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*CARLO MATTEINI* A misunderstood genius?..
Raise your hand if you don't have a smartphone these days. No one, or at least no one in the known modern world who has the intelligence to use one. Even children, of course. We see children, 8/9 years old, already with latest generation smartphones who fiddle around with the "touch" screen in search of who knows what...
But in 1967, when even the idea of a cell phone as we know it today was unthinkable, or at least science fiction, there was a man of high culture and intelligence who had foreseen everything. This man was Prof. Carlo Matteini. We have already covered a paragraph on our namesake, with the publication of the article on the interview he gave in June '67 of the last century. You can read the article here. But who was this man who knew how to look "beyond"?
Carlo Matteini was born in an unspecified year at the end of 1800. We probably find him enrolled as a naval officer already in the Great War of 1915/18, we will see later the reason for this certainty. Unfortunately, to date we do not know exactly when but we know that he graduated in electronic engineering in Rome, and in November 1934 he was reported, together with his colleague Prof. Ugo Ruelle, for an active collaboration in the drafting of an encyclopedic treatise of the Institute of the Italian Encyclopedia with none other than GUGLIELMO MARCONI on the topic of "Radio Broadcasting" and "Radio Communications" because, we quote, "distinguished naval officers as well as free university professors" (this is the reason we mention above).
Ugo Ruelle and Carlo Matteini were already members of the National Committee for radiotelegraphy and telecommunications of the CNR, chaired precisely by Guglielmo Marconi.
We have mentioned that in '34 of the last century Carlo Matteini was in fact a naval officer.
Between 1936 and 1939, or shortly before the outbreak of World War II, Carlo Matteini had the military complex of S. Rosa built, according to his own design, where the command in chief of the naval squadron is still based today, which constitutes the pinnacle of the operational organization of the Navy. He had it built to set up the imposing radio transmitting station.
In 1943 he was General of the Royal Naval Arms (Chief of Staff of the Navy). With the end of the war, at the beginning of the 1950s, he returned to his first love, radio telecommunications, where he was seen as a university professor of Radio Engineering.
In this regard, we received an anecdote about him via email from one of his former university students, Mr. Bruno, which we report in full as we received it:
"I read with great interest what you wrote about Prof. Carlo Matteini and I would like to add some information about him.
After the Second World War, he was given the task by the government to distribute the Alberty made available by the United States to Italian shipowners. He did so fairly, earning the respect and trust of the entire fleet.
In the first post-
The shipowners decided to found a private company with the same skills and gave Prof. Matteini the mandate to found it.
In 1947, Compagnia Generale Telemar was born and Matteini was its first managing director.
I met Matteini because for over 30 years I managed the Genoa office of the Company and I owe him my first pay raise. With the advent of the transistor he entrusted Autovox with the task of designing and building a radiotelephone. When the prototype was ready, he entrusted me with the task of presenting it to Mantovani, the one from Sampdoria, which I did. Because of the poor materials used by Autovox the device was not a success.
Another memory that testifies to the devotion that the shipowners had for him concerns Lollighetti. I had accompanied him to Lollighetti; the shipowner waited for him at the door, helped him take off and put on his coat. I remember that he spent his holidays on the island of Elba.
(..) Still on the subject of Carlo Matteini and his foresight.
He had been the chief designer of the Garigliano nuclear power plant and one day he took us to visit the construction work of which he was the director. In his office (a wooden shack with a precarious roof, in the center of the construction site) two of the walls had shelves that held many containers from a natural science museum: a lamb with two heads, lizards with extra tails or legs, and things like that. He told us that to be a good engineer you have to know how to protect yourself from possible future disputes. As soon as he had chosen the site and before starting the procedures for purchasing and expropriating the land, he had gone to visit all the farmers in the area, distributing a little money and promising a lot more to anyone who, having found a monstrous animal or plant, would deliver them without delay to a certain notary in the city who would take care of recording the delivery and making arrangements for its preservation. In fact, all the containers had the notarial seal and all the delivery reports were archived by date, all prior to the start of the work.
To our questions he explained that, as soon as the plant was put into operation, at the first monster found, a lot of incompetents would appear to babble that the shielding was not sufficient and that the radiation was spreading into the environment and similar nonsense; and that at that time the notary's reports and his mini museum would have been invaluable in demonstrating that the monsters were there years before the first radioactive charge arrived. (...) That's all. "
What can I say?! Carlo Matteini, a man who traveled through time with his mind!
..of Scandicci
In official documents Scandicci appears for the first time in a document of the end of the 9th century in which the Marquise Willa of Tuscany, mother of Ugo "the Great Baron" mentioned by Dante, donates to the Abbey of Florence the castle of Scandicci with the churches of Santa Maria a Greve and San Bartolo in Tuto, but traces of Hellenistic and even prehistoric settlements have been found, not counting those of the Roman era.
