily, for which the Italian State sought the help of the British companies. In 1862, the first cable between Sicily and Sardinia was laid down, with the initiative of the Glass and Elliot Company, but the branch of sea proved to be extremely turbulent and the communication did not work. The cable, more than 300 km in length, soon broke and the company, because of a faulty agreement concluded by the Italian authorities, was exempt from repairing it. More serious problems arose when, in 1864, the cable that connected Liguria to Corsica broke. The difficulties were so insurmountable from a technical perspective that for almost two years no other

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attempt to lay a cable was made and during that period Sardinia had no telegraphic connection. In 1868, the project to lay a cable between the two islands was definitively abandoned, but the cable that from the Ligurian coast reached Corsica and from Corsica reached Sardinia was doubled. Still relying on foreign companies, in 1875 the Italian mainland was finally connected with Sardinia, without having to pass through Corsica. Telegraph connections with Sicily were subject to large fluctuations, since in the Strait of Messina the breakages of the line were very frequent. In 1867, the Construction and Maintenance Company oversaw the installation of three cables in the Strait, but the technical difficulties of communication did not end. Also the minor islands started progressively to become a part of the national telegraph network. Overall, therefore, the network reached significant sizes, but it was controlled, to a large extent, by the Eastern Telegraph Company, the main company for submarine cables in the world owned by John Pender (1816–1896), ‘the cable king’. The Italian telegraph administration did not have sympathy for that company, which by virtue of its quasi-monopolistic position in the Mediterranean Sea was able to prevent any competitor from entering the market. In possession of the necessary technology and able to provide the best performances even in terms of costs, the Eastern Telegraph Company was a true telegraph colossus. The Italian government tried to oppose its power, as it aspired to possess its own national champion in the field. This goal was motivated by economic reasons as well as military and strategic ones. Had an Italian company, strong enough to compete with the Eastern, succeeded in entering the field, the Italian government, in an era of extensive protectionism, would not have hesitated to favour it, even at the cost of accepting less favourable conditions than those offered by Pender’s company. It was at this point that Giovanni Battista Pirelli took the crucial step forward. His company was able in the second half of that decade to occupy positions which had been held by the Eastern Telegraph Company, taking away from it most of the Italian market and becoming in this way the first Italian group to produce and lay submarine cables. This was not the result of real competition, because Pirelli was strongly supported by the Italian government, both for strategic and military reasons. It was Pirelli who carried out the laying of the first Italian cable in the colonies of East Africa. Nonetheless, the Milanese firm was able to carve out successfully a significant space in the sector of submarine cables, and to make important contributions to this technology also. The presence of high profile technical experts such as Emanuele Jona, who worked for 33 years with the Pirelli Company, represented undoubtedly a decisive advantage from a technological perspective.39

NOTES 1. This aspect is clearly pointed out in P. Ortoleva, ‘Telecomunicazioni: Un Modello Italiano?’, in Andrea Giuntini (ed.), Flussi Invisibili. Le Telecomunicazioni fra Ottocento e Novecento, special issue of Memoria e Ricerca, 5 (2000), pp. 107–18. 2. The literature on the history of the nineteenth-century submarine cables is extensive. Robert M. Black, The History of Electric Wires and Cables (London: Peter Peregrinus, 1983); Tom Standage, The Victorian Internet (New York: Walker & Co., 1998); Daniel R.

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Headrick, The Invisible Weapon. Telecommunications and International Politics, 1851– 1945 (New York and London: Oxford University Press, 1991); Chester G. Hearn, Circuits in the Sea. The Men, the Ships, and the Atlantic Cable (Westport and London: Praeger, 2004); Bernard Finn and Daqing Yang (eds), Communications Under the Seas. The Evolving Cable Networks and its Implications (Cambridge and London: MIT Press, 2009). 3. Michael Adas, Machines as the Measure of Men. Science, Technology and Ideologies of Western Dominance (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 1989); Daniel R. Headrick, The Invisible Weapon. Telecommunications and International Politics, 1851–1945 (New York and London: Oxford University Press, 1991); David P. Nickles, Under the Wire. How the Telegraph Changed Diplomacy (Cambridge, MA and London: Harvard University Press, 2003); Ben Marsden and Crosbie Smith, Engineering Empires. A Cultural History of Technology in Nineteenth-century Britain (Basingstoke and New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005); Jill Hills, Telecommunications and Empire (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2007); Andrea Giuntini, Le Meraviglie del Mondo. Il Sistema Internazionale delle Comunicazioni nell’Ottocento (Prato: Istituto di Studi Storici Postali, 2011). 4. David S. Jacks, ‘Intra- and International Commodity Market Integration in the Atlantic Economy, 1800–1913’, Explorations in Economic History, 42 (2005), pp. 381–413; by the same author, ‘What Drove 19th Century Commodity Market Integration?’, Explorations in Economic History, 3 (2006), pp. 383–412; Byron Lew and Bruce Cater, ‘The Telegraph, Co-ordination of Tramp Shipping, and Growth in World Trade, 1870–1910’, European Review of Economic History, 10 (2006), pp. 147–73. 5. Christopher Hoag, ‘The Atlantic Telegraph Cable and Capital Market Information Flows’, The Journal of Economic History, 2 (2006), pp. 342–53. 6. Menahem Blondheim, News over the Wires. The Telegraph and the Flow of Public Information in America, 1844–1897 (Cambridge and London: Harvard University Press, 1994); Terhi Rantanen, ‘The Globalization of Electronic News in the 19th Century’, Media, Culture & Society, 19 (1997), pp. 605–20; Richard John, ‘Recasting the Information Infrastructure for the Industrial Age’, in Alfred D. Chandler Jr. and James W. Cortada (eds), A Nation Transformed by Information. How Information has Shaped the United States from Colonial Times to the Present (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), pp. 55–105; John J. McCusker, ‘The Demise of Distance: The Business Press and the Origins of the Information Revolution in the Early Modern Atlantic World’, American Historical Review, 2 (2005), pp. 295–322. 7. Bruce J. Hunt, ‘Doing Science in a Global Empire: Cable Telegraphy and Electrical Physics in Victorian Britain’, in Bernard Lightman (ed.), Victorian Science in Context (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1997), pp. 312–33. 8. Paul B. Israel, From Machine Shop to Industrial Laboratory. Telegraphy and the Changing Context of American Invention, 1830–1920 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1992). 9. In Great Britain, the talk about a school specifically intended for the training of telegraph engineers began in these years, but the project was delayed and realized only in 1878. Seven years earlier the Society of Telegraph Engineers had been created

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as a direct descendant of the London Electrical Society, active since the 1830s: Iwan R. Morus, ‘Currents from the Underworld. Electricity and the Technology of Display in Early Victorian England’, Isis, 1 (1993), pp. 50–69; by the same author, ‘The Electric Ariel: Telegraphy and Commercial Cultures in Early Victorian England’, Victorian Studies, 3 (1996), pp. 339–78. In France the telegraph engineers were recruited from the École Polytechnique: Andrew Butrica, ‘Telegraphy and the Genesis of Electrical Engineering Institutions in France, 1845–1895’, History and Technology, 4 (1987), pp. 365–80. 10. Robert A. Buchanan, The Engineers. A History of the Engineering Profession in Britain, 1750–1914 (London: Jessica Kingsley Publishers, 1989). 11. Josiah L. Clark, Elementary Treatise on Electrical Measurement for the Use of Telegraph Inspectors and Operators (London: Spon, 1868). 12. James C. Maxwell, Treatise on Electricity and Magnetism (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1873). On the relationship between the British physicist and the Italian scholars of the time, see Adriano P. Morando, ‘James Clerk Maxwell e la Cultura Italiana’, in Virginio Cantoni and Andrea Silvestri (eds), Storia della Tecnica Eelettrica (Milan: Cisalpino, 2009), pp. 25–54. On the profile of the scientist see also the recent book by Giulio Peruzzi, Vortici e Colori. Alle Origini dell’Opera di James Clerk Maxwell (Bari: Edizioni Dedalo, 2010). 13. In 1892 he was honoured with the title of Lord Kelvin for his merits as a scientist. On Thomson as the protagonist of the season of submarine cables see, among others, Alex Russell, Lord Kelvin. His Life and Work (London: T. C. and E. C. Jack, 1912); Crosbie Smith and Norton Wise, Energy and Empire. A Biographical Study of Lord Kelvin (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989); Paul Tunbridge, Lord Kelvin. His Influence on Electrical Measurements and Units (London: Institution of Electrical Engineers, 1992); and N. Q. Sloan, ‘William Thomson’s Inventions for the Submarine Telegraph Industry: A Nineteenth-century Technology Program’, thesis, Harvard University, 1996. 14. His first patent came in 1854, obtained in collaboration with William John Macquorn Rankine (1820–1872), an engineer at the University of Edinburgh, active since the beginning of the 1850s in submarine telegraphy. 15. Harold I. Sharlin, Lord Kelvin. The Dynamic Victorian (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1979), p. 130. 16. Donard de Cogan, ‘Dr. E. O. W. Whitehouse and the 1858 Trans-Atlantic Telegraph Cable’, History of Technology, 10 (1985), pp. 1–15; and Bruce J. Hunt, ‘Scientists, Engineers and Wildman Whitehouse: Measurement and Credibility in Early Cable Telegraphy’, The British Journal for the History of Science, 29 (1996), pp. 155–69. 17. Bruce J. Hunt, ‘The Ohm Is Where the Art Is: British Telegraph Engineers and the Development of Electrical Standards’, Osiris, 9 (1994), pp. 48–63, esp. p. 52. 18. Brian Bowers, Sir Charles Wheatstone FRS 1802–1875 (London: Institution of Electrical Engineers, 2001). 19. Bruce J. Hunt, ‘Insulation for an Empire. Gutta-percha and the Development of Electrical Measurement in Victorian Britain’, in Frank A. J. L. James (ed.), Semaphores to Short Waves (London: RSA, 1998), pp. 85–105.

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20. Alexandre Kostov, ‘Le Prime Telecomunicazioni nella Periferia Europea. Il Telegrafo nei Balcani fino alla Prima Guerra Mondiale’, in Andrea Giuntini (ed.), Flussi Invisibili. Le Telecomunicazioni fra Ottocento e Novecento, monographic issue of Memoria e Ricerca, 5 (2000), pp. 67–78. 21. On Italian nineteenth century telegraphy see Simone Fari, Una Penisola in Comunicazione. Il Servizio Telegrafico Italiano dall’Unità alla Grande Guerra (Bari: Cacucci, 2008). 22. On Jona, who died in the wreck of the Città di Milano in June 1919 near the island of Filicudi, see Adriano P. Morando, ‘Emanuele Jona e la Nascita della Tecnologia Italiana dei Cavi Sottomarini’, Quaderni di Storia della Fisica, 14 (2007), pp. 67–90. 23. Lorenzo A. Ghisi, Lezioni sulla Telegrafia Elettrica (Milan, 1850); by the same author, Telegrafia Elettrica. Ossia Descrizione dei Telegrafi Elettro-magnetici, loro Modo di Agire e loro Applicazione agli Usi Sociali. Lezione (Milan: Stabilimento librario Volpato, 1850); Giuseppe Lo Cicero, Varie Osservazioni sulla Telegrafia Elettrica (Palermo, G. B. Lorsnaider, 1858); by the same author, Lezione per gli Aspiranti agl’Impieghi della Telegrafia Elettrica (Palermo: Tipografia Fratelli Pedone Lauriel, 1861). 24. Carlo Matteucci, Manuale di Telegrafia Elettrica (Torino: Unione Tipografico-Editrice, 1861). 25. Ernesto D’Amico, Sulla Telegrafia Italiana. Ragionamento di Ernesto D’Amico Ispettore Capo della Medesima, già Direttore Centrale della Telegrafia Siciliana (Torino: Tipografia letteraria, 1863). For a brief biography, see In memoria di Ernesto D’Amico primo direttore generale dei telegrafi italiani (Rome: Tipografia dell’Unione Cooperativa Editrice, 1898). 26. Esposizione e Storia della Telegrafia per Luigi Figuier. Prima Versione Italiana di Giuseppe Carloni Capo d’Ufficio del R. Telegrafo di Montepulciano Socio di Varie Accademie (Montepulciano: Angelo Fumi, 1860); Storia della Telegrafia di Luigi Figuier. Versione Italiana di Giuseppe Carloni (Montepulciano: Tipografia Fumi, 1861); Repertorio di Telegrafia Compilato da Giuseppe Carloni Sotto Ispettore dei Telegrafi dello Stato Socio di Varie Accademie Scientifico-letterarie (Livorno: Gio. Battista Rossi Editore-libraio, 1866); Domenico Berna, Corso Popolare Teorico-pratico di Telegrafia Elettrica con Cenni sull’Applicazione della Elettricità alle Scienze ed all’Industria e con l’Aggiunta di Processi per la Galvanoplastica e Galvanografia proposto agli Allievi di Telegrafia sì Civili che Militari (Verona: Stabilimento Tipografico G. Civelli, 1872). 27. Jules Gavarret, Telegrafia elettrica (Milan: Maisner, 1862). 28. Edouard R. Blavier, Nuovo Trattato di Telegrafia Elettrica. Corso Teorico-pratico ad Uso dei Funzionari dell’Amministrazione Telegrafica, degli Ingegneri Costruttori, Inventori, Impiegati delle Ferrovie di E. R. Blavier Ispettore Telegrafico in Francia (Livorno: P. Vannini e Figlio, 1874). 29. Richard S. Culley, Telegrafia pratica (Florence and Rome: Tipografia Bencini, 1873). 30. On the first Italian submarine cables see Andrea Giuntini, ‘Il Potere dei Cavi. Le Telecomunicazioni Sottomarine nel Mediterraneo’, in A. Giuntini (ed.), Sul Filo della

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Comunicazione. La Telegrafia nell’Ottocento fra Economia, Politica e Tecnologia (Prato: Istituto di Studi Storici Postali, 2004), pp. 59–81; and Gli esordi della telegrafia sottomarina in Italia, in Studi in ricordo di Tommaso Fanfani, edited by M. Berti, A. Bianchi, G. Conti, D. Manetti, M. Merger and V. Pinchera (Pisa: Pacini, 2013), vol. I, pp. 403–411. 31. Maurice Ailhaud, ‘Pose du Cable Sous-marin entre la Sardaigne et l’Algerie’, Annales Télégraphiques (1858), pp. 209–19. 32. Pascal Griset, Entreprise, Technologie et Souveraineté: les Télécommunications Transatlantiques de la France (Paris: Editions Rive Droite, 1996), p. 44. The same critiques are contained in Compagnie du télégraphe électrique de la Méditerranée. Procès-verbal de l’Assemblée générale du 15 juin 1857 (Paris: Typographie Charles de Mourgues Frères, 1857). 33. The affair is documented in Archivio Centrale dello Stato, Fondo Industrie Banche e Società, b. 137, f. 1084. 34. Procès-verbal de l’Assemblée Générale des Actionnaires de la Société J. W. Brett et cie, Dite Compagnie du Télégraphe Électrique Sous-marin de la Méditerranée (Paris, 1859). 35. ‘Sur le project d’un cable entre la France et l’Algérie’, Annales Télégraphiques, 3 (1860), pp. 348–50. 36. Maurice du Colombier, ‘Notice sue le Câble d’Alger’, Annales Télégraphiques, 5 (1862), pp. 105–40. 37. As testified by some documents found in ACS, Fondo Industrie Banche e Società, b. 137, f. 1084. 38. On the history of Porthcurno, telegraph station opened in 1870, see J. E. Parker, ‘Gateway to Empire. Porthcurno Cable Station 1870–1970’, in Frank A.J.L. James (ed.), Semaphores to Short Waves (London: RSA, 1998), pp. 77–91; and Alison Weeks (ed.), Snapshot in Time. Victorian Life in Porthcurno. From the Diaries of George Spratt (Porthcurno: Porthcurno Telegraph Museum, 2007). 39. Jona was the author of the main manual of that time: Emanuele Jona, Cavi Telegrafici Sottomarini, Costruzione, Immersione, Riparazione (Milan: Hoepli, 1896).

