Interaction-Ivrea, Arduino and Intel’s Galileo

Intel’s Arduino-compatible open-source Galileo development board was launched today in Italy at Rome’s Maker Faire. Rightfully so, as the initiative has such deep Italian roots.

In 2004, a group of programmers, students and teachers at the highly regarded Interaction Design Institute Ivrea (Italy) developed the Arduino platform in order to create a small and inexpensive tool that would help students “prototype interactions.” The Arduino project, which was led by Massimo Banzi, was actually based on an earlier board, called the Programma 2003 (named after the world’s first desktop computer the Programma 101, designed by Piergiorgio Perotto and launched by Olivetti in 1964).

Interaction-Ivrea strongly supported the project and backed Massimo Banzi in keeping the Arduino open source at the end of Interaction-Ivrea in 2005. This enabled Arduino co-founder Massimo Banzi and his team to expand the initiative, grow the Arduino community internationally, and in the end allowed Intel to create the Galileo, as a fully Arduino-compatible board.

One of the people involved in Interaction-Ivrea then, Experientia’s Jan-Christoph Zoels (who is now my business partner), dug up a visual – designed by Giorgio Olivero – that was the very first presentation of Arduino. (Click on the image above for the full pdf). It shows the history of the project, and lists the group of people involved at Interaction-Ivrea.

(Disclosure: I also worked at Interaction Design Institute Ivrea, and Experientia’s CEO, Pierpaolo Perotto is the son of the Programma 101 creator).

Congratulations, Massimo.