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FROM THE PC TO THE WEB: BYTES OF ITALIAN GENIUS

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ITALIANS: pioneers of the digital information era While information technology was rapidly reaching every level of society and during the exponential growth of the Internet, Italy – with the exception of a few brief exploits – remained largely on the sidelines, dwarfed by the sheer weight of giants such as the United States, Japan and China. But many of the revolutionary ideas which ushered in the Digital Era were in fact born in Italy: it was in Italy that the world's very first Personal Computer was created – Olivetti's P101, which was presented in prototype form at the 1965 New York World's Fair, anticipating the success of global players such as IBM, HP, Apple and Microsoft.

This momentous event, which had its roots in historically creative Pisa, gave renewed vigour to Italy's researchers and entrepreneurs, who became an integral part of the global process of digitalization with their ideas and inventions, from the first commercial microchip designed by Vicenza–born Federico Faggin, to the MP3 devel-oped by Leonardo Chiariglione of Turin, the Hyper Search created in Padua by Massimo Marchiori and the Arduino platform for 'mak-ers', which was the brainchild of Massimo Branzi from Monza. It is to these pioneers of innovation, who remain largely unsung but whose creative ideas have become an integral part of our daily lives, that BROVEDANI dedicates its 2017 Calendar, placing the fruits of their ingenuity against a backdrop of the cultural and artistic heritage of their Italy: it is a tangible sign that Italian genius is not simply a relic of the past, but a seed that lives on, and which can bear fruit if we real-ize its immense value and are willing to nurture it as a part of the vast cultural wealth of our country.

The survival and the future growth of an industrial company depend not only on its level of specialization, but also on the ability to adapt its manufacturing approach to sideways shifts and more general changes in the scenario, by introducing new disciplines and new organizational structures and adapting readily to changes in the dynamics of the market. This approach has enabled BROVEDANI to grow and to overcome periods of difficulty by thinking beyond pure mechanics. In a continuing process of renewal that began back in the 1980s, data processing and digital technologies have contributed to far–reaching changes in the approach adopted by companies in responding to the challenges posed by industrializa-tion, control systems, quality engineering, process–based organi-zation and the creation of an international network of corporations which share information in real time. In tomorrow's world, to shape metals with tolerances of tenths of a micron will be to enter the era of Industry 4.0: it will bring about the dematerialization of knowledge, the instantaneous flow of informa-tion and data, artificial intelligence and new interactions between man and machine.

BROVEDANI: bytes that changed the world

of mechanical engineering

33078 San Vito al Tagliamento (PN) Italy - Z.I. Ponte Rosso - Via Venzone, 9 • Ph. 0434.849511 • Fax 0434.849564 • www.brovedanigroup.com

Circuit diagram of the Intel 4004 microprocessor, perhaps Italy's most important contribution to research in the field of 20th century digital technology. The initials "FF" in the top right–hand corner are those of the inventor, Federico Faggin.

A symbolic image of the new era of Industry 4.0 era which, for the

Brovedani Group, is already a work in progress. How will the relationship between man and machine evolve?

Concept, copywriting, graphic design: www.primalinea.net - Pordenone Printed by Arti Grafiche Favia - Modugno (BA)

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OLIVETTI ELEA: when Cupertino was in Tuscany In the period prior to the production of the P 101, Adriano Olivetti (1901 – 1960) appointed Mario Tchou (1924 – 1961), an Italian engineer of Chinese descent, to lead a working group in Barbaricina (Pisa) which, working jointly with the University di Pisa, led to the development of the Olivetti Elea, the most powerful transistorized super–computer of the era, an extraordinary endeavour in which many young researchers were involved. "Because only young people can bring about innovation. Only young people throw them-selves into a task with such enthusiasm, working together as a team without any personality issues and free of the obstacles of an unimaginative mind", says Mario Tchou. The Olivetti model became the keystone of this new corporate culture "based on the empowerment and appreciation of the employees, the absence of hierarchies and the defence of creativity. All concepts that are common today in Silicon Valley and among makers, but which Olivetti had adopted more than half a century previously", underlines David Bevilacqua, former Vice President South Europe for Cisco Systems

The creativity of Brovedani for IBM's mainframes

In the early 1980s, the growth of the world of computers – prior to the large–scale introduction of the PC – opened up a new market for Brovedani's products: an "Ocean of Blue"

in which the company seized a series of unrepeatable opportunities working with IBM, a true "training ship" for companies operating in the Friuli region. The production of hard disk drives for IBM required Brovedani to implement cutting-edge technologies and at the same time to meet the exacting quality requirements of the future, even before the introduction of the ISO standards, which only years later would become the norm for the manufacturing industry.

