The Barsanti and Matteucci Foundation was officially established in Lucca on June 4, 2003.
From the very beginning, he worked to re-evaluate the work of the two scientists from Lucca, starting from the promising results already obtained in the field of "Committee for events in honor of Barsanti and Matteucci for the 150th anniversary of the invention of the internal combustion engine".
Thus began the collection and analysis of documents useful for retracing the life and works of Barsanti e Matteucci, most of which are preserved at theXimenian Observatory of Florence; this allowed us to develop a proven picture of the studies and experiments they carried out, the results achieved, and the recognitions received.
On this basis, an intense work of dissemination of the documentation found was started, starting from one of the most important museums in the world, the Deutsches Museum in Munich, and subsequently at other museums and at the European Community, aimed at the recognition and attribution of paternity of the invention of the first internal combustion engine to the two scientists from Lucca.
The first success of the initiatives was achieved precisely in Monaco, where, in 2004, a plaque was displayed stating that the first three-stroke internal combustion engine had been invented by Barsanti and Matteucci in 1853. Subsequently, a full-scale model of the engine, created by the Foundation, was exhibited in the same Museum, and many other awards were received from important international organizations.
Subsequently, the Foundation dedicated its efforts to disseminating the awards it had received and building various models of the engines developed by Barsanti and Matteucci. Some of these were donated to Italian and foreign museums, while the models of six different engines remained in the possession of the Foundation.
On September 25, 2013, the Barsanti and Matteucci Internal Combustion Engine Museum, located in the Ancient Guinigi Loggia in Lucca, where copies of the documents illustrating the activities of the two inventors are collected and moving models of the engines are on display.
The museum's layout was renovated in 2021.
