Ettore Conti

Ettore Conti was an Italian industrialist who built the country's first large scale hydroelectric power system. Born in Milan in 1871, he founded the Conti and Company Electrical Company in 1901, which became the first firm in Italy to carry electricity generated from mountain waterfalls and reservoirs to households across the country on a large scale. Conti also taught construction sciences at the Milan Polytechnic and later led the industrial association Confindustria and the Italian national oil and gas company Agip. He was made a senator in 1919 and count of Verampio in 1938. Conti lived to be 100 years old, dying in 1972, and remains best known within Italy's energy history as the founder of its national hydroelectric transmission network.