On May 23, 1774, with the Leopoldine reform, the community of Casellina e Torri (the old name of Scandicci) was established and a large number of small communities were united. The league of Casellina included, besides the parish church and the monastery of Settimo, as many as 15 peoples: People of Sant'Andrea a Mosciano, People of San Bartolo in Tuto, People of San Colombano a Settimo, People of San Giuliano a Settimo, People of Sant'Ilario a Settimo, People of San Lorenzo a Settimo, People of San Leonardo alla Querciola, People of Santa Maria a Romola, People of Santa Maria a Castagnolo, People of Santa Maria a Mantignano, People of San Martino alla Palma, People of San Piero a Sollicciano, People of San Romolo a Settimo, People of Santo Stefano a Ugnano and People of Santo Stefano a Gabbiola. The League of Torri was divided, instead, by 5 peoples: People of Santa Maria a Marciola, People of San martino a Torri, People of San Michele and San Lorenzo a Torri, People of San Niccolò a Torri and People of San Vincenzo a Torri. Some hamlets of Casellina and Torri, over time, were divided with other neighboring municipalities.
On March 15, 1860 the inhabitants of Casellina and Torri were called to express themselves with a plebiscite about the accession or not to the Kingdom of Sardinia: the inhabitants were 9,579; out of 1,857 having the right to vote, 1,587 expressed themselves for the annexation and 194 for the separate kingdom. 76 ballots were declared null and void.
A plaque, placed in the old town hall, in Piazza Matteotti, built one year after the plebiscite by Francesco Mattei, commemorates this event. For several years festivities for National Unity (including the feast of the Statute) were planned. One of the most famous celebrations was celebrated on Sunday 2 June 1861 in Pieve a Settimo (resolution of 14 May of the same year).
... by TEODORO MATTEINI ( painter )
was born in Pistoia on 10 May 1754 from Ippolito and Anna Marraccini.
He died in Venice on November 16, 1831.
He was an Italian painter, mainly of historical and religious subjects in neoclassical style. He also made numerous portraits.
His father, Ippolito Matteini, born in 1720, was a decorative painter, who therefore introduced him to art. Later Teodoro Matteini moved to Rome to work as an assistant to Domenico Corvi, after which he began to collaborate with Anton Raphael Mengs. He then set up his own business and worked in the Roman basilica of San Lorenzo in Lucina.
He was active in Rome, Bergamo, Milan and Venice; in the latter city he taught painting at the Academy of Fine Arts, where he restored a vast collection of stucco and terracotta models collected by Abbot Filippo Farsetti.
He had numerous students, including Giovanni Andrea Darif, Bartolomeo Ferracina, Odorico Politi, Giovanni Busato, Sebastiano Santi, Francesco Hayez, Ludovico Lipparini.
...of San Marino
..is a small Republic of just 61 km², within the Italian territory, with 1700 years of history and independence. A small State, perched on a mountain, Mount Titano, which during the 19th and 20th centuries was involved in the great phenomenon of European and extra-
Emigrating for the San Marino people, in the past centuries, was a way of life and survival, almost a custom handed down from father to son for generations and before taking on the character of mass exodus, such as to upset ancient balances, emigration was used as a resource. The emigrants, regulating their own flow according to the seasonal trend of agricultural work, moved along well known itineraries that other San Marino people had already traced and according to precise calculations of convenience. It was, however, the contemporary age, and more precisely the period between the last decades of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, that reached the peak of a phenomenon that for more than a century led more than half of the population to live outside San Marino.
At the end of the 19th century emigration from San Marino was mainly directed towards the United States, Argentina and Brazil. It was a considerable phenomenon, because for the first time not only single workers left, but entire families, and this shows that the balance guaranteed by traditional commuting had by now been broken.
During the First World War, the First World War, which left serious traces in all European states, both for the appalling loss of life and large quantities of material goods, and for the enormous difficulties and problems that ensued, the migration process came to a halt and the massive forced repatriation of a large part of the San Marino emigrants began.
The end of the Second World War, in 1945, also marked the resumption of emigration. The main destinations were still the United States, France, Switzerland and Belgium. In the latter three European states, labour was mainly required in the mines and construction sites under construction, which were now the only ones offering work opportunities.
Often they were single men, adolescents or adults, other times they were parents who left their young children to their grandparents, other times they were young girls or entire families. They would leave, come back and then leave again. They would come and go to face the urgencies of life, to build a house, to buy a farm, to open a first independent business, to get married.
A detailed analysis of turnover and migration balance has not yet been carried out, but departures and returns have been a constant feature in the emigration of San Marino people and this characteristic emerged in particular in the first collection of oral testimonies started, in 1995, in view of the birth of the Emigrant Museum-