Ercole Marelli

Ercole Marelli (Milan, 19 May 1867 – Tremezzina, 28 August 1922) was an Italian engineer and entrepreneur. Marelli was born in Milan on May 19, 1867, the son of a craftsman from the Como area. At fifteen he began working as an apprentice at a mechanical workshop. In 1885 he was presented to Bartolomeo Cabella, director of the Italian Brown Boveri Tecnomasio and hired as a mechanic for measuring instruments and for electrical work applied to lighting. In October 1888 he went to Asunción in Paraguay, just twenty years old, where he assembled and operated an electrical system for the Concha Sociedad plant. In 1891, when he returned to Italy, he founded a modest workshop of electrical appliances in the centre of Milan, assisted by a worker; they manufactured apparatus of physics and geodesy, electric machines for school toilets, batteries, accumulators and electro-medical devices. From 1898 it also began to trade AC motors. On 28 February 1900 it became a limited partnership. In December 1905 it opened a plant in Sesto San Giovanni, producing small electric motors, centrifugal pumps and transformers. In 1915, the "Società Anonima Ercole Marelli" started the first Italian experiments in the field of magnetos for petrol engines.