Pininfarina is employed by a wide variety of automobile manufacturers to design vehicles. These firms have included long-established customers such as Ferrari, Alfa Romeo, Peugeot, Fiat, GM, Lancia, and Maserati, to emerging companies in the Asian market with Chinese manufactures like AviChina, Chery, Changfeng, Brilliance, JAC and VinFast in Vietnam and Korean manufacturers Daewoo and Hyundai.
When automobile designer and builder Battista "Pinin" Farina broke away from his brother's coach building firm, Stabilimenti Farina, in 1928, he founded "Carrozzeria Pinin Farina" with financial help from his wife's family and Vincenzo Lancia. That first year the firm employed eighteen and built 50 automobile bodies.
After the war, Italy was banned from the 1946 Paris Motor Show. The Paris show was attended by 809,000 visitors (twice the pre-war figure), queues stretched from the main gate all the way to the Seine. Pinin Farina and his son Sergio, determined to defy the ban, drove two of their cars (an Alfa Romeo 6C 2500 S and a Lancia Aprilia cabriolet) from Turin to Paris, and found a place at the entrance to the exhibition to display the two new creations. The managers of the Grand Palais said of the display, "the devil Pinin Farina", but to the press and the public it was the successful "Turin coachbuilder's anti-salon".
It started in 1951 with a meeting at a restaurant in Tortona, a small town halfway between Turin and Modena. This neutral territory was chosen because neither Farina nor Enzo Ferrari wanted to meet at the other's headquarters. Battista’s son, Sergio Pininfarina recalled, "It is not difficult to imagine how I felt that afternoon when my father, without taking his eyes off the road for one moment told me his decision as we drove back to Turin: "From now on you'll be looking after the Ferrari, from A to Z. Design, engineering, technology, construction—the lot!"—I was over the moon with happiness."
From 1954 to 1955 Pinin Farina purchased land in Grugliasco, outside of Turin, for a new factory. "The factory in no way would look like the one of Corso Trapani. It would be a car no longer on my measurements but on those of my children, built looking like them; I had this in mind and wanted it," said Farina.
Starting with the planning for the new plant in Grugliasco in 1956, Farina started to groom his replacements–Sergio his son and Renzo Carli his son-in-law. To his heirs apparent, Farina said of the Corso Trapani facility "This old plant has reached the limits of its growth. It has no room for expansion and is far from being up to date. If I were alone I'd leave it as it is. But I want you to decide which way to go–to stay as we are or to enlarge. Either way is fine with me. It's your decision to make and I don't want to know what it is. I'm finished and it's your time to take over. The future is absolutely up to you." In 1958, upon leaving for a world tour Farina added, "In my family, we inherit our legacies from live people–not from the dead."
In 1961 at the age of 68, “Pinin” Farina formally turned his firm over to his son Sergio and his son-in-law, Renzo Carli, it was the same year that the President of Italy formally authorized the change of Farina’s last name to Pininfarina and the business took on the same name.
Pininfarina was run by Battista's grandson Andrea Pininfarina from 2001 until his death in 2008. Andrea's younger brother Paolo Pininfarina was then appointed as successor.
Great Soviet Encyclopedia
The Great Soviet Encyclopedia is one of the largest Russian-language encyclopedias, submitted in the Soviet Union from 1926 to 1990. After 2002, the encyclopedia's information was partially added into the later "Great Russian Encyclopedia" in an updated and changed form. The GSE said to be "the first Marxist–Leninist general-purpose encyclopedia".
The idea of the "Great Soviet Encyclopedia came" in 1923 on the idea of Otto Schmidt, a member of the Russian Academy of Sciences. In early 1924 Schmidt worked with a group which had Mikhail Pokrovsky, (rector of the Institute of Red Professors), Nikolai Meshcheryakov (Former head of the Glavit, the State Administration of Publishing Affairs), Valery Bryusov (poet), Veniamin Kagan (mathematician) and Konstantin Kuzminsky to draw up a proposal which was chosen in April 1924. Also involved was Anatoly Lunacharsky.
Contributors to the GSE are in this list.
The third version was translated and submitted into English in 31 books between 1974 and 1983 by Macmillan Publishers. Each book was translated separately, making use of the index found at the front of each book to locate specific items; knowledge of Russian can be helpful to find the right book the first time. Not all versions were translated into English; these are indicated in the index. Articles from the English version are made available online by TheFreeDictionary.com.
The third version was translated into Greek and submitted in 34 books between 1977 and 1983 from Akadimos publishing company (owned by Giannis Giannikos), which has also translated various Soviet encyclopedias and literature. All articles that were related to Greece or Greek history, culture and society were expanded and hundreds of new ones were written especially for the Greek version. The encyclopedia contains, for example, both the Russian entry on Greece as well as a much larger one prepared by Greek contributors. Each article written especially in the Greek version is marked with the note "Greek version supplement" (or "Συμπλήρωμα ελληνικής έκδοσης" as written in the Greek translation).
Finally, a supplementary book covering the 1980s was submitted in 1989. It contains translated and original Greek articles which, sometimes, do not exist in the 34-book set. The articles of the Greek version are being gradually made digital now; the digital books can be found on "vivlio2ebook" blog, which is dedicated on digital various books in Greek language.
Publication of the "Great Soviet Encyclopedia" was suspended in 1990 and halted in 1991, but in 2002 it was reinstituted by decree of Vladimir Putin. In 2003 and 2004 a team of editors overhauled the old encyclopedia by updating facts, removing most examples of overt political bias, and changing its name to the "Great Russian Encyclopedia". Many outdated articles are being entirely rewritten. In 2004 the first book of the newly overhauled "Great Russian Encyclopedia" was submitted. The complete version of 35 books was released by 2017.
Publication of the "Great Russian Encyclopedia" is overseen by the Russian Academy of Sciences, and funded by the Government of the Russian Federation. The encyclopedia is now found in libraries and schools throughout the CIS. Additionally, the 1980s versions remain in widespread use, particularly as references in scientific and mathematical research.
Italian Bourse
The Italian Bourse (Borsa Italiana S.p.A.), based in Milan, is Italy's stock exchange. It manages and organises domestic market, regulating procedures for admission and listing of companies and intermediaries and supervising disclosures for listed companies. Borsa Italiana is also informally known as Piazza Affari ("Business Square"), after the city square of Milan where its headquarters (the Palazzo Mezzanotte building) is located.
The Borsa di commercio di Milano (Milan Stock Exchange) was established by Eugène de Beauharnais, viceroy of the Napoleonic Kingdom of Italy, through decrees dated 16 January and 6 February 1808. It operated under public ownership until 1998, when it was privatized. In 1997, all the Italian stocks were merged. Before this year, other smaller stocks exchanges based in Naples, Turin, Trieste, Venice, Genoa, Florence, Bologna, Rome, and Palermo. In 1991, the electronic exchanges were approved, and in 1994, the market with grida (A,B,C) was abolished. In Milan were also the currencies exchange rates fixing and the commodities fixing.
Idaho's at-large congressional district