The Elea supercomputer. In the background, the Tower of Pisa (late 12th century) from which, according to legend, Galileo Galilei conducted his experiments on falling bodies. 02

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OLIVETTI P101:called a “Personal Computer”, but created in Pisa Created in Pisa by one of Olivetti's avant-garde start-ups, a group of "crazy young guys" led by Pier Giorgio Perotto from Turin, the P101 (Programma 101) was a "standalone" machine which could be programmed and store data and commands on magnetic cards. The simple operating system comprised only 16 instructions, and the unit featured a keyboard and was connected to a printer and a video system. Perotto described the P101 as a "friendly machine to which you could delegate those functions which are tiring and lead to errors". The user friendly machine was enclosed in a stylish Italian body designed by Mario Bellini, in his interpretation of the mantra for which Adriano Olivetti is famous: "design is the very soul of a product". At the 1965 New York World's Fair, the P101 was justly defined by the New York Journal-American as “the first desk top computer of the world”. Two years later, its main components were copied by Hewlett Packard for its HP 9100 - truly a resounding accolade!

A new intelligence for new processes

Perhaps the majestic beauty of Pisa's Cathedral (11th – 12th century) was

the inspiration for Olivetti's P101?

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RILBrovedani, too, benefited from the advent first of elec-tronics, and later of computer technology, to enhance its mechanical skills and to revolutionize the "factory" system

by integrating new production processes that were increasingly industrialized and increasingly complex.From machines with cams and mechanical gauges to numerical control machines, to electronic gauges, and then to process au-tomation: it was not a simple task, constantly striving towards the "technical state of the art" and in many cases anticipating it in order to meet the needs of new markets and new challenges.

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INTEL 4004 MICROPROCESSOR: what if Silicon Valley started in Vicenza? The vast experience acquired over the years by Olivetti had a far-reaching effect, moulding the working ap-proach and stimulating the curiosity of the many young researchers who trained there, including physicist Federico Faggin from Vicenza, who is recognized as one of the greatest inventors of the 20th century. It was Federico Faggin who, when working at Fairchild Semiconductor in Palo Alto, developed Silicon Gate Tec-nology (SGT), which made it possible to concentrate the CPU (Central Processing Unit) into a single chip, which increased the efficiency of the computers while reducing their production costs – a decisive factor for the spread of information technology. In 1971 Intel – the first company to perceive and exploit the enormous potential of this development – launched its Intel 4004, the first microprocessor, referred to as the "comput-er on a chip", which in just 12 square millimetres provided more computing power than ENIAC, the world's first-ever computer, built in 1946, which was about the size of a large apartment. It was the start of a new era.

Thinking Lean: the company microchip

The Intel 4004, microprocessor. In the background, the statue

of Andrea Palladio and the Basilica Palladiana (16th century) in Vicenza.

A synapsis of genius?

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NELean Manufacturing, of which Brovedani was one of Italy's pio-neers, is a set of manufacturing practices aimed at optimizing resources and reducing waste.

In the application of Lean, in the rigorous methodological approach to problem-solving and the displaying of data, information technology is the true motor of all management systems. And information technology is of fundamental importance in accelerating the organizational training required for the application of the techniques. IT is the tool specifically designed to collect, distribute and share information among the team.

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MP3: the atmosphere of Turin made listening to music simpler The main challenge of the Digital Era was to simplify the immaterial and to compress information. In 1998 Leonardo Chiariglione, an engineer born in Turin who studied at the capital’s Polytechnic University and later in Telecom’s research laboratories, founded MPEG (Moving Pictures Expert Groups), an international research team set up to find ways to increase the speed of data transmission and the networking of multi-media data. From its initial focus on video content, the team’s work subsequently led to the creation of the MP3 audio format in 1992. This format was based on an audio compression algorithm which eliminated information that was redundant and imperceptible to the human ear while at the same time preserving the sound quality of a CD-ROM and with bit rates that were 10 – 12 times lower (192 kbytes/second).Being compatible with all international standards and further improved over time, the MP3 format has revolutionized the way in which we listen to music, obviously have a huge effect on the market thanks to innovative applications such as Apple’s iTunes.

