Pio Pion (4 July 1887 – 15 May 1965) was an Italian

entrepreneur Entrepreneurship is the creation or extraction of economic value in ways that generally entail beyond the minimal amount of risk (assumed by a traditional business), and potentially involving values besides simply economic ones. An entreprene ...

, known for founding the first Italian company producing movie projectors, the Fumagalli, Pion & C.

Early life

Pion vas born in

Varese Varese ( , ; or ; ; ; archaic ) is a city and ''comune'' in north-western Lombardy, northern Italy, north-west of Milan. The population of Varese in 2018 was 80,559. It is the capital of the Province of Varese. The hinterland or exurban part ...

in 1887 to his father Pierre, whose premature death forced the young Pio to move abroad in search for work. He returned to his native Italy in the first years of the 1900s, where he heard of the recent invention of the first

movie projector A movie projector (or film projector) is an optics, opto-mechanics, mechanical device for displaying Film, motion picture film by projecting it onto a movie screen, screen. Most of the optical and mechanical elements, except for the illuminat ...

and, consequently, of what is considered to be the first motion picture, thanks to the

Lumière brothers Lumière is French for 'light'. Lumiere, Lumière or Lumieres may refer to: Buildings * Lumière, a building used by the Bibliothèque publique d'information in Paris, France * Lumiere (skyscraper), a cancelled skyscraper development in Leeds, ...

. Fascinated by this new technology, Pion and his friend Fumagalli start importing early

Pathé Frères Pathé SAS (; styled as PATHÉ!) is a French major film production and distribution company, owning a number of cinema chains through its subsidiary Pathé Cinémas and television networks across Europe. It is the name of a network of Fren ...

equipment.

Professional career

A few years later, in 1908, Pion and Fumagalli decide to produce their own movie equipment, and they start the ''Fumagalli, Pion & C.'' company. The business went through highs and lows until the beginning of

World War I World War I or the First World War (28 July 1914 – 11 November 1918), also known as the Great War, was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War I, Allies (or Entente) and the Central Powers. Fighting to ...

, when both men are enrolled to the army and forced to momentarily abandon their work. After 1918, Pion resumes his old job on his own and renames his firm ''Officine Pio Pion''. With cinemas becoming more and more popular, Pion enjoyed the most successful period of his working life. The ''Officine'' relocate to a larger location in via Rovereto in

Milan Milan ( , , ; ) is a city in northern Italy, regional capital of Lombardy, the largest city in Italy by urban area and the List of cities in Italy, second-most-populous city proper in Italy after Rome. The city proper has a population of nea ...

. The

fascist Fascism ( ) is a far-right, authoritarian, and ultranationalist political ideology and movement. It is characterized by a dictatorial leader, centralized autocracy, militarism, forcible suppression of opposition, belief in a natural soci ...

regime looked favourably on Pion's company, especially after he invented the so-called ''camion sonoro'' (sound-lorry), a lorry mounted on a

Fiat 508 The Fiat 508 Balilla was a compact car designed and produced by Fiat from 1932 to 1937. It was, effectively, the replacement of the Fiat 509, although production of the earlier model had ceased back in 1929. It had a three-speed transmission (in ...

wheelbase carrying a screen and a movie projector, which, apart from playing films, could also bring propagandist speeches around the major squares.

World War II World War II or the Second World War (1 September 1939 – 2 September 1945) was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War II, Allies and the Axis powers. World War II by country, Nearly all of the wo ...

brought another halt to the company's production, as it was arranged for it to produce

Morse code Morse code is a telecommunications method which Character encoding, encodes Written language, text characters as standardized sequences of two different signal durations, called ''dots'' and ''dashes'', or ''dits'' and ''dahs''. Morse code i ...

-machinery. At the end of the conflict, Pion once again resumed his job and was joined by his two sons, Pierandrea and Riccardo. In the sixties Pion left the business to his sons and retired. He died in 1965, aged 78.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Pion, Pio 1887 births 1965 deaths People from Varese 20th-century Italian engineers 20th-century Italian inventors