Field Telephone Equipment S.I.T.I. model 1916 Royal Italian Army

Field Telephone Equipment mod. 1916, produced by S.I.T.I. (Società Industrie Telefoniche Italiane) for the Royal Italian Army which had it in use until the end of the First World War.

This model, defined for "long distance telephony", was produced only in 1916 as S.I.T.I., in the following year, making some small modifications, created the model called 1917 which continued to be used even after the end of the First World War .

This telephone system installed a handset of French production and only in the next model, the S.I.T.I., did it begin to produce a handset with its own brand. All 1916 models of S.I.T.I. in fact, they are equipped with a handset marked as follows: "C.gnie F se THOMSON-HOUSTON B te S.G.D.G.", the same one installed on French military telephones during the first war. In fact, many of the supplies supplied to our Royal Army, in the first two years of the war, came from French production (see for example the Adrian helmets mod. 1915).

On the internal cover there is still the title block relating to the "rules of use".

Exceptionally, all the electrical components are preserved inside the box as well as its original generator which, by means of a special crank placed at rest in its housing inside the lid, generates sufficient voltage for the operation of the telephone system.

The serial number of the device, in addition to being punched on the edge of the box, is also found in a finely handwritten note on the inside of the lid, below the writing "okay", as if this last information referred to a test carried out at the time.

This exact telephone apparatus is published in Pierpaolo Genova's book "Zaino in Spalla" which contains "Piero" Genova's diary of the Great War.

S.I.T.I. (Società Industrie Telefoniche Italiane) was founded by Eng. Doglio in 1915, to represent Siemens Halske in Italy and produce telephones and accessories under license. The outbreak of the First World War, interrupting the representative relationship, meant that the newly founded company developed the field telephony sector for military use, drawing excellent economic benefits from it.

In 1923 the production of radios was added (with a specially created company, S.A.I.R., later incorporated) and thus "mythical" models in the collective imagination were born. The series (with multiple valves) was partly traditional in nature (models with two, three, four valves) and partly based on particular application developments (seven-valve tropadina model). Amplifier models and a heterodyne generator were also envisaged. The design was entrusted to two "pillars" of Italian radio engineering: Ing.ri Del Colle and Montù.

S.I.T.I. it was, however, too conservative a company and continued to offer the same models until 1930, while more modern devices, powered directly by electricity, were already on the market. In the center of Milan there was a famous Righi optics and scientific instruments shop which continued to sell these now old S.I.T.I. devices until 1935. The company's initial headquarters were in Milan in the Città Studi area but, in 1934, it moved to via Bodio where, a few years later, F.A.C.E. entered. Standard, absorbing it. The brand existed until 1937, and then disappeared definitively.