A digital look at Zero Defects07

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Not just listening, we can look in a new way, too. The digi-tal revolution has transformed quality control systems, to the point that the “Zero Defects” asymptote is now fea-

sible. Using the new technologies for processing digital images, and drawing on its experience in the automation of production processes, Brovedani is able to achieve superior product quality from the very start. By designing and creating totally innovative production and control units, it is possible to detect dimensional or surface defects which would not be identified by traditional control procedures or by the fallible eye of a human operator.

The “lightness” of an MP3 player placed in comparison with the “weight” of a radio/tape recorder. In the background: the imposing Mole Antonelliana (19th century) in Turin.

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HYPER SEARCH: the ‘Made in Padua’ algorithm that inspired Google’s PageRank Every day we turn to Google to search for information. Enormous resources are invested in order to position web pages at or near the top of the lists provided by the search engines when a key word or phrase is entered. The first and best-known ingredient of Google’s positioning algorithms is PageRank, a numerical value that is attributed to each web page on the basis of its links to other pages of greater or lesser importance within the structure of the web. This insight, which was developed and ‘industrialized’ by Google’s founders, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, was based in part on HyperSearch, an algorithm presented in California in 1997 by Massimo Marchiori, a twenty-seven year-old mathematician from Padua. His algorithm associates the ‘weight’ of a web page with its hypertext links to pages whose content is considered as interesting. In 2004, Massimo Marchiori was named by Tecnology Review as one of the 100 best researchers world-wide for his work in the field of “hyperinfo”.

The connected company: the world in real time

"Larry Page and Sergey Brin have had the immense persistence to transform an idea into an industrial project,

changing everyone's lives." Massimo Marchiori

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RInternet, intranet, cloud computing: the arrival of the world-wide web was a decisive factor in the growth of the Brovedani Group beyond the boundaries set by borders, so that today information is instantly accessible and shared

between all the multinational Group's divisions in Italy, Slovakia and Mexico.The Group's ERP software comprises a single system for the collection and real time display of production efficiency levels, which effectively extends the operational boundaries of the Group's operations in virtual mode, creating a seamless operational entity that enables every member of the team to feel closely and personally involved even when they are thousands of miles apart.

Prato della Valle in Padova, one of the largest squares in Europe, seen as a metaphor for the vast spaces of the world-wide web. In

the search... the Hyper Search algorithm.

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ARDUINO: the pragmatism of the lombards for the future of the home In parallel with this era of extreme industrialization, where manufacturing processes are increasingly required to guarantee large-volume production at ever-lower costs and with relatively long life cycles, new digital re-sources such as 3D printing are giving rise to a new generation of "makers", hi-tech D.I.Y. experts who are able, using minimal resources, to bring to fruition a variety of projects, from hobby items to prototypes and even personalised production runs.It was these "makers" who were responsible for the invention of "Arduino", the "blue card" developed in 2005 at the Interaction Design Institute in Ivrea by a working group led by Massimo Banzi of Monza. Ardui-no is a user-friendly open-source platform that interacts with the environment using sensors and actuators. From science to toys, Arduino gives form to the imagination, "for ever changing the meaning of 'factory', which can now begin to abandon the physical plant for the web", writes Riccardo Luna.

Brovedani 4.0: the challenge goes on 11

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ERAs one of the pioneers of Lean Manufacturing, Brovedani is also a front-runner in a new challenge that is destined to change the world's manufacturing processes. In this area, the Group is called

upon to find innovative solutions to a number of specific problems. How to trace the path taken by each of the 160 million components manufactured by the Group? How to monitor the "past performance" of the production pro-cesses? How to share all the acquired information and knowledge in real time with each and every work area? How to make the fullest use of this immense network of data in decision-making, from the machine operator on the factory floor to the top management team? The answer is called Industry 4.0.

Brovedani 4.0

The ingenious Arduino "blue card", framed by the Royal Villa of Monza, a Neoclassical masterpiece built by Giuseppe Piermarini.