The book by Umberto Bartocci, Albert Einstein and Olinto De Pretto: The True Story of the Most Famous Formula in the World (Bologna, Andromeda, 1999) is likely to become even more rare than De Pretto if the publisher does not hasten to reprint. The book is part of the series History impossible, is a book just in time, that is printed just in time, in time to be saved. It is 'the fate of those books that publishers do not consider suitable for publication and that without such a formula would not be able to ever see the light. The manuscripts would fall into oblivion, with the passage of time should be lost in a move or because of some relative distracted. Are the chills to think about how many novels, essays or those who scientific work has been denied even the simple come to light. Certainly the story was written by unknown hands, which sometimes was not the slightest trace. And it is very exciting to follow these mysterious footsteps. In the near future - and can play almost as a joke - the book Bartocci may be disputed by bibliophiles in search of original texts and prophetic, that do not have marked an era when their silent exit, but they did afterwards, as anticipatory of truth have become such only in the future, sometimes a distance of many years. It is a simple paperback publishing in the eighth, with the black cover on all sides. The face of Einstein and the atomic mushroom that campeggio sul front are two very clear symbols of the concept expressed by the most famous formula in the world. Before that book Bartocci had tried - in vain - to accept for publishing a four-hands, with Marco Mamone Capria on the same topic. The scientific journal to which he had directed the rejected manuscript, in a courteous but final. All these difficulties stem from the responsibility that is behind the name of Albert Einstein. Still too great and splendid is its star to be able to blur without exposing brutally critical of the 'scientific orthodoxy. Einstein can not be questioned, not yet, at least. Perhaps one day new conceptions of the world of physics toned down his theories, but at the moment remains an immovable pillar, slightly less than untouchable. For this reason that no magazine wants to be a voice worthy of note in academic would dare hold a decidedly "against the tide" that is not supported by evidence and irrefutable around a doubt - albeit qualified - on the paternity of the most famous formula world. It is logical that the problem at the moment can not be presented to a level of conjecture. It is not yet certified, if it ever will be, that Albert Einstein read the work of Olinto De Pretto and, above all, it drew inspiration. Perhaps the only feasible way is to focus attention on the figure of Michele Besso, who was a friend Einstein and connected to De Pretto. Einstein knew Italian, also held conferences in our language. The science seems not to want to make that De Pretto, this obscure agronomist Vicenza, perhaps inspired the great scientist. Maybe they are formal, not decisive, since the concept of ether does not seem to be applied to the theory of relativity, but certainly the phrase that appears in the work of De Pretto 1904 (a year before Einstein published in Annalen der Physik his two famous works) is explanatory in this regard: "The matter of whatever a body contains in itself a sum of energy represented the entire mass of the body, which moved all united and collectively in space, with the same velocity of individual particles. [...] the mv formula gives us the strength and the living formula mv2 gives us, expressed in calories, such energy. Since m = lev equal to 300 million meters, which would be the speed of light, also admitted to the ether, everyone will see that you get a lot of calories represented by 10,794 followed by 9 zeroes that is, more than ten million million."