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European Steel vs Chinese Cast-iron: From Technological Change to Social and Political Choices (Fourth Century BC to Eighteenth Century AD) MATHIEU ARNOUX University Paris Diderot and EHESS (Paris)

Abstract Traditionally, from a global point of view, the European ancient, medieval and early modern iron production has been considered backwards by comparison to the more efficient Chinese industry, where the smiths controlled the castiron technology from the fourth century BC onwards. Recent publications on Chinese and European cases give the opportunity to reappraise the question. Cast-iron was produced in both areas in the modern times, but not with the same purpose, and in very different productive contexts. A closer analysis of iron consumption in both cases shows that Chinese farmers used cast-iron tools, which were produced in large furnaces controlled by the imperial bureaucracy. Such tools did not need any specific craft in the peasant community; animal power was not generally used in agriculture. European ploughmen instead used steel tools locally produced in small iron-works, which needed the skills of a smith to be fixed. Such steel ploughs could support animal traction (by oxen or horses) which made them highly productive, and 297

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caused important losses of metal. From a more general point of view, the use of cast-iron or steel has therefore to be considered as a clue for the description of the agrarian system: the human work-intensive Chinese tradition, with its high yields, was either a technologic, economic and social choice, as was the energy intensive European system. For Europe, the change from direct production of steel towards indirect production of cast-iron was a path towards higher productivity of work and technology. Cast-iron was the same chemical material but not the same produce in the eastern and western parts of Eurasia. Technology is a crucial topic in any attempt to compare different societies or cultural areas even before global history became a common research field. One of the most popular expressions for such comparison has been proposed by Needham in his conclusive chapter of Science and Civilization in China.1 It summarizes the ‘Transmission of mechanical and other techniques from China to the West’, with an evaluation of the ‘approximate lag’ between the two parts of the Eurasian continent. Needham’s statement, which lists as technological innovations originated from China items such as wheelbarrow, kite, cast-iron, canal lock-gates or nautical construction principles, has been largely used by many global historians. For example, it was an essential argument in André Gunder Frank’s ReOrient, or in Jack Goody’s The Theft of History.2 Some scholars, however, have raised important reservations against the compelling strength of this argument. Recently, Karel Davids’ Religion, Technology and the Great and Little Divergences addresses the question of the coherence of the categories which are used for this comparison.3 More generally, one can argue that historical notions such as ‘China’, ‘the West’, ‘skills’, ‘nature’, ‘agriculture’, cannot be considered as steady and unchangeable from a two millennium prospective. It is not easy, for instance, to assess the exact meaning of the statements induced by Needham’s table, asserting for example that it took the West fourteen centuries to discover the crossbow, which China had invented during the Han period, or that the fertilizers were invented in China in the sixth century BC. In both cases, all the words (‘China’, ‘West’, ‘crossbow’, ‘fertilizers’) are conceived as realities, which remain unmodified with all their qualities, in spite of every historical discontinuity. One solution, which has been proposed both by historians of technology and economic historians, is to adopt an institutional point of view, i.e. to focus not on realities and events but on stylized situations and trends. Kenneth Pomeranz adopted this point of view in his Great Divergence, where he examined the solutions European and Chinese societies gave to some crucial problems they shared.4 Karel Davids, who provides a rightful criticism of the essentialism and determinism of traditional views, tries to compare institutions, such as religious communities or technical education, or even visions of nature. Such approach, however, can be criticized because of the excessive generality of the object of the comparison: since technology is at stake, the question focuses on skills and learning, but actual processes and innovations vanish as such. In their contribution Before and Beyond Divergence, R. Bin Wong and JeanLaurent Rosenthal have tried another way to reappraise Pomeranz’s topics.5 They observe that using general concepts in history implies a closer examination of context and periodization. Therefore, a plain Malthusian view cannot provide the

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ground for an exact and coherent comparison between specific situations. Their book does not address technology as an autonomous object, but as a consequence of regional dynamics, which resulted from political choices. It remains to explore the possibility of the comparison between specific sectors of activity and innovative dynamics. This chapter tries to assess the possibility of a European–Chinese comparison in the particular case of iron production. In the global history debate that followed the publication of Pomeranz’s Great Divergence, the issue of coal (i.e. coke) fueling, instead of charcoal, for the smelting of iron in the blast furnace, was a strategic one. The innovative process, which Abraham Darby invented in his forge of Coalbrookdale (Shropshire) in 1709, has been considered a starting point for the Industrial Revolution, since coal-fueling disentangled iron production from the ecological constraints of forest management. Using Pomeranz’s words, the coal mines provided the ‘ghost-acres’, in substitution of the woodland, that gave English industry the capacity to experiment and produce steam engines, so as to increase coal-mining. More broadly, they allowed the English economy to escape the Malthusian ecological prison it was locked in until the first half of the eighteenth century.6 Robert Allen turned eventually to the coal and iron issue in a chapter of his British Industrial Revolution in Global Perspective, where he reappraised Abraham Darby’s contribution to industrial history.7 First, he noticed the strange nature of this ‘innovation’: Darby himself did not invent the coke, which was used from the end of the seventeenth century for ale and beer brewing. Neither did he create or even modify the blast furnace, which was widespread in England from the sixteenth century onwards, and in other regions of Europe since the fourteenth century, nor was he even the first to try coke smelting. But he was the one who succeeded in doing it. Moreover, it was not before the middle of the eighteenth century that cokesmelted ironwares became of some importance in the English economy. Convincingly, Allen argues that the long delay for the use of coke in the continental iron industry has not to be seen as a clue of technological backwardness, but of the difference in ecological constraints and labour- or fuel-market factors between England and the Continent, which made such commodities more or less competitive in the two areas. If we consider the question in a long run perspective, Allen’s argument has to be extended: as was demonstrated by John Hatcher, England in the eighteenth century had already a long experience and a deep knowledge of different ways to use coal, particularly in smithies, where it had been burnt since the thirteenth century.8 The issue of fuel-saving in iron production was a common European one, since the end of the Middle Ages.9 In the very moment Darby and others in Britain were experimenting coke for smelting, a long lasting technological debate was going on in France, Belgium (Wallonie) and Italy about charcoal-saving processes. It could involve improved design for the crucible and better organization of the earthes for the chafery and finery where cast-iron was refined. Around 1630 the water pump, the tromba bergamasca, which used the power of the air pressure coming from a water flow driven back into a hollow trunk, was invented in Northern Italy. This very cheap device took the place of the much more expensive water wheel powered bellows, and made it possible to settle big furnaces in Alpine woodland (for example in Savoy and Dauphiné), where charcoal and ore had been almost useless before.

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From this point of view, the successful attempt by Abraham Darby was by no means a matter of luck and technological genius, rather a decisive step on a long and complex path of innovations, beginning in the Middle Ages. Only later on, in the nineteenth century, the invention of coke iron production proved to have been a turning point towards the industrial revolution. If we want to understand the entire historical process, we have therefore to take into account the early stages of the innovation, going back to the Medieval period. Such statement does not put an end to the global history issue. In Kenneth Pomeranz’s Divergence, and before him in Janet Abu-Lughod and André Gunder Frank’s books, the comparison of European and Chinese technologies, focusing on the question of iron production and use, is a crucial argument against the thesis of European superiority.10 It has usually been raised in a very long-term perspective, and the medieval centuries have a central place in it. Yet, since information, particularly on medieval European technology, is not so easy to gather, we lack convincing conclusions on such matters. The recent publication of Donald Wagner’s magnificent contribution to Needham’s Science and Civilization in China about iron production and work, gives the opportunity of a discussion of this topic with new and firmly grounded arguments.11 The first step of the comparison will be a secondhand sketch of Chinese iron production in the long run, followed by a symmetric sketch of European iron culture, with a conclusion dedicated to the implications of such exercise for the history of technology and material culture.

SKETCH NO. 1: IRON IN CHINA For many years the non-specialists of Chinese topics shared a common knowledge on Chinese ancient iron production, which resulted from a very limited bibliography. Most of it came from Joseph Needham’s essays published in various journals and miscellaneous books.12 Another important source were the articles published by Robert Hartwell about Chinese iron production in the Song period.13 Usually and conveniently, these major achievements of twentieth-century historiography are condensed in two statements: the first, which is said to be from Needham, maintaining that malleable cast-iron was invented by Chinese metallurgists in the fourth century BC and then by European metallurgists in the eighteenth century (recent versions say fourteenth or sixteenth centuries); the second, extracted from Hartwell, says that iron production in the late eleventh century (records of 1078) was 115,000 metric tons (usually, no figure is given for Europe or other regions). We can consider these two propositions as premises of some kind of historical syllogism. Its conclusion is obvious, and may be considered generally significant: during most of the last two millenniums European iron technology was backward in comparison with Chinese technology, and it recovered eventually by imitating the Chinese process of cast-iron production.14 Donald Wagner’s book provides a concise but broadly designed portrait of the iron production of ancient China, using both written records – printed books of Song and Ming periods and records on bamboo strips found in Han and Tang era graves – and archeological evidence. If we try to identify the original features, three statements can helpfully summarize his inquiry:

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3.

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Iron was produced and used in China from the first half of the first millennium BC, as in the Western part of the Old World. Cast-iron was produced and commonly used in China from the fourth century BC. Malleable cast-iron weapons, tools and implements can be found in every part of the country. During the Song period there is evidence of coal used for iron smelting. There was a public statute of iron production settlements and ironworkers. During the Han dynasty, iron production was an imperial monopoly; during the Song period, it was strictly controlled by local administrations and heavy taxes were levied on the iron trade.

Wagner’s book seems to confirm largely the two statements of Needham and Hartwell quoted above, but with important qualifications, which have to be emphasized. For example, though agreeing with Hartwell’s interpretation of the Song administrative records, Wagner specifies that only 3,300 tons of iron were registered in imperial accounts as taxes. The figure of a comprehensive production of 115,000 tons is an extrapolation, which may be considered likely or possible, but cannot be demonstrated. The early production of cast-iron in big blast furnaces is confirmed, but in the long run, owing to the scarcity of sources, the nature of the production settlements remains difficult to define and the technological continuity has to be considered a hypothesis. Starting from Wagner’s data, a historian of European technology has to give another form to Needham’s statements about Chinese cast-iron. Looking at some productions of the Han, Tang or Song period, such as great cast-iron statues made between the eighth and tenth centuries and preserved in Dengfeng, Yongjin and Cangzhou, one must say that in the first millennium AD the technological skills of Chinese smiths resulted in achievements that European or Western iron-workers were never able to emulate, even in the time of the industrial revolution.15 Another important point is the very wide range of uses of cast-iron, from any kind of pot, for any use, to weapons and tools. Important, and completely specific is the production of cast-iron ploughshares, which were absolutely unknown among European and Mediterranean societies. From this sketchy description of the Chinese case, we can inquire the original features and evolution of European iron production.

SKETCH NO. 2: EUROPEAN IRON PRODUCTION The comparison with the Chinese case leads to an obvious statement: except in the early period of the first millennium BC, where the situation was roughly the same in the two parts of the continent, there was a deep difference, in technology, political statute and evolution. Divergence in chronology is a good starting point. From the proto-historical period to the late Middle Ages there has been no great technological change in European iron production.16 The cultural and political unification under the Roman Empire had no specific consequences in this regard.17 Until the thirteenth century at least, the technological process remained unchanged in the whole of Europe, either inside or outside the old Roman border. Little individual furnaces of various types were used for direct reduction of ore. They were usually settled

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together in local districts, with good access to ore, wood and water. A single furnace usually produced less than 20-pound blooms, which were refined by hammering on the anvil. The qualities of an ironware could depend on the properties of the ore and the skills of the smith. In a commercial letter written in 1385, where the little iron-district around Pietrasanta (Tuscany) is described, the list of local ‘good’ forges is introduced by this preliminary statement: ‘L’essere buona fabbricha non vuol dire se non avere buoni maestri’ (when you say ‘a good forge’, you mean ‘there are good masters’).18 Such hierarchy of workers and tools is expressed in other records. In 1375 in Caen, in Normandy, a group of fourteen smiths (seven masters with their servants) were employed in the fabrication of a 2,500-pound wrought iron gun. According to the accounts of the workshop, they had to stop working at some point because of the excessive difficulty of the task, until the arrival of a new master, who was asked to come from a place around 100 km away ‘because he was the best smith in the whole country’.19 Direct process bloomery, where heat inside the furnace does not go up to 1500° Celsius, could produce objects of excellent quality, such as steel or pure wrought iron, but no cast-iron. Until the twelfth century, the main limitation was that of power: for the blowing of the furnace or of the earth, leather bellows were powered by workers who assisted the smith (usually, his wife or children) and every produce had to be hammered at arm’s strength, with effects on elbow and shoulders. It was therefore a skill and human force intensive process: no growth of production could be expected if not from the addition of more workers.

