Word: pavia
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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Between Wars. The first Necchi sewing machine was made in 1919 by Vittorio Necchi, son of a Pavia foundry owner, who decided that a native product could cash in on the Italian sewing-machine market, then divided among Singer and some 30 German companies...
...small factory outside Pavia, his 120 craftsmen carefully hand-machined each part, painstakingly fitted the parts together. Even by these old-fashioned methods, Necchi was turning out 60,000 machines a year in prewar days. World War II cut production to 60 machines a day and cost the company 400 million lire ($4,000,000) in war damages. But at war's end, Necchi executives dug out a stock of sewing machines they had hidden from the Germans, and with them, went after the export market...
Mayr has been a visiting professor at the University of Minnesota, Columbia, the University of Washington, and the University of Pavia in Italy. He is the author of "Systematic and the Origin of the Species...