Saturday November 20 Eraldo Tieghi, my father and founder of ServiTecno, would have turned 100.
In fact, he was born in November of the 1920. He was a "sui generis entrepreneur": he started thinking about and developing "innovative" companies from an early age, but also in maturity and even later in life he allowed many of his collaborators to "set up on their own", indicating with the example the way to follow, dispensing valuable suggestions and "advice on request" and allowing them to gain experience in "his school".
I too learned at "his school": knowing him, as a "master's son" I never expected "an extra hand", he treated me, in the Company, like one of his (many) collaborators who then started their business. In the mid-80s, I decided to take over the shares of ServiTecno from him (paying them in installments), where years earlier, I had entered during the last year of university and where I had my first experiences as an apprentice, of "real work ”.
And this was his "creed", which I keep as a precious teaching: if you receive a free company "as a gift", then you don't give it the value and attention it deserves.
Eraldo Tieghi, together with his brother Vittorio, Has founded ServiTecno in 1979. Just in these days, last year (2019, it seems like a long time ago!) we celebrated with all our collaborators the first 40 years of activity: for a company that sells “advanced technology products for industry” this is certainly a great achievement!
To better describe Dr. Eraldo Tieghi / Entrepreneur (in the Company everyone called him "the DET"), I prefer to leave room for what is contained in a chapter of the book "Men and Tools – 50 years of instrumentation in Italy" written by G. Mezzalira a few years ago, on behalf of the SHUT IT OFF.
I just took the liberty of integrating the text, with some of my notes and small corrections, which I hope will give the story a little more flavor.
The history of the Tieghi "entrepreneurs" is intertwined with post-war Italy
One cannot speak of Eraldo Tieghi without speaking of his brother Vittorio and above all without mentioning his other brother, Giulio.
The instrumental history of the three brothers, together with that of post-war Italy, in fact, unfolds together.
It starts from 1940, with the presence of the two older Tieghi brothers (Eraldo and Giulio) in the study and production of measurement and regulation instruments, with particular regard to thermoregulation.
While Eraldo is studying Physics at the University, the eighteen-year-old Giulio Tieghi is an apprentice at the company ing. Cesare Pavone & C. in Milan, in its technical-scientific laboratories in Via San Giovanni alla Paglia 7. Through its American representation, the Pavone company brings the prestigious recorders to Italy Speedomax, a true school for many Italian instrumentalists and builders. The apprentice Giulio Tieghi immediately demonstrates his talent, which was recognized in him by a rapid succession of increases in hourly wages, which went from 1,80 to 2,10 and then to 3,40 lire/hour and by the transition to the white-collar category with the monthly payment of 965,90 lire/month.
The vicissitudes of war mess up men and their relationships
The Tieghi brothers, led by Eraldo and Giulio, had found their calling: they could not remain stuck in a repair shop and work as employees. They had to implement their own ideas and fully demonstrate their construction skills.
So at end of 1943, still in War period, in hiding and with some "Ausweis" (pass) stolen from German commands, was born in the Pre-Alps, in Carenno, above Lake Lecco, the FAS – Scientific Apparatus Factory of the Tieghi Brothers. Here the first portable potentiometers and spare parts for the Speedomaxsynchronous motors. FAS production is almost totally absorbed by the Pavone company.
Having gone down to the valley, in the city, at the end of the war and in 1945, the brothers Eraldo and Giulio Tieghi equipped the basement of the house in Via Colletta in Milan, in the Porta Romana area, as a workshop-laboratory. The work of recovering, repairing and re-calibrating the Speedomax is no longer enough. You have to build your own clientele with your own products.
In the meantime, the Tieghis, in addition to their work, began to start a family: Eraldo got married and graduated from the State University of Milan, and a few years later their first child arrived (in the end there will be five!).
In those first post-war years, the first galvanometric diffuse regulator was born, which evolved over time with the technologies available at the time and with the Tieghi patents. Over 20.000 units of the diffuse regulator are produced during its life cycle.
The main manufacturers of industrial electric furnaces, used in the metal, glass, cement, rubber, heat treatment industries, etc. they become customers of the FAS which also undertakes on-site maintenance contracts.
The first post-war Milan Trade Fair in 1947 hosted a FAS stand close to those of other leading historic manufacturers such as SAE, Spriano, Gavazzi.
