Patents anti-seismic structures in iron and steel. 1908 Messina earthquake - 1954 International classification of Europe Council

The Messina earthquake of 1908, with the impression produced on public opinion, opened to a new sensitivity to the issue of earthquake-resistant construction. Although building sector was sometimes indifferent to this specific theme, technological researches, carried out by different companies or individual designers, were engaged to propose effective solutions to critical issues of anti-seismic houses. The interest for this specific argument was stimulated by initiatives promoted by metallurgical companies such as two national competitions of Falck's steelworks in 30's. The experimentations followed the 1908 earthquake are spread until the beginning of World War II, when the technical and productive scenario changes. These studies have almost never got a direct experimentation on buildings but some of them introduce technological innovations which will transposed tout court or partially revised some decades later by the construction industry. However, these studies constitute a rich documentation of patents. In Italy patents are in fact the favorite modality to which are addressed many of the research carried out, which often do not have a practical application for technological backwardness of industry or high costs of manufacture. The industrial patents, granted in the first half of Twentieth Century, provide, in most cases, the use of seismic isolation systems while the vertical structure is typically resolved with frames or load-bearing walls or with mixed systems that involve the use of frames and walls. The technologies explored ranging from traditional masonry to metal construction and reinforced concrete. In particular, we want to propose an historical reconstruction of researches which are based on metal constructive system, iron and steel structures above all. We want to define different paths of technological experimentation implemented by these patents on steel anti-seismic structures. The documentary value of proposed experiences is not only the testimony of an era and the synthesis of possible technological goals which are foreshadowed by specific patents on iron earthquake-resistant structures. They also introduce to considerations which invest technological research in a longer span of time, defining the contribution of these patents to following technological experimentations and to the applications in situ of constructive systems which have translated in facts ideas conceived into the patents of the first half of the Twentieth Century.