This film, made with footage from the Archivio Nazionale del Cinema d’Impresa in Ivrea, that sets out to tell the story of progress in Italy, from the early years of the 20th century until the beginning of the seventies, when environmentalism and the first major oil crisis marked the divide between a before and an after. From the great works of the second decade of the century to the rush to electrification to permit the development of large-scale industry, Fascism and the wartime production of FIAT, reconstruction after the war and the emergence of new industries in the fifties, the city in the factory and the Piedmontese models of FIAT and Olivetti, the search for new sources of energy in Italy and abroad in the sixties and the pioneering work in the fields of computer science and nuclear power.