It was rebirth and at the same time proof that there was a will for recovery. In 1954, an important step, the first electronic potentiometric recorder of the FAS was produced, also described in manuals and technical books of the time. (FAS instruments of those years are still on display in the "GISI section room", at the MuST, Museum of Science and Technology in Milan.)
In the mid-50s, in full economic recovery, FAS, represented by Eraldo Tieghi, participated in the establishment of the "COMIRE - Manufacturers of measuring and regulating instruments and appliances" within the SOUL (ANIMA Confindustria Meccanica varies) and in the October 1956, participates in the first Exhibition-Conference of Instrumentation, the future BIAS, which for years to come will be, in Italy in Milan, one of the major international exhibitions. FAS is present with a stand, where the entire range of industrial instrumentation is successfully presented, and Giulio Tieghi presents his own report entitled "The measurement of direct current voltages with potentiometric devices with electronic amplification” published in N°6 (November-December) 1956 of the first Italian magazine of instrumentation, which at the time was still called “Measures and Regulations”, which later became “Automazione e Strumentazione”.
But now the memory overpowers the memory of the evening of December 22, 1956
A state of anguish had rapidly spread to Milan: one of the numerous flights departing from Rome to Milan airport, with a load of men from the North, engaged in the capital and in central Italy, had not arrived. The passing of the hours, the thick fog of that afternoon, the advance of the night weakened and then annulled the hopes of those who were waiting for relatives, friends and colleagues to spend the holidays and Christmas holidays together. The Linate control tower had lost contact with the aircraft. Where was that plane with its load of 126 people, expected in Milan? Only the next day was the tragic truth known: yes crashed at an altitude of 2600 meters against Monte Giner, a peak in Trentino, near Madonna di Campiglio. No one was saved, among the missing Giulio Tieghi, who was returning from testing an automatic control system built in Rome at the Army Transmission Center. Giulio Tieghi left behind two children and his beloved wife.
And it is here that the younger brother, Vittorio, comes into play and begins to make his decisive contribution.
The following year, 1957, the premiere took place in Düsseldorf, Germany Interkama, and this too will become an important fair, an international appointment. The FAS takes part in it, thus becoming part of an international flow: on the basis of the Tieghi patent of the Pilotron CORECI was born in France, in Lyon, which will become one of the leading companies in France in the thermoregulation sector.
At the second edition of Interkama, the manufacturers present themselves collectively under the aegis of COMIRE: Eraldo Tieghi took care of the logistics with the help of ICE, building the famous "bridge over the Rhine" from which a favorable cycle of expansion of the sector begins national production of Italian instrumentation with an outlet towards European and international markets.
In the meantime, other process and laboratory instruments are designed and built: with Vittorio's intervention, the electronic part is transistorised, but still based on linear circuits and components. In the following years, with the advent of integrated circuits and digital electronics, the turning point took place which had a heavy influence also in the FAS house, which began to suffer competition from low-priced oriental producers.
Between the mid and late '70s, FAS then decided to interrupt the production of instruments with its own brands and concentrate on the distribution of sophisticated sensors and high-level instrumentation, coming from US manufacturers and from other European countries, with which Eraldo and Vittorio Tieghi, have over time established close commercial and technical collaboration relationships.
After FAS Automazione and Strument, Fasinternational, TermoFas and ServiTecno arrive
In 1977, as already mentioned, for the need to diversify between the production and the commercial import part, two new companies were born in place of the old "FAS Automation and Tools", FASintemational entrusted to Eraldo Tieghi and TermoFAS entrusted to Vittorio Tieghi , complementary companies and in close cooperation.
Shortly after, ServiTecno was created to provide technical services to the two "sister companies" and then, in the following years, also to the market: the company, founded in 1979, will then develop by offering prestigious software solutions for the automation market factory and process control.
In the following years, one takes over the management of the companies new generation of "Tieghi", Gianluigi and Enzo Maria, 2 of the 5 Eraldo children. Gianluigi Tieghi, first involved as director in the management of TermoFAS (later sold by Eraldo and Vittorio to the Italian branch of a German instrumentation multinational), decides in the mid-80s to take over all the shares of FASInternational, which between 1990 and 2015 develops to become one of the main distributors in Italy of sensors and international instrumentation. Having become FASInt, it will be sold to an Italian consultancy group in the Life Science field, and Gianluigi retires.
Enzo Maria Tieghi, who joined ServiTecno already during his university studies, once he graduated, he began consulting and selling IT products, a sector in its infancy at the time. In 1985, Enzo Maria, believing in the entrepreneurial adventure, decided to invest and took over the shares of ServiTecno: he began to expand the business by proposing, among the first in Italy, SCADA software.
