Best Pamono Fan from Marelli, 1950s

The company was founded in 1891 in Milan as a sole proprietorship on the initiative of Ercole Marelli, a young worker at the Italian Tecnomasio in Milan. Initially, the company produced electromechanical devices; in 1896 it began manufacturing “air agitators” (fans), until then imported from the United States, and in a few years became one of the leading companies in the industry worldwide. Transformed on February 28, 1900 into a limited partnership, in December 1905 it inaugurated a large factory in Sesto San Giovanni, which was served by the Milan-Monza tramway and employed specialized Milanese labor and local general laborers. In 1919, due to the growing need for ignition magnets for the automotive and aviation markets, Magneti Marelli was established with a share capital of 7 million liras, subscribed in equal parts by Fiat and “Società Anonima Ercole Marelli”.[2] On October 10, 1920 the company changed its name to Società anonima per azioni. In 1921 the second factory was built in Sesto San Giovanni, “Grandi Costruzioni”, where workers and technicians of great professionalism built transformers, generators, electromotive, turbo alternators and large pumps for hydro and thermoelectric power plants around the world. In the Thirties, the production of large machinery such as alternators and transformers, control systems for rolling mills for the world’s major steel producers, propulsion machinery for ships and equipment for trains, electric pumps for aqueducts and land reclamation works was greatly expanded. The company had its greatest development after World War II. In the sixties it exported high-powered locomotives for the Chilean railways and diesel-electric engines for the Argentinean railways and in 1963 the Ercole Marelli group had 7100 employees. Its products, technologically advanced for the time, are present in many achievements for mass transport, such as traction drives for the Milan Metro; later, it was the first Italian company to propose power drives for chopper locomotives. Starting from 1968, in order to face the lowering of prices in the electromechanical sector, the company began a radical restructuring phase and was reorganized into four divisions: Energy, Industrial traction and marine plants and systems, Serial products, Aerotechnics.