THE AGRARIAN DEMAND FOR IRON The origins of technological and economic change in European iron production are to be found in a growth of demand. Its main factor depends on the part iron and steel took in material culture and economic development, especially in the agrarian sector. Without iron and steel tools there could have been no clearances, and therefore no great European growth during the eleventh to thirteenth centuries. The option taken by Mediterranean and European societies for wheat/rye, oats and barley as the essential crops and the basis of the whole diet, was of huge consequence, especially when, from the eleventh century, bread and vegetables became the main food, while gathering fruits and hunting game in woodland proved more difficult because of the clearances. Reclaiming new fields was impossible without strong hoes and axes. The choice of farming large pieces of heavy and sticky silt or stony earth was extremely iron expensive. Plowing such fields was impossible with ards (scratch ploughs) driven by yoked oxen; an asymmetric plough and, if possible, a team of two horses were the right tools. Oxen and horses lost or broke their horseshoes, and the earth, which was cut and moved aside by the plough, rubbed coulters and ploughshares. Following a calculation made by Paul Bairoch for African regions in the first half of the twentieth century, François Sigaut shows that in great farms of the French countryside around 1800, the cultivation of two acres could implicate an average cost of a pound of iron.20 As imprecise as such evaluation could be, based as it is on eighteenth and nineteenth-century husbandry treatises, we must remember

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that from the tenth to the fourteenth century, cereal cultivation concerned growing areas and became more intensive, involving every year three ploughings or more in the same fields. In the middle of the nineteenth century, cereal cultivation in France extended up to 15 million hectares (37 million acres): the figure may have been not very different around 1300. Certainly, tens of thousands of tons of iron were lost each year in the fields of the European countryside: they surely had to be replaced, and the total amount of metal was probably not so inferior to the Chinese production, as estimated by Robert Hartwell. From this point of view, there is a great difference between Chinese and European technological systems. In Chinese agriculture the use of working animals was not widespread and much work had to be done by hand, with individual tools.21 Probably, cast-iron tools and ploughshares, like the many that were found in China, may have been efficient and resistant. They were well suited to the cultivation. When operated with yoked oxen, in rice-fields carefully cleared of every stone, or in the light and powdery loess fields of the Northern regions, such ploughshares could operate. But they surely would have broken if used in a stony soil and drawn by a pair of powerful and speedy horses. When damaged, cast-iron tools could not be fixed and new tools had to be bought on the market. Wrought iron and steel ploughshares used in Western regions were not brittle, and a blacksmith could fix them. From different points of view, wrought iron or steel implements may be considered technologically inferior to malleable cast-iron ones, but they were pertinent to the kind of cultivation of Western Europe. The organization of iron production was absolutely different in the two regions. As Hartwell and Wagner demonstrated, massive Chinese blast furnaces, with hundreds of workers and animals, produced standard commodities (with administrative registered marks), which were sold on the markets of the whole empire. During the largest part of the Middle Ages, the European production was organized in little or medium-size iron districts, using local ore and charcoal for local or regional markets. A large part of the implements for cultivation were wrought and maintained by the local smiths. In his classical study of agrarian life in twelfth- and thirteenth-century Picardie, Robert Fossier has highlighted the presence and the growing social influence of the fèvres/smiths, whom he saw as ‘the mechanics of the villages’ and a condition for the growth of agrarian output. Such pattern of production and market not only implicated some degree of labour division and social hierarchy inside the communities, it also determined a high regional degree of variability in the forms of tools and ploughshares, which prevented any actual standardization of their markets and the birth of big firms until the nineteenth century. Written records from the twelfth to the fifth century provide good information on the production and trade organization. The description of the little iron district of Pietrasanta in 1385, already quoted, provides a list of the commodities the local smiths produced there and sent to Sicily. It is an excellent illustration of this kind of regional specialization and of the prevalence of the agrarian market: In Pietrasanta, iron sheets for the cars, with the plates for the wheels, 3 inches wide, thin, around 3 arms long, cost 15 fiorini the thousand (of pounds).

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Sheets of the same kind, one arm and half long, 4 inches wide, which you put in the middle of a wheel, around the axle, cost the same, that is 15 fiorini the thousand. Little sheets and rods, thin and neat, half and half, 14 fiorini the thousand. Ploughshares of 14, 15 or 16 pound each, and plates for shovels, 14 or 15 pounds the pair, cost in Pietrasanta 15 fiorini and half the thousand. Square rods for car shafts or axles, 1 inch wide on each face, cost in Pietrasanta 14 fiorini and half the thousand. Sheet, very thin and neat, for oxen-shoes, 2 or 2 and half inches wide, cost in Pietrasanta 15 fiorini the thousand.22 A late twelfth-century custumal for an estate of the Norman abbey of Saint-Martin de Sées describes the work of the smith, with a long list of the tools and implements he had to take care of. The most important point, for our topic, is the indication of the different origins of the raw material: for his duty, the smith could use the iron of the out of use or broken wares, or the iron provided by the abbey, perhaps from seigniorial customs, and the steel and iron he had bought or produced himself. Who will be the smith of this abbey will do what follows. With his own iron, he will shoe our horses, our sexton’s or cook’s ones. In the case a horse is weak, he will take care of it as a farrier . . . . He will also put iron shafts to our cars and, in the case shafts are not long enough, he will make them longer with his own iron. With his own iron, he will make the rims and the axles of the wheels . . . and for this, used rims and axles of the old cars will be for him. In the case a careless carter makes the car loses some pieces, [the smith] will not be obliged to find them again. We will get new axes, ploughshares, coulters, picks, hoes, tripods, grills, which the smith will steel with his own steel. If they are broken, he will fix them with his iron and steel. Every year, he will make new forks for hay and dung, hooks for dung and meat.23 Such combination of market and lordship is not specific to French or Anglo-Norman regions. A similar feature can be found in 1226, in a custumal for the Hungarian abbey of Saint Martin in Pannonhalma: The smiths of the community must do their work on an anvil which is inside the monastery. Yet, they have not to bring the iron themselves: one of them will go to Ferreum Castrum (i.e. Eisenstadt, in Austrian Styria) and choose enough iron. And they must produce every iron implements and other necessities, except the said anvil.24 Another issue was the rather low quality of basic iron, which broke often and easily. It was therefore necessary to have spare pieces for the main tools. An indenture made in 1275 for a farm of another Norman abbey gives an interesting list of the tools, which were leased with the manor house, cattle and fields: I was given the following poultry and tools: 20 chickens, 6 capons, 6 ducks, 14 gooses, 2 ploughs, 4 plougshares, 4 coulters, 1 pan, 1 grill, 5 dung forks, 2 ironshovels, 1 axe for wood and another for the plough.25

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Such documents make it easy to emphasize the difference with Chinese patterns of production: from any local iron-production district in Europe, each piece of iron used to be sent or sold not directly to its final user, but to a smith, who would prepare it for its specific use. Such operation should have been senseless with castiron tools, which had to be used as they were cast. Not only the cultivation demanded iron. It was, for example, absolutely necessary to the mill, where a big and sophisticated piece of iron, the mill-iron, linked the gear moved by the water-wheel to the millstone. Its fabrication and installation required the work of the smith. Findings from archeological excavations in various European settlements from the ninth century onward have given huge evidence of the wide range of the use of iron. They raise the issue of the growth of iron supply, which could happen only thanks to a deep technological change in all the processes of production.

EUROPEANS ‘FINALLY’ INVENT CAST-IRON How could the quantity of metal and the size of the objects be increased?26 The mechanization of hammering was the first step. The water-powered hammer was invented somewhere in Europe around the middle of the twelfth century. It could have been present in the Cistercian abbey of Clairvaux, in the time of abbot Saint Bernard (d. 1153), and a water-powered hammer could have been in use in the smithy of Bordesley Abbey, a Cistercian abbey in Worcestershire, at the end of the twelfth century.27 Water-powered hammers increased notably the productivity of the work of the smith, who was not asked to make the effort of bearing the hammer. It could also produce very heavy iron-wares, like those that appear, for example, in the great gothic churches of the second half of the thirteenth century. Thus far the problem of urban demand for iron has been set aside. Until the end of the twelfth century, it may be considered marginal in comparison with massive rural demand. From 1200 onward, urban growth, state building, the accumulation of capital and the new patterns in architecture drastically changed the situation. A recent collective inquiry on the use of metals in gothic architecture has brought important evidence for a growth of the role played by iron in the construction of cathedrals since the middle of the thirteenth century.28 During the long period of the greatest churches’ lengthy building, important pieces of iron, frequently locked inside the masonry by lead seal, were cast inside the pillars, across the walls or along the tribunes, to give some stability to the unfinished construction. There they remained until today, giving the historians of architecture the false idea of elements used to fix weak walls, pillars or windows after the building. Marginal in late twelfth- and early thirteenth-century buildings, such pieces became much more important after 1240, especially because of the growing size and weight of the stained-glass windows, which had to be very coherent and strictly locked inside the masonry. For the Sainte-Chapelle in Paris some 20 tons of iron were used either for the windows or for the chaining of the walls. According to the dimensions, from half a ton to one and a half ton of iron could have been necessary in a big stained-glass window. They included shafts of 4 to 6 metres long and 1 or 2 inches wide, which could be wrought only using a massive water-powered hammer.

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Soon, this capacity of hammering faster, more and bigger pieces of iron would raise the problem of producing more and bigger blooms, in higher furnaces. Then, the essential issue was blowing inside the crucible. The traditional leather bellows operated by hands29 or by feet were obviously inadequate, and only greater wooden water-powered bellows could operate with big furnaces. The paternity of the waterpowered bloomery, which eventually gave birth to the blast-furnace, was claimed by several European regions: Catalonia, Sweden, Germany and Italy. The oldest production settlements, with one big furnace and one or more smithies for the hammering of the blooms, may have appeared in northern Italy in the middle of the thirteenth century: early occurrences can be found in records for Piazzola (1212) and Schilpario (1251), both in the Alpine valleys north of Bergamo. They describe furnaces for iron ore with legal rights to use water, water pipes (aqueductus) and hydraulic devices (scherpa). From the last quarter of the thirteenth century the classic formula to describe a forge is ‘furnus et fusina’.30 This vocabulary gives some ground for the hypothesis of a technological transfer from silver to iron production. The word foxina is used for the workshop of silver refinement in the valley of Ardesio, in the same region, in the middle of the twelfth century. Eventually, foxinae powered by water-wheels are mentioned in the nearby Trent silver-mining district around 1200. Merchants from Bergamo, Brescia and Milan used to trade either silver or iron: they could therefore easily find the capital for expensive buildings and hydraulic devices and get a safe access for their commodities to the local and interregional markets. From the end of the thirteenth century the Lombard specialization in high-quality weapons, which lasted until today, was already established. In the last years of the thirteenth century the new process, which necessitated a high masonry furnace with water-powered bellows and a smithy with a waterpowered hammer, spread across Europe, with many different names: hammerwerk in German regions, ferriere in Liguria and Tuscany, martinet in Dauphiné, mouline in the French Pyrénées, farga in Catalonia.31 The new process was fit for many and different purposes, as are all great innovations. Water-powered blowing gave the capacity of making very big blooms, but also of producing cast-iron, if managed to get very high temperatures (1538° C).32 We don’t know exactly when such furnaces began to regularly produce cast-iron. It is very likely that where an excellent localore could be transformed, at a lower temperature, in high-quality steel, smelting was not necessary. This was the case, for example, in Styria. In other places, the fusion of the metal in pig-iron or cast-iron gave better yields for the ore, but requested a second high temperature treatment (1100° C) and hammering, before wrought iron or steel could be produced. It is not easy to know when cast-iron was for sale on European markets. The Italian expression ferro cotto (against ferro crudo) is often ambiguous for this period. A sure indication is given by a tariff of the customs in the port of Rouen before 1294, where an entry is made for ‘Glusies, qui est une manière de fer fondu’ (glusies, that is some kind of smelted iron), which could be the first occurrence (at least in French) of the German word gusseisen, that is cast-iron (the French modern word for castiron bar is gueuze).33 The spread across Europe of the different forms of the new process during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries is a very complex and

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discontinuous story. To understand it, we have to take into account every factor of production and market. Some special qualities of ore may give a very good steel, without fusion, and are used for making tools and weapons. This is the case for some of the most prestigious iron-districts of medieval Europe: Steier (Austria), Breckerfeld and Siegen (near Koln), Biscaye (Spanish Navarre) and, perhaps, Sweden (Lapphyttan, Norberg district).34 Until recent times, there were exclusive markets for very special commodities: perhaps the most important, from the fifteenth century at least, are the scythes and sickles from Styria, which were sold across Europe and even in Ottoman regions. In the case of ‘common’ ores, fusion made it possible to smelt all the iron contained; but it had a high cost in fuel, that is in charcoal. An estimate for the end of the fifteenth century is that a blast furnace burnt yearly the wood of 1,000 acres (400 ha) of coppice, which needed 20 years to grow: that was at least 20,000 acres of woodland, if production lasted. At the end of the eighteenth century the forest area for charcoal supply of a blast furnace (25,000 acres) was the same as a medium size town (20,000 people). Moreover, a big forge with a blast furnace and a smithy with two earthes involved a very complex hydraulic device, with no less than three to six wheels, for the bellows and for the hammer. Usually, because of the necessity of preserving water in case of summer low tide, three or more pools were created up the rivers. For the landlords or the ecclesiastical institutions, which owned such place, the whole operation was a gambit with a high stake: one or two mills and 50 or more acres of water-meadows were valuable and safe incomes. In Mediterranean regions, such pressure on the environment was unsustainable, as it was in the surroundings of all great cities, which had to preserve important wood and charcoal supply for their own purpose.35 From the fourteenth to the sixteenth century these different factors created a new European geography of iron production. Prices of charcoal, iron and tools often decided of the local situation. Many local districts, where low- or mediumquality iron was produced, disappeared in the fourteenth century, because of the arrival of high-quality commodities at low prices, such as the Spanish iron and steel, which were available in every town of the French kingdom from the beginning of the fourteenth century, or the Swedish osmund, which was on sale in the Hanseatic markets from the second half of the fourteenth century. The demographic trend matters too: from 1348 to the middle of the fifteenth century decreasing population implied lower demand for iron, but it made lands, wood and metal cheap. In the second half of the fifteenth century the reclamation of new fields for a growing population provided free wood and charcoal in some regions, giving the opportunity for the settlement of very profitable iron-plants. Such process continued during the early modern period. It explains the successful story of the Franche-Comté ironworks in the seventeenth century, which was favoured by the regional reconstruction after the Thirty Years War and by the trend of mountain pasture reclaiming for the production of gruyere cheese. Indeed, it was a kind of joint venture, because of the large market for iron and cheese created by the settlement of the arsenal and fleet in Marseille, at the mouth of the Rhone.36

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GLOBAL QUESTIONS At this point of our story, it is time to go back to the beginning and assume a comparative point of view. One of the difficulties of the comparison lay in the difference of chronologies. Chinese iron production, according to Donald Wagner, was created during the Han and Song periods; it was strictly controlled by the imperial administration. Its most important feature was the production of cast-iron in blast furnaces, which could be huge or rather little, according to places and periods. There was no necessary link between blast furnace and hydraulic energy: water-powered bellows were known since the fourth century, but they could be substituted with bellows moved by animal or human force; no water-powered hammers were used. From the Han period Chinese ironworkers explored all possible uses for cast iron. They created objects of extraordinary perfection, which were absolutely out of range for European smiths. They provided all kind of tools, perfectly fitted to the needs of Chinese agriculture. Iron production was therefore an element of a very coherent society, where political and legal control, agrarian systems and markets were linked. Few steel tools seem to have been used, and some written sources bear evidence that imperial officers were uncomfortable with the possession by the peasants of steel implements, i.e. weapons.37 Until the last part of the Middle Ages, European and Mediterranean countries went on using for iron production the same kind of technological process which had been invented in the first millennium. Unlike silver production, which remained under political control, starting with the Romans iron production was organized on a local or regional scale and was part of the peasant economy. The process of technological innovation was triggered first by the growth of the agrarian demand for tools. During the fourteenth to seventeenth centuries, urban demand, improvements in the indirect process and the growth of markets made it possible to increase the production of iron. The use of hydraulic power instead of human or animal force played an essential role in the technological process from the twelfth century to the beginning of the nineteenth century. It is important to underline that the arrival of low-price iron was an incentive to increase the use of metal. Starting in the fifteenth century, such a trend raised the issue of fuel shortage, which was resolved only in the eighteenth century by Darby’s innovation at Coalbrookdale forge. If we try to consider these two histories together, it is obvious that cast-iron is one name for two different realities in the two material cultures: in China it was the result of a complex and sophisticated technological system which took place in the Han period; in Europe it did not exist, as artefact or commodity, before the second part of the thirteenth century. Eventually, until the industrial revolution, cast-iron production grew as part of a more complex technological process, whose aim was to supply a growing demand of wrought iron and steel. Though ‘invented’ more than 1,500 years after Chinese ironworkers began to produce it, European cast-iron was not borrowed from the Chinese example: both were definitely different stages in very different technological processes. One part of the problem is the inadequacy of a study limited to a single sector, such as, for example, iron production. Donald Wagner criticizes this intellectual

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frame, which makes it difficult to study the interaction between interconnected technologies (iron and non-ferrous).38 It is not a new question: in his Histoire des techniques, Bertrand Gilles, the major French historian of technology, claimed for a study of technological systems, which should take into account knowledge transfers from one sector to another and the economic implications of technology, material culture and consumption.39 From an analytical point of view, a global comparison within a single technological and economic sector is useful. Interesting issues can be raised for both parts of the equation, but it gives no synthetic answer. Another element of conclusion should be that the current issue of iron and steel shortage tells us that the story is not yet concluded. Saving energy and metal, as well as improving efficiency, still matters, and we should therefore learn from every historical situation.

