A Forgotten Italian Inventor
Headline News Maker in 1915-16, but Does Anyone Remember Him Today?
Giulio Ulivi, an Italian inventor and engineer born in 1881, was either a charlatan or someone whose discoveries could have changed the course of World War I.
Except for scattered news articles in the U.S. between 1913 and 1921 and a few reports in Italian documents, little is known about this fascinating man’s life.
Ulivi was born was born June 23, 1881 in Borgo San Lorenzo, a small village nineteen miles north of Florence. The first community was founded in early Roman times and called Anneianum.Later the town took the current name from a parish dedicated to Saint Lorenzo.
Ulivi’s early years are a mystery, but it is known he attended a technical school and graduated. A few Italian official records confirm Ulivi’s military service before and during World War I. In early experiments, Ulivi invented a primitive automobile speedometer in France to protect motorists from speed traps run by overzealous policemen. Supposedly this ended the practice of speed traps for several years.
He also invented a moving picture projector in 1921 that presented 3-D images, and a new fluorescent paint to be used in train stations and motion picture theatres. Then he claimed to have invented a ray device, supposedly capable of blowing up any explosive at a distance. The first notice of him in U.S. newspapers came in a 1913 New York Times essay on the inevitability of war.
He began making headlines in the European and United States newspapers early in 1914. More stories appeared 1915 and 1916. His first attempt with an explosive ray targeted a less dangerous substance than high explosives. Ulivi unintentionally blew up the gas meter in his laboratory. From there he moved on to bigger things. By the time he disappeared from the news, Ulivi had demonstrated his invention, which he first called an F-ray and later an M-Ray (in honor of the woman he fell in love with), in England, France, and his home country. He secured the backing of prestigious business executives and military officers and succeeded in a number of demonstrations. However, a well-monitored test failed miserably, and the next report described his elopement with the young daughter of the Italian admiral overseeing the tests. The daughter’s name was Maria Fornari.
Independent confirmation of the effect of Ulivi’s F-Ray came later, in 1917, and is described in a report titled “A Few Considerations Regarding the Radioballistic Experiments Carried Out at the Experimental Camp in Lomazzo in July 1917.” This report described some unfortunate side effects on the nearby Somaini electrical generating factory from the F-Ray tests.
When Ulivi turned on his ray device in an attempt to blow-up buried grenades, the plant director reported seeing powerful electrical discharges from the dockets at the corner of the central electrical area. The manager, Herr Hilzinger, described how three large electrical motors, a 500 HP, a 260 HP, and a 150 HP, suffered violent assaults, frightening the workers, and four copper bars were almost totally destroyed or dissolved.
The military never adopted his invention. No one now will ever know whether it really worked and could have affected the course of the war. Instead, Ulivi served in a hospital battalion during the World War I. Towards the end of the war, the Italians tried and convicted him of “defeatism,” but a government proclamation later overturned this finding.
Following his release from prison, Ulivi continued to work on inventions. Disappointments led him to destroy his F-Ray and all records of the device. He and his wife left Milan and relocated to Lerici, a small coastal town in northern Italy. The story of his remarkable man ends there as far as current research can determine.
