Ercole Marelli

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,^{[clarification needed]} 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. In 1916, Ercole Marelli registered the first patent related to magnetos, perfecting the innovation in 1917, and then again with a "complete" patent towards the end of 1918.

In 1919 by Ercole Marelli he broke off a production department of automobile magnetos, which later became in turn the company Magneti Marelli.^[1] The joint venture established equal shares of capital, giving the presidency and the technical management, as well as the commercial one to Marelli. The ownership was then entrusted to the husband of his daughter, Bruno Antonio Quintavalle, who remained until 1967. In that year the entire stock package passed to Fiat and his brother Umberto Quintavalle.