NOTES 1. Joseph Needham, Science and Civilisation in China: Vol. 7, The Social Background, Part 2, General Conclusions and Reflections (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), pp. 214–19; the long alphabetic enumeration of ‘Chinese inventions’ has to be considered an interesting clue for Needham’s historical method, rather than a comprehensive survey of the Chinese contribution to the history of innovation. 2. Andre Gunder Frank, ReOrient: Global Economy in the Asian Age (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998); Jack Goody, The Theft of History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006). 3. Karel Davids, Religion, Technology and the Great and Little Divergences: China and Europe Compared, c. 700–1800 (Leiden: Brill, 2013). 4. Kenneth Pomeranz, The Great Divergence. China, Europe, and the Making of the Modern World Economy (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000). 5. R. Bin Wong and Jean-Laurent Rosenthal, Before and Beyond Divergence. The Politics of Economic Change in China and Europe (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2011). 6. Pomeranz, The Great Divergence, pp. 59–62. 7. Robert C. Allen, The British Industrial Revolution in Global Perspective (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), pp. 217–37. 8. Denis Woronoff (ed.), Forges et forêts. Recherches sur la consommation protoindustrielle de bois (Paris: Editions de l’EHESS, 1990). 9. John Hatcher, The History of the British Coal Industry, 1, Before 1700: Towards the Age of Coal (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993); Paul Benoit and Catherine Verna, Le charbon de terre en Europe occidentale avant l’usage industriel du Coke (Turnhout: Brepols, 1999). 10. Pomeranz, Great Divergence, pp. 43–68; Janet Abu-Lughod, Before European Hegemony. The World System A. D. 1250–1350 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989), pp. 322–30; Frank, ReOrient, pp. 202–3. Jack Goody’s Metal, Culture and Capitalism. An Essay on the Origins of the Modern World (Cambridge: Cambridge

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University Press, 2012), which addresses the issue of metal working from a global point of view, from Neolithic period on, should be specifically criticized, which is not pertinent to this paper. 11. Donald B. Wagner, Science and Civilisation in China, vol. 5, Chemistry and Chemical Technology, part 11, Ferrous Metallurgy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008). 12. Joseph Needham, The Development of Iron and Steel Technology in China (London: Newcomen Society, 1958). 13. Robert Hartwell, ‘Markets, Technology, and the Structure of Enterprise in the Development of the Eleventh-Century Chinese Iron and Steel Industry’, The Journal of Economic History, 26 (1966), pp. 29–58; Idem, ‘A Cycle of Economic Change in Imperial China: Coal and Iron in Northeast China, 750–1350’, Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient, 10 (1967), pp. 102–59. 14. See an illustration of this thesis in the articles published in Technology and Culture (1964, 5/3), where Filarete’s description of the forge of Ferriere (Italy, in the province of Piacenza) in the late fifteenth century was presented as a clue for ‘Asian influences on European metallurgy’. 15. Wagner, Science and Civilisation, plates xxix–xxxix. 16. Radomir Pleiner, Iron in Archaeology. Early European Blacksmiths (Prague: Archeologicky Ustav AV CR, 2006); G. Pagès, Artisanat et économie du fer en France méditerranéenne de l’Antiquité au début du Moyen Âge. Une approche interdisciplinaire (Montagnac: Mergoil, 2010); Mathieu Arnoux, ‘Forgerons, fourneaux et marteaux. Choix techniques et usages du fer dans l’Europe médiévale jusqu’au milieu du XIIIe siècle’, in Il fuoco nell’alto medioevo (Atti della LXa settimana di studi del Centro italiano di studi sull’alto medioevo) (Spoleto: CISAM, 2013), pp. 272–94. 17. Inquiries and excavations in Hispanic gold mines should lead to a different conclusion for the gold and non-ferrous mining and metallurgy: Claude Domergue, Les mines de la peninsule ibérique dans l’antiquité romaine (Rome: École Française de Rome, 1990). 18. Federigo Melis, Documenti per la Storia economica dei secoli XIII–XVI (Florence: Olchski, 1972), pp. 156–9 (25 May 1385). 19. Mathieu Arnoux, Mineurs, férons et maîtres de forges: étude sur la production du fer dans la Normandie du Moyen Age (XIe–XVe siècles) (Paris: C.T.H.S., 1993), p. 118. 20. François Sigaut, ‘Le fer dans l’agriculture’, in Laurent Feller, Perinne Mane and Françoise Piponnier, Le village médiéval et son environnement. Études offertes à Jean-Marie Pesez (Paris: Presse de la Sorbonne, 1998), pp. 414–26. 21. Michel Cartier, ‘L’homme et l’animal dans l’agriculture chinoise ancienne et moderne’, Études rurales, 151–2 (1999), pp. 179–97. 22. Melis, Documenti per la Storia economica, pp. 156–9 (25 May 1385). 23. Arnoux, Mineurs, férons et maîtres de forge, pp. 112–13, 438–9. 24. Richard Marsina (ed.), Codex diplomaticus et epistolaris Slovaciae, t. 1 (Bratislava, 1971), pp. 233–5, n° 322 (1226).

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25. Leopold Delisle, Études sur la condition de la classe agricole et l’état de l’agriculture en Normandie au moyen âge (Évreux: Hérissey, 1851), pp. 693–4. 26. For what follows, cf. Arnoux, ‘Forgerons, fourneaux et marteaux’, pp. 762–71; a different view of the process in Catherine Verna, ‘Réduction du fer et innovation. À propos de quelques débats en histoire sociale des techniques’, Médiévales, 39 (2000), pp. 79–95, and ‘Forges catalanes: la question des origines’, Revue d’histoire et d’archéologie méditerranéennes, 21 (2005), pp. 55–62. 27. Grenville G. Astill, A Medieval Industrial Complex and Its Landscape: The Metalworking Watermills and Workshops of Bordesley Abbey (York: Council for British Archaeology, Research report 92, 1993), pp. 246–91. 28. Arnaud Timbert (ed.), L’homme et la matière: l’emploi du plomb et du fer dans l’architecture gothique (Paris: Picart, 2009). 29. Wages for the blowers (probably the smith’s wife and children) are mentioned in the account of the iron works at Tudeley (1350): Montagu S. Giuseppi, ‘Some Fourteenthcentury Accounts of Ironworks at Tudeley, Kent’, Archaeologia or miscellaneous tracts relating to Antiquity, 2nd series, 14, t. 64 (1912–13), pp. 145–64. 30. Philippe Braunstein (ed.), La sidérurgie alpine en Italie (XIIe–XVIIe siècles) (Rome: École Française de Rome, 2001). 31. Ninina Cuomo di Caprio and Carlo Simoni (eds), Dal basso fuoco all’altoforno. Atti del simposio Valle Camonica 1988 (Brescia: Grafo Edizioni, 1991); Estanislau Tomàs i Morera (ed.), La farga catalana en el marc de l’arqueologia siderurgica (Andorra: Govern d’Andorra, 1993); Philippe Dillmann, Liliane Hilaire-Pérez and Catherine Verna, L’acier en Europe avant Bessemer (Toulouse: Méridiennes, 2011). 32. Cast-iron was not unknown before the spread of innovation: recent excavations near the Lombard city of Lecco, suggest that unfruitful attempts were made in late Roman and in early medieval period to produce and use cast-iron: Costanza Cucini Tizzoni and Marco Tizzoni (eds), La miniera perduta. cinque anni di ricerche archeometallurgiche nel territorio di Bienno (Bienno: Comune di Bienno, 1999); Marco Tizzoni, Costanza Cucini and M. Ruffa (eds), Alle origini della siderurgia lecchese, Richerche archeometallurgiche ai Piani d’Erna (Lecco: Museo di Lecco, 2006), pp. 129–46. 33. Arnoux, Mineurs, férons et maîtres de forge, p. 385. 34. The hypothesis of a production of cast-iron in the furnace of Lapphittan as early as the twelfth century is not supported by all Swedish archeologists: see the divergent views of Nils Björkenstam, Gert Magnusson and Erik Tholander in Cuomo di Caprio and Simoni, Dal basso fuoco all’altoforno, pp. 83–103 and 105–14; from another point of view, the iron called ‘osmund’, which is specific of the Swedish production in late medieval and early modern times, does not appear in international trade before the fourteenth century: is it likely that a major innovation in technology may have no commercial implication for one or two centuries? 35. Mathieu Arnoux, ‘Matières premières, innovation technique, marché du fer: les logiques de la carte sidérurgique de l’Europe (XIIIe–XVIe siècles)’, in Vincenzo Giura (ed.), Gli insediamenti economici e le loro logiche (Naples: Liguori, 1998), pp. 1–14.

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36. Jean-François Belhoste, Christiane Claerr-Roussel and François Lassus, La métallurgie comtoise, XVe–XIXe siècles: étude du val de Saône (Besançon, Cahiers du patrimoine 33, 1994). 37. Wagner, Science and Civilisation, pp. 222, 301. 38. Wagner, Science and Civilisation, pp. xix–xxx. 39. Betrand Gille, Histoire des Techniques (Paris: Encyclopédie de la Pléiade, 1978).

The Italian National Innovation System: A Long-term Perspective, 1861–2011 ALESSANDRO NUVOLARI Sant’Anna School of Advanced Studies, Pisa MICHELANGELO VASTA University of Siena

Abstract This chapter provides a survey of the long-term evolution of the Italian National Innovation System since the unification of the country in the 1860s. In the first part we sketch a broad reconstruction of long-term trends by examining a wide range of quantitative indicators of science and technological activities in a comparative perspective. On the basis of this quantitative survey, in the second part, we put forward a conjectural interpretation of the fundamental features of the Italian National Innovation System. Our conclusion is that Italy has approached the process of modern economic growth following a peculiar path, characterized by a limited commitment to invest in science and technology, in combination with low real wages and an intense use of unskilled labour.

INTRODUCTION1 The study of the relationship between technical change and comparative economic development represents perhaps one of the most important themes of research in economic history. Whilst (mainstream) economists have tended for a long time to conceive technology as a ‘public good’ that is, by and large, freely accessible by all 313

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countries, economic historians have instead recognized that the successful assimilation of innovations and new technologies is by no means automatic and that it requires, in most cases, significant efforts and investments in the concomitant development of new skills and competences. Furthermore, the introduction of new technologies frequently requires a creative process of adaptation to the specific local circumstances prevailing in the importing country.2 Alexander Gerschenkron was probably the first to provide an articulated exposition of what may be called the ‘technology gap’ approach to the study of economic growth.3 Gerschenkron, in his attempt to develop a useful historical model for nineteenth-century European industrialization, introduced the key distinction between leader and backward countries. This distinction is a way to define the position of a country with respect to the (world) technological frontier. Leader countries are located on the edge of the frontier of technological progress, whereas backward countries are situated at varying degrees of distance from this conceptual border. In Gerschenkron’s view, the ‘backlog of technological innovations’ that a backward country can import from the leader countries represents ‘a great promise’ holding the key for achieving a prolonged acceleration of economic growth and, ultimately, for the successful ‘catching up’ with the leader countries.4 However, the fulfilment of this promise is far from easy, requiring the construction of ‘institutional instruments for which there was little or no counterpart in an established industrial country’.5 Interestingly enough, Gerschenkron also noted that the ‘ideological climate’ surrounding the process of industrialization in the backward country differs from the one that characterized the economic development of the leaders. The notion that the technological ‘catching up’ by backward countries is not an automatic process has been further elaborated by Moses Abramovitz. Abramovitz6 argues that the successful assimilation of foreign technologies is based on the construction of a proper set of ‘social capabilities’ in the importing country. The notion of social capabilities is used in this context rather loosely. Broadly speaking, Abramovitz’s concept refers to capabilities embodied in firms and other organizations and to a large set of factors that directly affects them such as the quality of the education system together with several other contextual dimensions.7 In his chapter, he pointed to another key factor affecting the process of ‘catching up’ which he labelled as ‘technological congruence’.8 Technological congruence indicates the degree in which the leader and backward countries are similar in dimensions such as overall market size, factor supplies and resource endowments. For example, a new technology developed in the leader country may not be profitably adopted in the backward country because of different resource endowments and factor supplies. The increasing recognition that country-specific factors shape the process of technological change at the national level was probably the main source of inspiration of the notion of National Innovation Systems (NIS) in the late 1980s. The concept of NIS is based on the idea that innovation is the outcome of ‘social’ processes in which a variety of actors (individuals, business firms, public institutions, etc.) are involved. Typically, these actors are connected by means of both market and non-market interactions. According to the NIS view, the key actors and the key interactions featuring in innovation processes have a predominantly national character.

