With the architect Gino Valle, the Solari company introduced a small electromechanical flip clock, the Cifra 5. Remigio died in 1957, but his brother Fermo continued his work. In 1956, the first “Solari board” was installed in a train station in Belgium, becoming the worldwide standard for rail and airway travel soon after. It was a revelation in terms of clarity, particularly when standing at a distance. You could say the movement of time was in his blood, or perhaps he had too much of it on his hands, but in the late 1940s, the self-taught engineer had a breakthrough: Rather than hands that move around fixed numbers on a dial, he inscribed the numbers on metal flaps that rotated around a wheel. His family’s business had been making clocks for towers in the Dolomites of Northern Italy since 1725. Less familiar - unknown, more likely - is the man responsible for effectively conducting this movement of millions of people for the past 60 years, Remigio Solari. Their distinctive shuffling sound, which sends travelers scurrying like a well-orchestrated flash mob, is so synonymous with departure that when Boston’s North Station upgraded its boards to LED displays, they were programmed to emit the familiar clicketyclack, as much for nostalgia as for necessity: How else to get passengers to look up from their phones? Anyone who travels is familiar with the large flip-board displays indicating the gate of your plane, train or bus.
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