Le antenne televisive: oggetti tecnici alla grande scala

Abstract

The study brings together some research results on the points of dialogue between the worlds of engineering and design. In particular, this contribution aims to analyse the television antenna as a technical object with its specific formal value and how this, more than seventy years ago, contributed to the spread of a new custom in Italy. The technical object and its diffusion are therefore investigated, from the first television antennas that have experimentally connected Turin and Milan to the entrance of television programs in the homes of Italians. These are built in the landscape, urban and suburban, whose evolution shows how the design result follows strictly a technical necessity and how the shape was shaped — for example, for the current Torre del Parco Sempione in Milan — by the sensitivity of a group of designers. Thanks to the dissemination of antennas in the Italian territory was possible the spread of the signal, therefore, television, with the consequent increase of its social role as a means of mass communication.
Based on a survey of the technical literature on antenna operation, an attempt was made to link historical sources with technical knowledge in the telecommunications field, To reconstruct the evolution of the antenna object on the scale of the landscape and its formal value. The research was carried out in several historical archives, particularly in the Teche Rai, which document the complex diffusion of the television signal in the whole Italian territory.