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Interestingly enough, in the literature one can distinguish the co-existence of three broadly alternative definitions of the NIS concept, each to be ascribed to one of the three early pioneers of this approach: Chris Freeman, Richard Nelson and Bengt-Ake Lundvall.9 According to Freeman, a NIS consists in the ‘network of institutions in the private and public sectors whose activities and interactions initiate, import, modify and diffuse new technologies’.10 Lundvall defines the NIS as ‘all parts and aspects of the economic structure and the institutional setup affecting learning as well as searching and exploring’.11 Finally, Nelson invokes a fairly straightforward definition of the concept, using the NIS label to indicate ‘a set of institutions whose interactions determine the innovative performance of national firms’.12 As noted by Soete, Verspagen and Ter Weel, these different definitions of NIS share a broadly similar outlook, but, at the same time, they contain some subtle differences concerning the scope of the concept.13 Nelson’s use of the concept is the narrowest in its scope. In particular, the attention of Nelson and his associates is focused on the research and development (R&D) system of business firms and on the role of universities and public research laboratories in providing support to the activities of this R&D system. While the starting point of Nelson is the R&D system of business firms, Freeman takes as the starting point of the analysis the role played by the state. This is indeed not surprising when we consider that Freeman’s book is essentially a reappraisal of the Japanese historical experience.14 The focus of Freeman’s study is precisely the critical role played by the state and by its technostructures in orchestrating the networks of firms and other actors involved in innovation processes. Overall, Freeman’s study maintains a powerful Gerschenkronian flavour throughout since the emphasis is put on the policies and institutional arrangements that are progressively put in place in order to overcome bottlenecks and other obstacles to the introduction of new technologies in a backward country. Freeman’s emphasis on the role of the Japanese state in coordinating and guiding the actions of different actors is also clearly reminiscent of the developmental state literature.15 Finally, it is also worth noting the prominence given by Freeman to the ability of the Japanese policy-makers and technocrats in laying out sensible scenarios charting the most likely trajectories of evolution of specific technologies and industries and in employing the same scenarios in a flexible way as a guiding tool for coordination purposes. Lundvall’s definition of NIS is the broadest in its scope, as it considers as part of the NIS not only formalized R&D activities, but also the more ordinary learning processes taking place in connection with routine activities of production, distribution, marketing, etc. This broadens the NIS perspective also to small firms and to the low-technology sectors of the economy. Furthermore, Lundvall’s approach, in the study of the interactions among the various actors of NIS, gives a special attention to the exchanges of information between users and producers.16 In his view, detailed feedback from users provides a powerful stimulus to producers to further improve and refine their products. As a result, institutional arrangements and specific social conditions providing a context in which this type of user–producer relationship can flourish, may be a very important factor shaping the innovation performance of a country. Since the early 1990s the concept of NIS has enjoyed remarkable success in ‘policy making’ circles both at national level and at super-national levels in particular

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in institutions such as the OECD and the European Commission.17 The main limitation of the NIS approach is the danger of assuming the existence of an ideal benchmark that all countries should emulate in order to improve their innovation performance, neglecting the Gerschenkronian intuition that backward countries are very often forced by historical circumstances to pursue development trajectories that are different from the one embarked on by the leader countries. Hence historical studies should probably adopt a framework of investigation of NIS that is closer to the spirit of the approach outlined by Freeman in his analysis of the Japanese experience.18 The key intuition is that the overall innovation performance of national economies is ultimately the outcome of the relative degree of congruence or mismatching among the various constituting elements of the NIS. In other words, the historical evidence suggests that different combinations of institutional set-ups may produce equally successful outcomes in terms of catching up with the technological frontier. In this chapter we provide a comprehensive reappraisal of the quantitative evidence on the long-term evolution of scientific and technological activities in Italy since the unification in the light of the NIS approach as outlined by Freeman. Rather than looking at the Italian experience as an attempt to emulate the innovation systems of the leader countries, we think it is more fruitful to look at the Italian example as an attempt to develop an appropriate ensemble of ‘substitutes’ aimed at overcoming the bottlenecks stifling innovative activities in a technologically lagging country. The key interpretative issue then becomes that of assessing the peculiar Italian variety of NIS and the role it has played in shaping Italian innovation performance in a long run perspective. As we shall see, in a comparative perspective, Italy seems to be a country characterized by a structurally weak national innovation system. Our contention is that this weakness has forced the country to adopt a peculiar path towards modern economic growth characterized by low real wages and the intensive use of unskilled labour.

THE ITALIAN NATIONAL INNOVATION SYSTEM: A QUANTITATIVE REAPPRAISAL The aim of this section is to provide a quantitative description of the historical evolution of the Italian NIS. We would like to provide an account that is both comprehensive and comparative, including a large number of indicators and proxies of scientific, technological and innovation activities not only for Italy, but also for other major industrial countries. Since the early 1960s, a suitable array of indicators capturing the most relevant dimensions of scientific and technological activities at country level has emerged and it has improved and refined.19 In this context, it is possible to draw a distinction between two main typologies of indicators: input and output indicators. Input indicators refers to the resources that a country invests in innovative activities, whereas output indicators to the actual outcomes of innovation processes. The standard input indicator is the volume that a NIS dedicates to R&D. In this paper, we have decided to take a broader perspective and include in the analysis also some proxies of human capital. From a conceptual

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point of view, it is plausible to regard the general endowment of human capital of a country as broad input for innovative activities. The indicator of innovation output most commonly used is instead the number of patents for which there is a large availability of data since the end of the nineteenth century. However, in order to provide an assessment of scientific research activities, we have also considered bibliometric indicators. The availability of indicators of output for both scientific research (publications) and technological activities (patents) gives us the opportunity of gleaning useful insights on the relative effectiveness of the technology transfer mechanisms of the Italian innovation system. Finally, we have taken into consideration as a contextual factor the dynamics of real wages, which, we shall argue is a crucial determinant of the rate and direction of technical change in the Italian context.

1. THE INPUT DIMENSIONS OF THE ITALIAN NIS As already noted, the human capital endowment of a country directly affects its ability to use, adapt and develop new technologies.20 Therefore, in this paper the structure and performance of the education system as a whole is considered as one of the broad input dimensions of NIS.21 Table 1 shows literacy rates of the adult population in a comparative perspective. The first point that merits attention is the particular low starting point of Italy. In 1860, the Italian adult literacy rate (25 per cent) was the lowest of all countries considered, similar to that of Japan and a little lower than Spain (27 per cent). Interestingly enough, all the other countries in the table had literacy rates that were more than double the Italian figure. It is also worth noting that it took a prolonged period of time to close this initial gap. In 1900, the Italian literacy rate was 51.8 per cent while Germany, Sweden and the United Kingdom had already exceeded 90 per cent and other countries were very close; in 1950, Italy had not reached the literacy rates that most of the countries had achieved at the beginning of the century. A second useful indicator of the human capital endowment of a country, charted in Figure 1, is the average years of schooling of the population (aged between

TABLE 1 Literacy rate of adult population (1860–1950) in selected countries

France Germany Italy Japan Spain Sweden United Kingdom United States

1860

1880

1900

1913

1950

60.1 86.0 25.3 25.0 27.0 91.3 68.0 80.3

74.2 92.5 38.0 41.1 33.0 94.8 81.0 83.0

83.5 96.3 51.8 53.1 45.0 97.8 91.9 89.3

88.1 97.0 62.8 74.8 52.0 98.5 92.8 92.3

96.6 98.5 87.0 97.8 82.7 98.5 98.5 97.4

Source: Data kindly provided by Leandro Prados de la Escosura, mimeo.

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16

France Netherlands United Kingdom

14

Germany Spain United States

Italy Sweden

Japan Switzerland

12 10.3 10

11.0

9.1 8.0

8 6.8 6 5.2 4 2 0

2.0 0.9 1870

2.6

3.1

3.6

4.1

4.4

4.7

1.4

1880

1890

1900

1910

1920

1930

1940

1950

1960

1970

1980

1990

2000

2010

FIGURE 1: Average years of schooling on population (15–64 years) in selected countries Source: Own elaborations on Christian Morrisson and Fabrice Murtin, ‘The Century of Education’, Journal of Human Capital, 3 (2009), pp. 1–42.

15 and 64). Also in this case, the indicator shows the existence of a significant gap between Italy and the other major countries. Furthermore, the average years of schooling in Italy remains the lowest during all benchmark years – except for Spain in the last forty years – going from 0.9 in 1870 to 11 years in 2010. The third indicator we consider is tertiary education. Since the Second World War, in Italy there has been a steady growth in the number of students enrolled at university (61 students per 10,000 inhabitants in 1962 to 147 in 1972, reaching 228 in 1989). In the early 1990s, the number of university students was not too far from that of other industrialized countries, even if completion rates were still very low: in 1991 in Italy there were only 9.2 graduates per 100 people belonging to age group for degree, compared with 29.6 in the United States, 23.7 in Japan, 18.4 in the United Kingdom, 16.3 in France, and 12.7 in Germany.22 Table 2 contains the shares of students enrolled at university by disciplinary groups and it shows that in the first post-unification period the scientific and engineering area is chosen by about one third of total students. This share decreases from 1881 to the end of the century; in the 1900s there is a trend reversal, with the enlargement of the faculties of engineering reaching a peak (37.2 per cent) in 1921 due, presumably, to the expansion of the demand for engineers arising from Italy’s newly emerging military–industry complex. This phase is followed by a sharp decline of students in scientific faculties during the 1920s. Finally, since the Second World War, the share of students in science and engineering faculties has stabilized at around 25 per cent, while in the last two decades it has dropped below 23 per cent.23

THE ITALIAN NATIONAL INNOVATION SYSTEM

319

TABLE 2 Students enrolled by faculties (1866–2006), per cent

1866 1871 1881 1891 1901 1911 1921 1931 1941 1951 1961 1971 1981 1991 2001 2008

Law and Economics Humanities Medical Political Science

Science and Others Engineering

36.4 31.9 36.0 29.2 30.8 35.7 17.4 21.2 13.7 16.9 16.2 9.6 14.1 25.1 25.6 22.7

32.0 35.6 25.3 25.9 30.4 28.5 37.2 21.3 20.5 29.7 26.4 28.3 27.1 22.8 22.8 23.1

– 0.8 1.2 1.3 1.3 4.9 12.9 19.9 22.8 13.1 24.1 15.6 16.2 17.8 13.6 13.2

1.7 1.4 3.4 6.6 7.6 7.9 8.2 11.0 28.8 22.2 23.0 31.7 22.2 20.9 24.6 24.7

27.5 27.1 31.9 34.0 23.6 19.8 20.3 23.5 11.1 15.0 8.7 12.9 16.4 5.3 6.5 8.3

2.4 3.2 2.2 3.0 6.3 3.2 4.0 3.1 3.1 3.1 1.6 1.9 4.0 8.1 6.9 8.0

Source: http://Seriestoriche.istat.it (data extracted 8 July 2012)

The Italian delay in (higher) technical education is also evident if we consider the stock of engineers in the population. Comparative data on this variable are available only up to World War One and are shown in Figure 2, which again highlights the gap dividing Italy from the other countries. Furthermore, looking at more recent data we find that Italy has reached the levels of engineers in total population recorded in 1914 by Germany, France and the United Kingdom only during the 1950s.24 This significant delay suggests that the degree of technological sophistication of the Italian economy was not particularly high until at least the 1950s. A recent analysis on computer skills in the European Union confirms the Italian delay in technical education showing a very low share of computer science graduates. Furthermore, Italy is below the EU27 average for almost all proxies measuring even very basic computer abilities.25 For example, Italy, in 2011, has one of the lower shares (61 per cent) of persons who have ever used a computer on all individuals aged 16–74, being the EU27 average 78 per cent and the share of the main advanced European countries around 90 per cent. Turning our attention to more traditional input indicators, Table 3 shows the evolution of R&D expenditure on GDP for the principal industrialized countries. This indicator is systematically available only from the mid-1950s, although for some countries it is possible to reconstruct some rough estimates for the 1930s. The table shows that also in this case, Italy is characterized by a very significant gap persisting throughout the entire period. Throughout the period Italy is significantly far from not only the most advanced countries that traditionally invest large amounts of resources in research (Germany, Japan and the United States), but also from South

320

0.2

0.6

0.1

1934

3.0

1.6

0.2

0.8 0.6

1955–60 estimate

1.8 1.4 1.5 0.6 1.8 2.3 0.1 3.3 1.2 1.1

1964

1.8 2.0 1.8 0.8 1.9 2.2 0.2 2.6 1.2 1.3

1970

1.7 2.1 1.8 0.8 1.9 2.0 0.3 2.2 1.7 1.3

1975

1.7 2.4 2.0 0.7 1.8 2.4 0.4 2.3 2.2 1.3

1980

2.2 2.6 2.5 1.1 2.0 2.2 0.5 2.8 2.7 1.5

1985

2.3 2.6 2.8 1.3 2.1 2.1 0.8 2.6 2.7 1.6

0.7

1990 0.6 2.3 2.3 2.2 2.7 1.0 2.0 1.9 0.8 2.5 3.3 1.6

1995 0.9 2.3 2.2 2.5 3.0 1.0 1.9 1.8 0.9 2.7 3.6 1.7

2000 1.3 2.8 2.1 2.5 3.3 1.1 1.9 1.7 1.1 2.6 3.6 1.8

2005 1.7 3.7 2.3 2.8 3.4 1.3 1.8 1.8 1.4 2.9 3.4 2.0

2010

Note: Data for 1934 are from Christopher Freeman and Luc Soete, The Economics of Industrial Innovation (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 1997), p. 300; the OECD data in 1934 refers to a weighted estimate of 12 European countries; data for Japan from 1975 to 1995 are taken from ‘adjusted’ series; for 1964 data of Italy and Unites States refer to 1963; for 1970 data of United Kingdom and Sweden refer to 1969; for 1980 data of Germany, United Kingdom and Sweden refer to 1981; for 1990 data of China and Sweden refer to 1991; for 2010 data of China, Japan and United States refer to 2009. Sources: Our own elaborations on OECD database (OECD, Main Science and Technology Indicators Database, data extracted on 1 April 2012); for the period 1955–60 estimate based on Franco Malerba, ‘The national system of innovation: Italy’, in Richard R. Nelson (ed.), National Innovation Systems. A Comparative Analysis (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1993); for United States in 1964, OECD, A Study of Resources Devoted to R&D in OECD Member Countries in 1963/64, 2 Statistical Tables and Notes (Paris, 1968); for the period 1964–1980 elaborations on OECD.

China South Korea France Germany Japan Italy Netherlands United Kingdom Spain United States Sweden OECD

Countries

TABLE 3 R&D expenditure on GDP (%) for benchmark years (1934–2010)

THE ITALIAN NATIONAL INNOVATION SYSTEM

321

FIGURE 2: Engineers per 10,000 inhabitants (1866–1914) Source: Own elaborations on Michelangelo Vasta, Innovazione Tecnologica e Capital Umano in Italia (1880–1914). Le Traiettorie Tecnologiche della Seconda Rivoluzione Industriale (Bologna: Il Mulino, 1999), p. 250.

