The connection was made possible through the Fucino Space Centre, thanks to the satellite subnetwork SATNET (SATellite NETwork) built by CNR, Telespazio, and Italcable.
As highlighted in a press release from the CNR (National Research Council), released to the press but ignored by all the Italian newspapers, from April 30, 1986 the CNR was connected to a network of thousands of other computers. The feat was possible thanks to the efforts, foresight, and determination of Luciano Lenzini, creator and architect of the project, Stefano Trumpy, who in the '70s was key in the SIRIO mission and then director of the CNUCE, and Antonio Blasco Bonito, technical manager of the project.
Using a router the size of a refrigerator, from that day onward the Italian CNR researchers were able to exchange data, application programs, and email messages with colleagues overseas, thus being able to connect in real time with American universities and research centres . It was a truly epochal revolution, not immediately understood in Italy. Indeed, it was the start of the era of the Internet, which would change the world within a few years.
Telespazio was part of this revolution, thanks to the know-how and experience in the field of telecommunications via satellite it accumulated since the early '60s, when the first antenna installed in the Piana del Fucino, Abruzzo, was used to start the first experiments of satellite communications between Italy and the United States.
The event will be celebrated on April 29 at the CNR of Pisa, during the Italian Internet Day by Prime Minister Matteo Renzi, and it will be recounted in the documentary "Login, the day Italy discovered the Internet" by Riccardo Luna and Alice Tomassini, which will be broadcast that same day by Rai5 at 19:50.