Senza-titolo-6Precisa has occupied a place of honour in the history of Italian metrology since inception in 1957. The first Italian granite surface plate saw the light in the Varallo workshops. It was an idea that came about almost by chance, while leafing through the pages of a trade magazine that was advertising the heretofore unknown “granite plates”. After two months of research and hard work, Vincenzo Bertoli successfully completed the first black granite plate in Swedish Black AK F1 in June 1952. After review and testing in the most rigorous Metrological Institutes, planarity was found to be four times greater than the best results obtained at that time. This important achievement encouraged him to found Precisa, the first Italian company to specialise in granite precision measuring instruments .