Korea, which now has the highest level among the countries considered, and from China that has overtaken Italy in the last decade. In particular, in relation to Italy we can make two further observations. First, in the second half of the twentieth century the share of R&D expenditure on GPD has increased by more than six times, passing from 0.2 per cent in 1955–1960 to 1.3 per cent in 2010. Second, this growth was characterized by a two-stage process: the share is increasing until the end of the 1980s and then stagnating during the last two decades. In 2010, Italy has the last place in the table, being overtaken also by Spain. Overall, the level of expenditure of the Italian innovation system remains today well below the 2 per cent level which is the average value of OECD countries. Figure 3 shows the number of researchers (FTE) engaged in R&D activity. Again the figure points out the limited attention paid to scientific and technological research by the Italian economic system. Despite the growth in the share of researchers on population, the gap between Italy and the other countries increases over time. In 1981, Italy had about 1 employee per 1,000 inhabitants employed in research activity, while France and Germany engaged 1.5 each, and Japan 2.6; thirty years later, Italy has 1.8 employees while France and Germany reach 3.6 and 4 respectively, while Japan has 5.2 researchers per 1,000 inhabitants.

2. THE OUTPUT DIMENSIONS OF THE ITALIAN NIS The first output indicator we consider is the number of patents. The basic idea is that the number of patents can be adopted as a proxy for the number of innovations

322

HISTORY OF TECHNOLOGY

FIGURE 3: Numbers of researchers (FTE) per 1,000 population (1963–1964, 1981, 2010) Note: Data on researchers for Japan in 1981 are taken from ‘adjusted’ series; for 2010 data of China, France and Japan refer to 2009; data of United States refer to 2007. Source: Our own elaborations on Angus Maddison, Historical Statistics of the World Economy: 1–2008 AD (2009), http:// www.ggdc.net/MADDISON/oriindex.htm; for 1963–1964 OECD (1968), A study of resources devoted to R&D in OECD member countries in 1963/64, 2 Statistical Tables and Notes, Paris for 1981 and 2010 [data extracted on 30 April 2012 from OECD.Stat.]

produced by a country in a given period of time. Tables 4 and 5 show respectively, the percentage shares of the patents issued in the United States to residents in the major industrialized countries and the number of patents issued to residents in these countries per million inhabitants.26 Table 4 shows that the relative position of Italy with respect to the other countries did not change substantially in the long term. However, looking at Figure 4, four distinct phases can be noted: the first, of rapid growth ending at the beginning of the 1920s, when Italy reached a peak (2.5 per cent). This period was characterized by the effects of the First World War, when several industries with high technological intensity, such as steel production and chemicals, underwent a phase of rapid expansion.27 This phase is followed by a period of relative decline that coincided with the rise of fascism, the autarchic period, and World War Two, during which the share of Italian patents was significantly lower than in the previous period. In fact, the levels registered in the early 1920s were exceeded only in the early 1950s. The third phase coincides with the period of the Italian Golden Age (1950–1973), when the share reached the historical peak of 4.4 per cent in 1963. The effervescence of this historical phase is also confirmed by the number of success stories of breakthrough innovations such as the polypropylene invented by Giulio Natta during the 1950s and the Perottina invented in 1964 by Giorgio Perotto.28 Subsequently, a new phase of decline ensued with a constant reduction in performance

323

– – 0.1 0.0 0.1 0.1 0.1 – 0.0 – 0.1 0.2 2.5

17.8 10.3 10.9 9.3 11.4 9.9 17.5 11.8 10.6 8.9 7.0 5.5 4.2

France

23.3 26.1 34.3 39.2 33.1 40.8 0.6 30.9 27.3 24.7 18.5 14.8 11.6

Germany

0.2 0.1 – 0.5 0.8 1.6 0.1 3.3 16.1 30.5 47.5 45.4 41.9

0.3 0.3 1.0 1.5 2.5 1.5 1.0 3.6 3.5 3.4 3.1 2.5 1.7

Japan Italy – 0.3 0.8 0.5 1.7 3.6 9.1 5.3 3.3 2.8 2.3 1.8 1.5

Netherlands – – – – – 0.0 – 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.5 4.8 10.9

South Korea 0.2 0.4 0.2 0.1 0.7 0.2 0.5 0.1 0.3 0.3 0.3 0.4 0.4

Spain 1.2 1.8 1.5 2.4 3.3 3.3 7.5 5.0 3.9 3.5 1.9 2.3 1.3

Sweden 2.2 3.2 2.5 3.6 4.5 4.0 11.0 7.7 6.8 5.4 3.1 1.9 1.5

Switzerland 43.2 43.9 34.1 26.8 25.8 24.2 40.5 26.4 18.1 10.3 6.8 5.3 4.0

United Kingdom

11.7 13.5 14.4 16.0 16.1 10.8 12.2 5.9 9.9 10.1 8.9 15.1 18.6

Others

100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0

Total

Sources: 1883–1960: elaborations on USPTO TAF mar. 1977; 1970–2010 elaborations on: USPTO.GOV Extended Year Set – Patents By Country, State, and Year Utility Patents (December 2011). (http://www.uspto.gov/web/offices/ac/ido/oeip/taf/reports.htm#by_geog)

1883 1890 1900 1913 1927 1938 1950 1960 1970 1980 1990 2000 2010

China

TABLE 4 Patents granted in the United States (%) to foreign residents for benchmark years (1883–2010)

324

HISTORY OF TECHNOLOGY

FIGURE 4: Patents granted to Italian residents in the US on total patents granted to foreign residents (1883–2010) Source: our own elaboration: for 1883–1962, on US Department of Commerce, Patent and Trademark Office, Technology Assessment & Forecast; for 1963–2010 on USPTO.GOV Extended Year Set [data extracted on 1 April 2012].

with an average value of 3.4 per cent during the 1970s and of 3.1 per cent during the 1980s. A drastic deterioration of the performance occurred from the mid-1990s, so that in 2000 the share was equal to the levels of the 1920s with a further drop to 1.7 in 2010, the level reached at the eve of the First World War. Table 5, in which the number of patents granted per million inhabitants is reported, makes it possible to advance further conjectures. The distance with all the other countries, with the exception of Spain, remained considerable for the entire period, and the relative position did not change. In synthesis, Italian long-term innovative performance as measured using patents was in general very weak and far from that of countries with similar levels of income. From this perspective it is particularly significant to note the marked worsening in performance during the last twenty years. The sectoral disaggregation of patents allows the identification of the patterns of technological specialization of the Italian economy, highlighting points of strength and weakness. Vasta carried out a pioneering study on patents registered in Italy in the electromechanical and chemical sectors from 1880 to 1914. He finds that, in the first sector, innovative activity was concentrated on products that were not technologically very advanced, although a certain capacity to gain several product niches emerged. The second sector, instead, is characterized by a considerable gap for all fields of activity and a growing dependence on foreign countries.29 Further insights on Italian innovative performance emerge from a closer look at the historical development of the patent system in Italy. Conventional economic theory suggests that, without patent protection, incentives for investment in innovative activities will be lacking. Hence, a strong and effective system of patent

325

0.0 0.1 2.0

0.0

0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0

4.5 4.4 8.4 8.2 12.0 12.7 16.1 17.9 33.3 37.9 49.3 62.5 69.1

France

5.3 9.5 19.7 22.0 22.2 32.2 0.4 30.2 57.1 73.8 95.9 124.5 150.2

Germany

0.4 0.6 1.2 0.0 2.5 25.2 61.0 158.0 246.9 352.6

0.1 0.0

Japan 0.1 0.2 1.0 1.5 2.7 1.9 0.8 5.0 10.6 14.3 22.2 29.7 30.9

Italy

1.3 5.1 3.2 9.9 22.5 35.3 32.6 41.7 46.3 64.2 78.0 96.6

Netherlands

0.0 0.1 0.2 5.2 70.8 240.6

0.1

South Korea 0.1 0.4 0.3 0.2 1.2 0.4 0.6 0.3 1.7 1.7 3.3 6.7 10.2

Spain 2.6 6.7 9.0 15.5 23.7 28.7 41.9 47.1 78.1 98.9 89.7 177.8 158.3

Sweden 7.7 19.0 23.9 33.9 48.5 51.3 91.4 102.0 177.4 198.3 187.8 181.9 211.5

Switzerland

12.3 20.3 25.8 21.5 24.5 27.6 31.7 35.6 53.1 42.7 48.6 61.5 70.4

United Kingdom

Sources: Elaborations on Angus Maddison, Historical Statistics of the World Economy: 1–2008 AD (2009), http://www.ggdc.net/MADDISON/oriindex.htm; for 1883–1960 on USPTO OTAF mar. 1977; and for 1970–2010 on USPTO.GOV Extended Year Set – Patents By Country, State, and Year Utility Patents (December 2011) (http://www.uspto.gov/web/offices/ac/ido/oeip/taf/reports.htm#by_geog).

1883 1890 1900 1913 1927 1938 1950 1960 1970 1980 1990 2000 2010

China

TABLE 5 Patents granted to foreign residents in the US by countries per million habitants and benchmark years (1883–2010)

326

HISTORY OF TECHNOLOGY

protection is a necessary prerequisite for the attainment of substantial levels of innovative activities. The historical evidence instead suggests a much more complicated picture, especially for countries that are catching up with the world technological frontier.30 In fact, many successful catching up countries adopted judicious policies concerning intellectual property rights, in order to make sure that patents could act not only as an incentive, but also as a tool for transferring technologies from abroad. Thus, many nineteenth-century patent systems contemplated the possibility of granting patents not only for new inventions, but also for importing technologies from abroad. More importantly, many nineteenthcentury patent systems contained discriminatory measures against foreign inventors sometimes explicitly, sometimes in the actual practice of the legal procedures. For example, in the US patents were initially restricted to American citizens (a ban that was gradually relaxed) and until 1861 foreign applicants were required to pay higher fees.31 An illustration of discriminatory practices against foreign inventors is provided by the case study of Richter and Streb showing the obstacles raised by the German patent office against US machine tool makers during the 1920s.32 Italy did not follow these examples and it developed a patent system that did not contemplate any systematic discriminatory rules towards foreign inventors.33 The lack of discrimination in the Italian system is visible when we look at the relative openness of the patent system. This may be measured by considering the share of patents granted to foreign applicants in the total number of patents granted (Table 6). It is interesting to note that until 1979 the Italian system seems to be extremely open with a share of patents granted to foreign inventors that exceeds the 50 per cent which is very similar to that of small open economies such as The Netherlands and Belgium.34 The general impression is that of a system that is particularly open in order to stimulate the transfer of technologies from abroad, but it is surely less suited in stimulating the use of foreign technologies as a base for autonomous innovations. As a final notation, we may observe that the Italian weak patenting position both nationally and internationally is going to represent a future obstacle to the access to sophisticated knowledge bases of high tech sectors. As noted by Hall and Ziedonis, one of the reasons underlying the growth of international patenting activities since the late 1980s is the need of firms of accumulating sizable patent portfolios in order to have enough resources to spend in cross licensing agreements and other forms of research joint ventures and technological alliances.35 If we turn our attention to the generation of scientific knowledge, the most widely used output indicator is the number of scientific publications. In this paper, we use two different samples: the overall world scientific production extracted from the Scopus database (henceforth All-Scopus AS) and a sub-sample of this database, which should approximate the excellence of research activity, represented by the two leading ‘generalist’ scientific journals in the world: the English Nature and the American Science (henceforth N&S). Figure 5 shows the share of Italian publications in AS, while Table 7 shows the average share publications of selected countries in six different periods and Table 8 shows the average number of publications per million inhabitants. In order to have some corroboration about the reliability of the Scopus dataset, in Figure 5 we also include some alternative authoritative estimates on the

327

67.3 53.2 13.3

39.1

31.1

78.4 51.4 37.1 64.4

69.3

a. 1901

80.2 62.0 – 11.5

50.8 30.1 61.5

a. 1914 42.8 24.4 62.8 27.7 80.0 59.3 53.3 11.8

1927

Source: Our elaborations on data from http://www.wipo.org [extracted 1 July 2012].

Belgium France Germany Italy Japan Netherlands Switzerland United Kingdom United States of America

a. 1880

TABLE 6 Share of foreign patents in different patent systems

55.0 19.2 57.7 17.4 76.9 55.9 55.6 15.2

a. 1938 89.5 65.3 37.2 72.2 35.9 81.1 66.3 74.7 18.6

a. 1963 89.1 72.2 51.7 77.2 21.0 86.8 75.2 79.9 37.4

1979

53.6 31.2 38.1 25.5 15.6 88.8 45.6 64.6 47.0

a. 1991

20.3 11.3 29.6 10.7 15.9 15.7 37.8 58.5 50.9

a. 2010

328

HISTORY OF TECHNOLOGY

FIGURE 5: Share of Italian publications in AS (1860–2011) Note: The series has been smoothed with a five-period moving average; all documents in AS concerning areas of Life Sciences, Health Sciences and Physical Sciences. De Solla Price data refer to the number of scientific authors, while May and King data are relative to publications. Source: Our own elaboration on Scopus database (http://www.scopus.com/home.url) [data extracted on 7 April 2012].

scientific impact of Italy provided by other scholars: the pioneering contribution by De Solla Price and the more recent studies by May and King.36 Figure 5 shows the existence of different phases in Italian performance in scientific research. In the first phase, running from the unification up to the end of the 1880s, the Italian share is around 0.6 per cent, while starting from the beginning of the 1890s in the Giolittian era this value grew considerably overcoming the threshold of 2.5 per cent.37 The First World War produced a drastic decline and, during the interwar period, even if characterized by a positive trend, the Italian share on world scientific production remained under 1 per cent. Italian performance increases considerably during the Golden Age passing from 1.8 per cent in 1950 to 4 per cent in 1973. After this period the Italian share remains substantially stable around the 4 per cent mark. The comparative perspective of Tables 7 and 8 provides further insights on the historical dynamics of Italian scientific performance. In the period 1890– 1914, Italy is ranked above France, Japan and Spain. During the Golden Age, Italy remains constantly above France and is overtaken by Japan who increased considerably its performance. In the last decades, notwithstanding Italy doubling its capacity, it is overtaken also by France. Table 8, which contains data normalized by population, shows that, in the period 1973 to 2011, the performance of Italy is higher than that of Japan and South Korea, and not so distant from those of France and Germany. Further insights emerge from the analysis of publications that represent the research excellence in the N&S sub-sample. This analysis is possible only from 1950

329

0.6 1.6 0.7 2.1 4.0 4.1

73.6 46.6 11.3 9.6 8.9 7.9

United Kingdom

0.9 1.1 0.3 1.6 5.8 5.6

France 8.8 22.2 34.2 12.0 8.1 7.7

5.7 9.2 27.3 49.3 35.7 28.9

Germany United States 0.1 0.5 1.3 4.0 7.8 8.2

Japan 0.0 0.0 0.1 0.1 1.3 3.1

Spain 0.2 0.4 1.4 1.5 2.0 2.3

Netherlands 0.0 0.0 0.2 0.0 0.8 9.5

China

Note: All documents in Scopus database concerning areas of Life Sciences, Health Sciences and Physical Sciences. Sources: Our own elaboration on Scopus database (http://www.scopus.com/home.url) [data extracted on 7 April 2012].

