PIRELLI AND CO. and SOCIETA ITALIANA MILANO, Italy, are now one of the largest industrial organisations throughout all Italy, with a large number of international ramifications, employing at the end of 1928 over 30,000 hands all over the world, specialising in the manufacture of electric cables, tyres of all descriptions and general india-rubber and gutta-percha goods. Founded in 1872 by Ing. Giovanni Battista Pirelli, at present a member of the Italian Senate and president of the company, they have gradually increased in importance, developing large factories in Italy (Milano, Bicocca, Spezia and Vercurago), Spain (Villanueva y Geltra and Manresa) and in the Argentine (two factories in Buenos Aires).
Pirelli-General Cable Works, Ltd., 144, Queen Victoria Street, London, E.C.4., with factories in Southampton and Eastleigh, England, are among the most prominent British manufacturers of electric cables ; Pirelli, Ltd., own a large factory on a site of 63 acres at Burton-on-Trent, manufacturing pneumatic, semi-pneu matic and solid tyres ; these English factories employ British labour throughout.
Another Pirelli company owns large rubber plantations at Boenisari, Isle of Java. Financial and commercial Pirelli com panies operate from Barcelona, Brussels, Bucharest, Copenhagen and Paris, and Pirelli agents are active in practically every com mercial centre throughout the world. Pirelli also own, or have controlling interests in, cotton-spinning and weaving mills, copper drawing mills and other branches of industry.
Among the lines in which the Pirelli companies specialise should be mentioned submarine telegraph cables laid across the Atlantic Ocean ; high tension underground cables for abnormal working pressures, installed in New York and Chicago; pneu matic, semi-pneumatic and solid automobile, motorcycle and bicycle tyres. (M. S. L.) PIRENNE, HENRI (1862-1935), Belgian historian, was born at Verviers on Dec. 23, 1862. He first lectured at the Uni versity of Liege, and was professor at the University of Ghent, 1886-1930. His Histoire de Belgique, of which seven volumes had appeared in 1932, completely revolutionized the current concep tions of Belgian history and nationality by showing how, from the time of the Germanic invasions, Flemings and Walloons were drawn together by community of tradition and economic interest. Pirenne's works on mediaeval cities and social conditions include Les anciennes democraties des Pays-Bas (1910, Eng. trans. 1915) Recueil des documents relatifs a l'hzstoire de l'industrie drapiere en Flandre (with G. Espinas, 4 vol., 1906-24) and Mediaeval Cities: Their Origins and the Revival of Trade (Princeton, 1925). He was the first president of the "Union Academique Inter nationale" (192o-23) and received many foreign honours.