Franco Tosi Meccanica

Franco Tosi grew out of an engineering business called, originally, Cantoni Krumm & C., which Tosi himself joined as Technical Director in 1876. The firm had originated a couple of years earlier (1874) as a producer, primarily, of textile machinery, but under Tosi's leadership it rapidly reinvented itself as a producer of steam engines, which Tosi had developed for use as the power source for industrial looms. These formed the basis for the company's rapid growth in the closing decades of the nineteenth century. Tosi soon became a shareholder, and in 1881 the company also took his name. In 1894 he became the sole shareholder.

Some time later in 1907, the business diversified into the production of diesel engines, which was then a rapidly growing market sector. For a time Ettore Maserati, one of the five brothers who later founded Maserati, worked as a designer of diesel engines for "Franco Tosi", which was also cooperating with the motorbike producer, Emilio Bozzi.

In 1914, shortly before the start of the First World War, Tosi established as a subsidiary business a shipyard at Taranto in the south of the country for the production of submarines and ships, destined primarily for the Regia Marina and the Italian Navy. During the 1920s a submarine from this shipyard, the Cantieri navali Tosi di Taranto, achieved a world-wide depth record descending to 75 meters below sea level.

In 1919 the United Engineering Company of San Francisco obtained the rights to manufacture 4-, 6- and 8-cylinder variants of Franco Tosi four-cycle marine diesel engines.

In the 1930s the football team from the Tosi shipyard in Taranto participated in the first division of the Italian football league.

After the Second World War, "Franco Tosi" collaborated with two large US corporation called General Electric and Combustion Engineering producing under licence large steam turbines and boilers of American design. Turbine components were also produced. The 1970s saw the number of employees peaking at more than 6,000.