1860–1889 1890–1914 1919–1938 1950–1972 1973–1995 1996–2011

Italy

TABLE 7 Average % by countries of total publication in Scopus (1860–2011)

– 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.2 2.3

South Korea

0.0 0.3 0.6 1.1 1.7 1.7

Sweden

10.0 18.0 22.5 18.6 23.7 18.6

Others

330

0.1 0.8 1.1 17.3 284.9 890.7

15.6 18.8 10.6 69.1 621.1 1,608.9

United Kingdom

0.2 0.5 0.4 16.5 404.4 1,092.6

France 1.7 6.9 28.0 53.5 399.9 1,152.7

Germany 0.9 2.0 12.5 97.4 593.3 1,200.6

United States 0.0 0.2 1.3 18.1 270.0 777.2

Japan 0.0 0.0 0.2 1.9 155.7 980.7

Spain 0.3 1.4 9.4 49.9 572.2 1,739.7

Netherlands 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 3.6 104.4

China

– 0.0 0.0 0.3 24.9 635.3

South Korea

Note: All documents in Scopus database concerning areas of Life Sciences, Health Sciences and Physical Sciences. Sources: Our own elaboration on Maddison (2009) and Scopus database (http://www.scopus.com/home.url) [data extracted on 7 April 2012].

1860–1889 1890–1914 1919–1938 1950–1972 1973–1995 1996–2011

Italy

TABLE 8 Average number of publications in Scopus per million inhabitants (1860–2011)

0.0 1.1 5.7 57.2 817.2 2,241.9

Sweden

THE ITALIAN NATIONAL INNOVATION SYSTEM

331

FIGURE 6: Share of Italian publications on selected countries (AS vs N&S) Note: All documents in Scopus database concerning areas of Life Sciences, Health Sciences and Physical Sciences. The countries considered are: China, France, Germany, Japan, Italy, Netherlands, Spain, South Korea, Sweden, United Kingdom, United States. Source: Our own elaboration on Scopus database (http://www.scopus.com/home.url) [data extracted on 7 April and 26 June 2012].

because for the previous years there the data are not fully reliable. In this case the world is represented only by a restricted number of countries and this means that the share for each country is calculated on this more limited sample. In Figure 6, two curves for Italy are plotted: the share of total publications of selected countries in AS and in N&S. In the first case, the share of Italian publications grows with a fluctuating behaviour until the end of the 1960s, it reaches its peak (5.8 per cent) in 1980 and then displays a decreasing trend, dropping in the last year to 4.8 per cent. The Italian publications in N&S are around 1 per cent until the early 1990s, and increase considerably in the following years reaching 2.9 per cent in 2008. These data seem to indicate that, since the early 1990s, there has been a significant increase in the Italian ability to produce excellent research converging towards the level of performance in AS publications. Finally in Figure 7 we consider another dimension of research excellence, the cumulative number of Nobel laureates in physics, medicine and chemistry by research affiliations. This should be considered as a proxy of the capacity of producing radical scientific breakthroughs and discoveries. The affiliations are recorded at the moment in which the prize was awarded.38 Several points deserve attention. The first is that in the period 1901 to 1935, the UK, France and Germany are the leading countries in terms of Nobel laureates. The leadership of the US is relatively recent and emerges only after the Second World War. The second point is that Italy lags far behind the UK, France and Germany throughout the period. Finally, Nobel laureates with Italian affiliations are rather evenly scattered throughout the entire period and there is no particular clustering in specific periods of time. Overall, the figure points to a significant weakness of the Italian NIS in the domain of scientific research; namely, the inability to construct

332

HISTORY OF TECHNOLOGY

FIGURE 7: Cumulative number of Nobel laureates in Chemistry, Physics and Medicine by affiliation of the winner, 1901–2011 (logarithmic scale) Source: Our own elaborations on data extracted from http://www.nobelprize.org [data extracted on 4 July 2012].

long lasting traditions of research excellence. It is particularly revealing that the six Italian Nobel laureates in the figure (Camillo Golgi (1906), Enrico Fermi (1938), Daniel Bovet (1957), Giulio Natta (1963), Abdus Salam (1979), Rita Levi Montalcini (1986)) all belonged to different scientific institutions. In other European countries, instead, it is possible to identify a restricted number of research institutes that account for more than a single Nobel laureate. Even smaller countries like the Netherlands and Sweden with few Nobel laureates show a certain tendency towards the concentration of research excellence in specific institutions. Considered together, the indicators, measuring the capacity of the Italian NIS of generating scientific knowledge, show that Italy, starting from very low levels, has reached a capability of producing what Thomas Kuhn calls normal science that is comparable to that of other major industrialized countries.39 The data also indicates that there has been a recent improvement in scientific findings of sizable impact (as measured by the articles published in Nature and Science). Finally, the data on the Nobel laureates seems instead to indicate a lack of ability in the construction of research traditions of excellence (in particular the incapacity of concentrating resources and talents in key research institutions). This quantitative picture is consistent with accounts produced by historians of science in Italy such as Maiocchi and Russo and Santoni.40 Indeed, from the unification up to the First World War there was no real integration of the system of scientific research and industrial applications, so that the growth of scientific research was due, by and large, to the expansion of the university system and to the sporadic initiative of some talented scientists such as Vito Volterra.41 After the First World War a major restructuring of the system of scientific research took place leading to

THE ITALIAN NATIONAL INNOVATION SYSTEM

333

the creation in 1923 of Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche (CNR).This was a major institutional reform adopted by the Fascist regime for allegedly boosting the performance of the Italian scientific system and increasing its connections with industrial firms, especially in military applications. In fact, most historians agree in considering this reorganization as a missed opportunity, because it was carried out with a very limited amount of resources and more with a view to propagandistic goals than to the real support of promising research projects.42 Another missed opportunity is the period 1950 to 1963 when the experience of CNR was fraught by an excessive fragmentation of resources and by a political inability to focus on the most promising projects as shown by the case of the lukewarm support to research in nuclear power systems.43 After the oil crisis, the Italian system has been systematically characterized by a structural lack of resources and by a confusing arrangement of the interaction between the CNR and the university system.44

A MISMATCH BETWEEN SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY? The comparison between the share of scientific publications of Italian researchers and the share of patents granted to Italian residents in the US, provided in Figure 8, points to an important peculiar characteristic of the Italian innovation system. First, looking at the whole period, scientific activity performs better than patent activity. Second, scientific activity increases considerably in the early 1960s when, on the contrary, the share of patent activity starts to decline. Third, the ‘mismatch’ between science and technology becomes even more apparent after the 1980s, when the share of Italian publications in N&S grows rapidly while the share of patents drops. This latter trend is probably due to the growing internationalization of the Italian academic system, at least in hard sciences. Overall this pattern suggests the existence of a serious lack of congruence between the two key elements of NIS. In particular, the diverging performance between scientific and technological activities reveals major difficulties in the technology transfer of scientific results from universities to firms (lack of bridging institutions), and, more generally, the existence of a research system that seems able to deliver a reasonable performance, although not outstanding, and that is more sophisticated than the system of industrial research of business firms.45

CONTEXTUAL FACTORS: THE DYNAMICS OF REAL WAGES The final element of our quantitative overview of the Italian NIS is represented by what we consider an important contextual factor. In general terms, the indicators we have considered so far provide the picture of a country characterized by a very limited investment of resources in scientific and technological activities and by a relatively marginal position in these areas when compared with that of other major industrialized countries. In our interpretation, this configuration was sustainable

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FIGURE 8: Technological activity versus scientific research activity, Italy (1883–2011) Note: The series have been smoothed with a five-period moving average; all documents in AS concerning areas of Life Sciences, Health Sciences and Physical Sciences. The countries considered are: China, France, Germany, Japan, Italy, Netherlands, Spain, South Korea, Sweden, United Kingdom, United States. Sources: For publication: our own elaboration on Scopus database (http://www.scopus.com/home. url) [data extracted on 7 April and 26 June 2012]; for patents: 1883–1960: elaborations on USPTO TAF mar. 1977; 1970–2010 elaborations on: USPTO.GOV Extended Year Set – Patents By Country, State, and Year Utility Patents (December 2011) (http://www.uspto.gov/web/offices/ac/ido/oeip/taf/reports.htm#by_geog).

because the Italian economy could enjoy a relatively sluggish dynamics of real wages from the unification until at least the late 1960s.46 This is confirmed by Figure 9, which shows the ratios between the indices of real wages constructed by Williamson for all the major industrialized countries and the Italian level. If the ratio is higher than 100 then Italy has a higher real wage than the other country.47 Figure 10 shows instead the comparison between real wages in Italy and in the UK for the period 1870 to 2010. It shows that period in which Italy is characterized by levels of real wages higher that the UK is just a relatively brief interlude (1975– 1990). Several economic historians have indeed pointed to the relatively low level of real wages as a permanent feature of the Italian process of economic growth.48 Here, we would like to draw attention to the potential connection between real wages and innovative activities. In our view, it is plausible to assume that low real wages did represent a powerful compensating factor for the structural weaknesses of the innovation system. In other words, low real wages were a safety valve that Italian

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FIGURE 9: Comparative real wages, 1870–1988 (100 corresponds to Italy = foreign country) Source: Our own elaboration is based on Jeffrey G. Williamson, ‘The Evolution of Global Labor Markets since 1830: Background Evidence and Hypotheses’, Explorations in Economic History, 32 (1995), pp. 141–96.

FIGURE 10: Comparative real wages, Italy/UK, 1870–2010 (100 corresponds to Italy = UK) Sources: 1870–1988 own elaborations based on Jeffrey G. Williamson, ‘The Evolution of Global Labor Markets since 1830: Background Evidence and Hypotheses’, Explorations in Economic History, 32 (1995), pp. 141–96; 1990–2010 own elaborations on OECD data.

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firms and entrepreneurs could activate to counterbalance the lack of a sound contribution to their competitiveness arising from their own ineffective innovation activities. Furthermore, it is also likely that in the long run this lethargic dynamics of real wages might have exerted further negative effects by discouraging the systematic search for improvements in labour productivity and the substitution of capital equipment for labour.49

CONCLUSION Our reappraisal has confirmed that the Italian pattern of modern economic growth is indeed a peculiar one, structurally characterized, on the one hand, by limited investments in R&D activities and in the broader educational system, and, on the other hand, by a limited capacity of generating innovations and being competitive in high tech industries. Our study shows that the origins of this structural weakness have deep historical roots. In the liberal age, there was a substantial lack of appreciation of the key role of scientific research. During the fascist period, it is possible to see a more concerted attempt of constructing a system of scientific research capable both of generating scientific results and of developing new industrial applications, but the fascist contribution to the construction of a modern system of scientific research was more rhetoric than real. Overall, this neglect of science and technology constituted a very heavy burden that could not easily be overcome even in the post Second World War phase. While in this period it is surely possible to identify a number of success stories both in scientific research and industrial R&D, this historical phase remained a missed opportunity for an effective consolidation of the Italian NIS. One may also be tempted to speculate whether, since the 1980s, the rhetoric of the industrial districts and the anti-Chandlerian ‘small is beautiful’ literature may also account for the complacency concerning the failure of the Italian NIS. However, at closer inspection, it is probably useful to distinguish between two different dynamics with the Italian NIS. If we consider the two main output indicators (papers and patents), it is possible to claim that up to approximately the early 1960s, the performance of the NIS in the sphere of scientific production was roughly aligned with that in terms of generation of industrial innovations. Since then, the dynamics of the two indicators are characterized by a divergent pattern. In particular, the Italian NIS seems to deliver a somewhat satisfactory performance, as far as the production of scientific publications is concerned, while losing ground in the generation of innovations. In our interpretation, this diverging pattern suggests that one of the major weaknesses of the Italian NIS is the lack of suitable bridging institutions for ensuring an effective knowledge transfer from science to industrial applications. Finally, it is worth noticing that the performance of the Italian system in the production of high-quality scientific publications is characterized by a significant improvement from the early 1990s. This is probably an outcome of the stimulus raised by the growing internationalization of the Italian academic system as far as hard sciences are concerned. Still, the general impression arising from the evidence collected here is that of a NIS that is structurally weak when compared with those of the other major industrialized countries.

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The recent evidence on the dynamics of productivity growth over the last twenty years, in our view, shows clearly that a fully developed NIS capable of contributing both to the assimilation of technologies from abroad and to the generation of new technologies is a key ingredient of a successful process of catching-up.50 In this perspective, Italy’s position among the richest countries of the world is not to be regarded as firmly secured. In other words, the Italian model of development characterized by a scarce attention to innovative performance and by an in-built tendency to rely on a compression of the dynamics of real wages appears as an inherent fragile construction.

NOTES 1. This paper is an extended version of Alessandro Nuvolari and Michelangelo Vasta, ‘The Ghost in the Attic? The Italian National Innovation System in Historical Perspective, 1861–2011’, Working Papers of the Department of Economics and Statistics-University of Siena, n. 665, 2012. We would like to thank Anna Guagnini, Ian Inkster, Luca Molà and the other participants to the workshop ‘The Italian Technology in a European and Global Context, 15th–20th Centuries’ (European University Institute, Florence, November, 2012) for useful comments and discussions. We are also grateful to Gabriele Cappelli for valuable suggestions. 2. Jan Fagerberg, ‘Technology and International Differences in Growth Rates’, Journal of Economic Literature, 32 (1994), pp. 1147–75. 3. The original contribution was actually published in 1952, see Alexander Gerschenkron, Economic Backwardness in Historical Perspective (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1962), Chapter 1. 4. David S. Landes, The Unbound Prometheus. Technological Change and Industrial Development in Western Europe from 1750 to the Present (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1969) is a classic account of the emergence of Britain’s technological leadership and of the subsequent adoption and diffusion of the new technologies of the industrial revolution from the leader country to the rest of Europe. 5. Gerschenkron, Economic Backwardness, p. 7. 6. Moses Abramovitz, ‘Catching Up, Forging Ahead and Falling Behind’, Journal of Economic History, 46 (1986), pp. 385–406 and Moses Abramovitz, ‘The Origins of the Post-war Catch-up and Convergence Boom’ in Jan Fagerberg, Bart Verspagen and Nick von Tunzelmann (eds), The Dynamics of Technology, Trade and Growth (Aldershot: Edward Elgar, 1994). 7. ‘As I use it . . . [social capability] is a rubric that covers countries’ levels of general education and technical competence, the commercial, industrial and financial institutions that bears on the abilities to finance and operate modern, large-scale business and the political and social characteristics that influence the risks, the incentives and the personal rewards of economic activity including those rewards in social esteem that go beyond money and wealth’ (Fagerberg, Verspagen and von Tunzelman, The Dynamics of Technology, p. 25). 8. Abramovitz, ‘Catching Up’, p. 371.

