story

There are great men, who lived in times past, who are not celebrated in history books. There are men who changed the fate of humanity but forgotten, hidden.

It also happens that men, undoubtedly brilliant, find space in books and treatises ... but who, on closer inspection, have no right or merit. Men hailed and rewarded for inventions and discoveries that, after decades, are admitted not to be the fruit of their own work but copies or, sometimes, insights that occurred temporally after another man's. 

Yet, the sweet glossy paper does not correct itself ... what was mistakenly written 100 years ago, though objectively wrong, continues to be propagated as 'the truth' . By "objectively" , I mean that after commissions of analysis, complaints, trials, etc., the facts were established ... and often history would have to be rewritten ... but precisely ... 'would have to be'! 

The search for the reasons for such behavior is an interesting topic ... but one that I prefer to leave out; certainly, as it still is today, meritocracy is utopia and one must subject oneself to purely economic and political decisions. What I am saying is very sad, but as it stands today, it is the reality of the facts.

Why is there no mention of Tesla in any history book? Mankind has made an impressive evolutionary leap with his discoveries and insights ... alternating electricity alone would be worth the talk, but we can add electric motors, wireless communication .... and yet, inconvenient character is ignored. Marconi? is he really the one who discovered radio transmission? Because if you ask who was the inventor of the light bulb, the most common answer is Edison? If we want to talk about the patent related to the light bulb attachment bhe, ok ... the Edison screw attachment is the one we still use today along with Tesla's bayonet model, but related to the light bulb Edison only( like many others) experimented with materials and filaments to try to increase the average life of a light bulb which, in the beginning was a few minutes ... then hours ... then days etc. Why do we Italians not know ( and many will hear him mentioned here for the first time ) who Alessandro Cruto is? Piemontese, from Piossasco ... ... in 1979 he was the one who experimented with a filament that reached 500 hours ... as opposed to the 30 that Edison arrived at ... and incidentally ... in the following year Tesla produced a lamp very similar to today's neon ... so? What does it say in all these history books? Interpretations, points of view, keys to interpretation that lead the reader to 'assume' certain things ( light bulb = Edison, radio = Marconi) that in fact are not objective!

In this section then, I want to collect short monographs of characters and stories from the past that have intrigued me ... that have challenged thoughts and assumptions ingrained in my mind and that I happen to question today.