Yeah, I worked in the typewriter factory. I think I was there for a month before I was allowed to go to lunch by myself because otherwise I'd get lost in its labyrinthine corridors.
If you visit Italy and are interested in this kind of architecture you should also visit Crespi d'Adda [1] a couple of hours of car to the East of Ivrea, past Milan. That's another UNESCO site and was created for the workers of the local textile factory. When you're there you should also hike the Adda river to the north, some hydroelectric power stations from 100+ years ago, nice sightseeing and some Leonardo da Vinci's works of engineering.
After misreading a section which talked of Italian rationalism and not nationalism, I went searching. An industrialist in Italy in the 1930’s would surely have had an interesting relationship with the government, especially given his seemingly socialist politics.
its sad my biological grandfather got a bit lost in buying underwood seemingly out of mortification. He also spent a lot of effort in a not very successful political career in as you say, a very interesting environment. Imagine where Ivrea would be today if that effort went into SGS (and his personal Health i guess).
Europe has paid a high price for neglecting its manufacturing base. Asking it to do the impossible, producing at chinese prices under heavy regulation and high salaries.
The big difference is that Europe is a collection of independent national governments, many of which were/are keen to independently support their own distinct domestic tech industries. The EU doesn't run the sort of big projects that dole out large amounts of govt money to tech, particularly in defence, which is notoriously partisan. France, Germany, Italy and the UK are all separately in the world top-ten defence exporters chart.
if they applied same regulations to imports they'd be smart, instead they hobbled themselves, made a lot of grand gestures, but made no contribution to sustainability as they just outsourced the dirty work to former colonies.
can't help but think the remaining days of google arts and culture aren't many. if they killed code jam and gutted the open source team to save a few bucks i can't imagine ruth will let this continue.
The Arduino is from Ivrea, it rose from the ruins of Olivetti, so to speak.