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9. An insightful survey of the NIS literature is provided by Luc Soete, Bart Verspagen and Bas Ter Weel, ‘Systems of Innovation’ in Bronwyn H. Hall and Nathan Rosenberg (eds), Handbook of the Economics of Innovation, Vol. 2 (Elsevier: Dordrecht, 2010). The concept of NIS was explicitly introduced for the first time in a paper written in the early 1980s by Freeman for the OECD; see Christopher Freeman, ‘Technological Infrastructure and International Competitiveness’, Industrial and Corporate Change, 13 (2004), pp. 541–69. See also Bengt-Åke Lundvall, ‘Introduction to “Technological Infrastructure and International Competitiveness” by Christopher Freeman’, Industrial and Corporate Change, 13 (2004), pp. 531–9. As recognized by Freeman himself (Christopher Freeman, ‘The “National System of Innovation” in Historical Perspective’, Cambridge Journal of Economics, 19 (1995), pp. 5–24), in historical perspective, the concept of national innovation system may be regarded as a modern elaboration of many of the views put forward by Friedrich List on the peculiar set of policies and institutions that Germany should have adopted in order to be able to close the economic gap with England (Friedrich List, The National System of Political Economy (London and Totowa, NJ: Frank Cass, 1983, 1st edition 1841)). On the intellectual connections between the national innovation systems literature and the research done at the OECD on scientific and technological activities during the 1960s and 1970s, see also Benoît Godin, ‘National Innovation System: The System Approach in Historical Perspective’, Science, Technology and Human Values, 34 (2009), pp. 476–501. 10. C. Freeman, Technology Policy and Economic Performance: Lessons from Japan (London: Pinter, 1987), p. 1. 11. Bengt-Åke Lundvall (ed.), National Systems of Innovation: Towards a Theory of Innovation and Interactive Learning (London: Pinter, 1992), p. 12. 12. Richard R. Nelson and Nathan Rosenberg, ‘Technical Innovation and National Systems’ in Richard R. Nelson (ed.), National Innovation Systems. A Comparative Analysis (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993), p. 4. 13. Soete, Verspagen and Ter Weel, ‘Systems of Innovation’. 14. Freeman, Technology Policy. 15. The first use of the concept of ‘developmental state’ is the study of the MITI’s experience by Chalmers Johnson, MITI and the Japanese Miracle (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1982). The book is cited in Freeman, Technology Policy. On the concept of ‘developmental state’, see Meredith Woo-Cumings (ed.), The Developmental State (Cornell: Cornell University Press, 1999). 16. Bengt-Åke Lundvall, ‘Innovation as an Interactive Process: From User-producer Interaction to the National Innovation System’ in Giovanni Dosi, Christopher Freeman, Richard R. Nelson, Gerald Silverberg and Luc Soete (eds), Technical Change and Economic Theory (London: Pinter, 1988), pp. 349–69. 17. Naubahar Sharif, ‘Emergence and Development of the National Innovation Systems Approach’, Research Policy, 35 (2006), pp. 745–66. 18. Freeman, Technology Policy. 19. Keith Smith, ‘Measuring Innovation’, in Jan Fagerberg, David C. Mowery and Richard R. Nelson (eds), Oxford Handbook of Innovation (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), pp. 148–77.

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20. Abramovitz, ‘Catching Up’. 21. Studies of NIS typically focus only on the higher education system (which is the component of the education system that is assumed to affect directly innovative activities). 22. Sandro Trento, ‘Il Grado di Scolarizzazione: Un Confronto Internazionale’, in Nicola Rossi (ed.), L’Istruzione in Italia: Solo un Pezzo di Carta? (Bologna: Il Mulino, 1997), pp. 21–66. 23. According to David Edgerton, the percentage of graduates in scientific and technological subjects for the major industrialized countries in 1954–1955 were as follows: Germany (34 per cent), Italy (26 per cent), UK (44 per cent), France (29 per cent). David Edgerton, Science and Technology and the British Industrial ‘Decline’ (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), p. 54. 24. Michelangelo Vasta, Innovazione Tecnologica e Capitale Umano in Italia (1880–1914). Le Traiettorie Tecnologiche della Seconda Rivoluzione Industriale (Bologna: Il Mulino, 1999) and Michelangelo Vasta, ‘Capitale Umano, Ricerca Scientifica e Tecnologica’, in Franco Amatori, Duccio Bigazzi, Renato Giannetti and Luciano Segreto (eds), Storia d’Italia. Annali, Vol. 15, L’Industria (Torino: Einaudi, 1999), pp. 1041–24. 25. Eurostat, Computer Skills in the EU27 in Figures (Brussels: Eurostat Press Office, 2012). 26. To overcome the problems originating from differences in countries’ patent legislations, international comparisons typically considers patenting activity by subjects of different nationalities in a third country. In comparison across major industrialized countries, the most suitable choice of a third country is that of the United States, since they represent the most important market on a world scale. This is also the approach followed in this paper. Note that the results presented here exclude patents issued to US and Canadian inventors from the calculation. 27. Franco Amatori, ‘Italy: The Tormented Rise of Organizational Capabilities between Government and Families’, in Alfred D. Chandler Jr., Franco Amatori and Takashi Hikino (eds), Big Business and the Wealth of Nations (Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press, 1997), pp. 246–76; and Vera Zamagni, ‘L’Industria Chimica in Italia dalle Origini agli Anni’ 50’, in Franco Amatori and Bruno Bezza (eds), Montecatini 1888–1966. Capitoli di Storia di una Grande Impresa (Bologna: Il Mulino, 1990), pp. 69–148. 28. It is interesting to note that 1963 is also considered a turning point by Lucio Russo and Emanuela Santoni, Ingegni Minuti. Una Storia della Scienza in Italia (Milan: Feltrinelli, 2012), Matteo Gomellini and Mario Pianta, ‘Commercio con l’Estero e Tecnologia in Italia negli anni Cinquanta e Sessanta’ in Cristiano Antonelli, Federico Barbiellini Amidei, Renato Giannetti, Matteo Gomellini, Sabrina Pastorelli and Mario Pianta (eds), Innovazione Tecnologica e Sviluppo Industriale nel Secondo Dopo Guerra (Bari: Laterza, 2007); and Marco Pivato, Il Miracolo Scippato. Le Quattro Occasioni Sprecate dalla Scienza Italiana negli Anni Sessanta (Rome: Donzelli, 2011). 29. Vasta, Innovazione Tecnologica. 30. Hiroyuki Odagiri, Akira Goto, Atsushi Sunami and Richard R. Nelson (eds), Intellectual Property Rights, Development and Catch Up. An International Comparative Study (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010).

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31. More precisely, the reform of 1836 stated that foreign inventors could be granted a US patent by paying a fee of $300 ($500 if they were British). The patent fee for US inventors was $30; Zorina Khan, The Democratization of Invention: Patents and Copyrights in American Economic Development, 1720–1920 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005). 32. Ralf Richter and Jochen Streb, ‘Catching Up and Falling Behind: Knowledge Spillover from American to German Machine Toolmakers’, Journal of Economic History, 71 (2011), pp. 1006–31. 33. Lerner in his comparative study of the structure of worldwide patent systems claims that in Italy around unification there was a discriminatory fee (+ 50%) for foreign applicants which was later removed; see: Josh Lerner, ‘150 years of Patent Protection’, NBER Working paper n. 7478 (2000), Table 5. However, this does not appear confirmed by the text of the Law (Legge 28 Febbraio 1826, n. 1899, Regno di Sardegna, and Legge 31 Gennaio 1864, n. 1657, Regno d’Italia). The other distinguishing feature of the Italian patent system from 1859 to 1939 was that it did not contemplate an examination procedure. The system was simply a registration system. For a compact overview of the Italian patent system, see Vasta, Innovazione Tecnologica, pp. 121–6. 34. The decline in the share after 1979 is probably due to the creation of the European Patent Office. 35. Bronwyn H. Hall and Rosemarie Ziedonis, ‘The Patent Paradox Revisited: An Empirical Study of Patenting in the US Semiconductor Industry, 1979–1995’, Rand Journal of Economics, 32 (2001), pp. 101–28. 36. Derek J. De Solla Price, Little Science, Big Science . . . and Beyond (New York: Columbia University Press, 1986); Robert M. May, ‘The Scientific Wealth of Nations’, Science, 275/5301 (1997), pp. 793–96; David A. King, ‘The Scientific Impact of Nations. What Different Countries Get For Their Research Spending’, Nature, 430 (2004), pp. 311–16. 37. Paul Forman, John L. Heilbron and Spencer Weart, ‘Physics circa 1900: Personnel, Funding and Productivity of Research Establishments’, Historical Studies in the Physical Sciences, 5 (1975), pp. 1–185 contains a comprehensive survey on the state of academic physics in the world around 1900, in which Italy appears to lag behind Germany, France and the UK both in terms of funding and in terms of scientific production. 38. Of course, several Italian scientists received Nobel prizes while being affiliated with foreign institutions, so it is possible that the results of Figure 7 contain a downward bias. Still, we would maintain that if one is interested in getting a sense of the structural performance of a country in science, the approach adopted here is fully plausible. 39. Thomas S. Khun, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1962). 40. Roberto Maiocchi, ‘Il Ruolo delle Scienze nello Sviluppo Industriale Italiano’, in Gianni Micheli (ed.), Storia d’Italia. Annali 3. Scienza e Tecnica (Torino: Einaudi, 1980) and Russo and Santoni, Ingegni Minuti. 41. According to Maiocchi, during the liberal age in the parliamentary discussions it is very common to find statements like these: ‘In Italy we should work more and study

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less. We should first become a wealthy and powerful national and later on we shall become a learned and science-minded nation’ (statement to Parliament of MP Rizzetti in 1894). Maiocchi, ‘Il Ruolo delle Scienze’, p. 924. 42. Maiocchi, ‘Il Ruolo delle Scienze’; Arturo Russo, ‘Italian Science Between the Two World Wars’, Historical Studies in the Physical and Biological Sciences, 16 (1986), pp. 281–320; Vasta, ‘Capitale Umano’. For a comprehensive study of technological development in military applications at the beginning of the Second World War which shows that, despite some noteworthy successes, Italy was characterized by a fundamental gap in military equipment, see Vera Zamagni, ‘Italy: How to Lose the War and Win the Peace’ in Mark Harrison (ed.), The Economics of World War II. Six Great Powers in International Comparison (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998). 43. Renato Giannetti and Sabrina Pastorelli suggest that since the mid-1960s it is possible to detect a ‘progressive involution in the innovation strategy of the country’. Giannetti and Pastorelli, ‘Il Sistema Nazionale di Innovazione negli Anni Cinquanta e Sessanta’, in Antonelli et al. (eds), Innovazione Tecnologica e Sviluppo Industriale. 44. Vasta, ‘Capitale Umano’. 45. Pier Angelo Toninelli and Michelangelo Vasta, show that the Italian case is characterized by a structural shortage of genuine Schumpeterian entrepreneurs. Pier Angelo Toninelli and Michelangelo Vasta, ‘Opening the Black Box of Entrepreneurship: The Italian Case in a Historical Perspective’, Business History 56/2 (2014), pp. 161–86. 46. The connection between real wages and the lack of investments in scientific and industrial research by firms is also suggested by Maiocchi in particular in relation to the Giolittian period and the period 1950–1970; Maiocchi, ‘Il Ruolo delle Scienze’, pp. 918 and 970. 47. Jeffrey G. Williamson, ‘The Evolution of Global Labor Markets since 1830: Background Evidence and Hypotheses’, Exploration in Economic History, 32 (1995), pp. 141–96. 48. See in particular Vera Zamagni, ‘La Dinamica dei Salari nel Settore Industriale’, in Pierluigi Ciocca and Giuseppe Toniolo (eds), L’Economia Italiana nel Periodo Fascista (Bologna: Il Mulino, 1976) and Vera Zamagni, ‘The Daily Wages of Italian Industrial Workers in the Giolittian Period (1898–1913), with an International Comparison for 1905’, Rivista di Storia Economica, 1 (1984), pp. 59–93. 49. The potential role of low real wages in inhibiting innovation is discussed in Alfred Kleinknecht, ‘Is Labour Market Flexibility Harmful to Innovation?’, Cambridge Journal of Economics, 22 (1998), pp. 387–96. For some evidence on the Italian case during the 1990s and 2000s, see Federico Lucidi and Alfred Kleinknecht, ‘Little Innovation, Many Jobs: An Econometric Analysis of the Italian Labour Productivity Crisis’, Cambridge Journal of Economics, 34 (2010), pp. 525–46. 50. Stephen Broadberry, Claire Giordano and Francesco Zollino, ‘A Sectoral Analysis of Italy’s Development: 1861–2010’, Working Paper 62-011 (2011), University of Warwick.

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THE CONTRIBUTORS

Mathieu Arnoux EHESS and LIED Université Paris – Diderot Box 7040 75205 Paris cedex 13 France Email: [email protected]

Salvatore Ciriacono Dipartimento di Scienze Storiche Geografiche e dell’Antichità Università di Padova 35122 Padova Italy Email: [email protected]

Gabriele Balbi Istituto di Media e Giornalismo Università della Svizzera Italiana 6904 Lugano Switzerland Email: [email protected]

Roberto Davini Independent Scholar Via 2 Giugno 6 50012 Bagno a Ripoli (Fi) Italy Email: [email protected]

Emese Bálint Department of History and Civilization European University Institute 50133 Florence Italy Email: [email protected]

Simone Fari Facultad de Ciencias Economicas y Empresariales Universidad de Granada 18071 Granada Spain Email: [email protected]

Christian Carletti SPHERE Université Paris-Diderot 7 / CNRS 75013 Paris France Email: [email protected]

Andrea Giuntini Dipartimento di Economia Università di Modena e Reggio Emilia 41121 Modena Italy Email: [email protected]

Marta Caroscio Medici Archive Project c/o Archivio di Stato di Firenze Viale Giovine Italia, 6 50122 Florence Italy Email: [email protected]

Anna Guagnini Dipartimento di Filosofia e Comunicazione Università di Bologna 40126 Bologna Italy Email: [email protected]

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THE CONTRIBUTORS

Luca Molà Department of History and Civilization European University Institute 50133 Florence Italy Email: [email protected]

Barbara Valotti Museo G. Marconi Fondazione Guglielmo Marconi 40037 Pontecchio Marconi Italy Email: [email protected]

Alessandro Nuvolari Institute of Economics, Sant’Anna School of Advanced Studies 56127 Pisa Italy E-mail: [email protected]

Michelangelo Vasta Dipartimento di Economia Politica e Statistica Università di Siena 53100 Siena Italy Email: [email protected]

Giuseppe Richeri Istituto di Media e Giornalismo Università della Svizzera Italiana 6904 Lugano Switzerland Email: [email protected] Matteo Serafini Dipartimento di Filosofia e Comunicazione CIS, Università di Bologna 40126 Bologna Italy Email: [email protected]

Cristiano Zanetti Medici Archive Project C/o Archivio di Stato di Firenze Viale Giovine Italia, 6 50122 Florence Italy Email: [email protected]