Engineer Basilio Catania’s heirs have donated to the Marconi Foundation the important Catania Meucci archive. Such donation was publicized during a press conference held at the Rectorate of Bologna’s University on 7th November 2012.

The archive contains both the known and still unknown papers, that helped engineer Catania obtain by the US Supreme Court the complete rehabilitation of the Italian scholar, who was then declared to be “the inventor of the telephone”.

It was so fulfilled the goal of Marconi himself, who had been the first to raise the matter of the telephone invention at an international level, by supporting Meucci’s work. A section of the Marconi Museum at Villa Griffone is entirely dedicated to these events in order to keep their memory.

The large archive is now available to scholars at the Marconi Foundation. Bologna’s University is organizing a project aimed at studying and enhancing this important fund, which has already caused the interest of many foreign researchers.

Basilio Catania was also a very important researcher: he focused on optical communications and carried out thorough studies on the concept of information. As a tribute to his memory, Basilio Catania’s office has been entirely reproduced inside the Marconi Foundation’s separate branch at Mongardino.

Basilio Catania