The John Geloso S.A (Anonimous Society n.d.r) was born in 1931 in a modest seat in via Sebenico 7 in Milan; the company started the activity manufacturing material for radio receivers and amplifiers. At that time this kind of industry was just rising in our country. The production of radio receivers and amplifiers was in fact committed to the enthusiasm of few people keen on this activity. The company created for them special “assembling boxes” containing all the components and necessary parts to build a complete apparatus.
These boxes represented a very important step for the professional, theoretical and practical training of future generations of technicians and they were surely convenient form an economical point of view. Tape winders for transformers and spools were planned and manufactured at home creating in this way essential instruments for the new national industrial manufacturing.
At that time it was published for the fist time the famous “GelosoTechnical Newsletters” (freely distributed in hundreds of thousand copies to whom required it) that gave to the radio mechanics, technicians and radio amateurs a valid instructive instrument of study and general features; at the same time all the news, technical and circuital details of the products and suggestions for various use become public. The company’s philosophy was to simplify difficult things through a clear and essential teaching method widely tested. In 1932 the firm was developing and moved to via Brenta 18; the premises enlarged in order to face bigger demands of room for the increasing production. In 1934 starts the industrial production of electrolytic condensers constantly improved to reduce bulks, dispersion current and waste angle (for example the 2900 series, produced since 1939, represented a real technical progress in field of electrolytic capacities. This series was produced with some changes up to the end of the fifty beginning of sixty years). In 1936 was established a proper laboratory for the culture of “Seignette” salts and a specialized division for machining. This diffused microphones and piezoelectric pick-up, contemporarily to some worldwide manufacturing firms, that were welcomed from technicians and amateurs. In 1939 the Geloso head office moved to the big plant of via Brenta 29 (that remained head office up to the end of the activity) in a 17.000 squared meters area. At the end of the war Geloso became bigger again directing its production towards peaceful aims: the traditional production of components and assembling boxes goes on supported by new apparatus. New plants of Lodi , Naples, Salerno and Rome are born, each one with a specialised production section. In September 1949 took place the first experimental television programme and Geloso is in the van showing a prototype (GTV 1001) that will be successively improved; thanks to this prototype Geloso became in 1952 (date of the beginning of the regular commercial television service) one of the first manufacturers on the marked.
In Geloso are planned and realized also series of components (transformer, reel, etc) adopted from the great part of the national industries, with an original layout that is proposed again to train “future” technicians. The plant of Engineer Geloso continued the activity after his death up to 1972. There were several reasons for the end of the activity, mainly due to the hardened foreign competitors, and due to the incapacity in business management related to internal trade-union movements very strong at that time. The trade mark Geloso was bought by another industry , the “PASO”, and for some years it will appear on a limited kind of apparatus produced in Italy , generally amplificators, resonant trumpets and loudspeakers, before disappearing. It comes naturally to think about the few workers of the beginning of the activity compared to the thousand workers that now directly or indirectly live in the firm, or to think about the small premises of via Sebenico compared to the actual plants and to the complex of satellite companies, to think about the first few but valid items compared to the thousand of items present in the brochures up to the last product realized during the last physical and moral sufferings that John Geloso bore as he was conscious to fulfil what he always considered his duty and moral creed: ensure a future to whom was working with him.