FAS, the Tieghi family and Milan
And now, in the appendix, we tell two stories of Milan, from the period of the mayors Bucalossi and Aniasi, and of Cardinal Montini, Archbishop of Milan, who later became Pope Paul VI.
As in many Italian cities, both civil and religious events and monuments coexist and intertwine in Milan. In the Milan of the economic boom the Madonna of the Cathedral , Torre del Parco, near the Castello Sforzesco, almost as symbols of the two souls that fervent in the Lombard metropolis. In both, the FAS company then installed measuring and detection instruments.
In the first half of the 60s Milan had two big problems and opportunities: the construction of the first subway line and the fight against smog.
Line 1 of the MM passed alongside the Duomo and the experts asked themselves a few questions:
- Would the tunnels and huge excavation have caused the Duomo to lean?
- Would the passage of the convoys have caused harmful vibrations?
Hence the installation of FAS sensors on the top of the highest spire, at the foot of the Madonnina, connected to instruments for measuring vibrations and displacements, placed in the offices of the Fabbrica del Duomo, behind it. Result: the subway, with the excavation first and then the underground traffic, gave no cause for concern for the integrity of the monument.
Analyzing the measurements and the data, however, it was discovered that the wind, the seasons and the sun cause displacements of the spire that reach ten millimeters when there are exceptional storms or… earthquakes: it was this seismograph, a point of reference in Lombardy , for several years! The entire sensor-instrument chain was then destroyed by lightning, which fell during a storm, after the radioactive type lightning rod (and considered dangerous for radiation) had been replaced. New optoelectronic techniques then made it possible to put the system back into operation.
Meanwhile, we are in the 60s, Milan was covered by a pall of fog and smog 50 meters high and over 50 kilometers wide. L'pollution it had to be contained. However, how to measure it, quantify it? How to relate it to meteorological facts, and in particular to the many temperature inversions?
The Tower in the Park (from Wikipedia), the Torre Branca, originally Torre Littoria, is a steel construction built in 1933 to a design by the architect Giò Ponti and located inside the Sempione Park in
Milan. With its 108,60 meters in height, it is today the tenth tallest accessible structure in the city after the Unicredit Tower (231 m), the Isozaki Tower (207 m), the Lombardia Palace (161 m), the Solaria Tower (143 m ), the Diamante Tower (140 m), the Pirelli Skyscraper (127 m), the Breda Tower (117 m), the Vertical Forest (111 m) and the Galfa Tower (109 m).
In 1960 the Torre del Parco, 100 meters high, was the second highest point in Milan after the Madonnina, and then became the observatory for monitoring and measuring temperature, humidity and fumes "at altitude": here FAS sensors were installed at the top, and under the tower the recorders that for years have functioned under the control of theBrera Weather Observatory.
The Milanese administration had the data to issue ordinances to limit heating fuels and boilers. Things improve over time, but the Tower, due to poor maintenance, deteriorates and falls into disuse. Today the anti-pollution network is wider, there are other high points that did not exist before, but the Tower has also taken on its former appearance and, probably, even the instrumentation has been updated, more sophisticated and "connected" , recalling the first experiences with FAS tools.
Eraldo Tieghi, man of Associations
In addition to being an entrepreneur, Eraldo Tieghi was a man of association.
In addition to participating in Lombard and national business associations, he was one of the founders of GISI (Industrial Instrumentation Business Group) strongly desired by him and created in 1974 together with other "visionary" entrepreneurs/instrumentalists of the time, later also becoming President.
Eraldo Tieghi was also the starting point of AIS (Italian Association of Instrumentalists) and of ISA Italy Section, the Italian affiliate of ISA - The International Society of Automation, the largest global association for instrumentation and automation professionals, which today has over 30.000 members.
In 1990 he received the prestigious award ISA Life Achievement Award, first non-American and third in the history of ISA, after names of the caliber of AOBeckman and HCFrost, pioneers of world instrumentation. After him, only a few others receive this award, including Dick Morley (inventor of PLCs). In October 1995, (photo on the side) in his last appearance on a stage in the USA, he received the ISA Fellow plaque from the president of ISA, once again, first Italian to have this honour.
One night in the autumn of 1997, a few days before his birthday, Eraldo Tieghi, who at that time was still Chairman of the Board of Directors of ServiTecno, passed away due to a sudden illness.
The rest is modern history