The Italian Armed Forces began using photography before national unity, that is to say at least since Spring 1859 on battlefield, also if there are pictures of Piedmontese men-of-war from the late 1840s.

In 1861, the Royal Navy took pictures as a documental evidence of the progressive building of the new Arsenal and Shipyard in Spezia, from the first diggings till the first time when its dry-docks were flooded, the very moment when the water entered. These was an interesting use of pictures as a document, but was not, or not yet, an use of the photo as a tool, a technical tool, to be shared with an audience as wide as possible in order to transmit experience and factual evidence.

Things changed when in 1872 the Italian Royal Navy began testing torpedoes in Venice. It is unclear who had the idea of exploiting photos to give evidence of the results, but it was done. The pictures of the targets were immediately published, in order to give all the personnel of the Navy an idea of the effects of the tests and, of the effectiveness of the new weapons the Navy was testing at that time.

It was important because it was the first published photography - actually it was a group of four - on an Italian Military journal, and, one of the first in world (the first photograph in France was published by “l’Illustration” only in 1891).

Photography was used a second time with an extensive coverage of the 100tons cannon tests occurred in La Spezia in 1877. The Rivista Marittima, the Navy official journal, published no less than 24 pictures showing in detail the effects of the shots on the targets, with an appropriate comment.

This paper describes how the experiments were made, shows the pictures published at that time and says how they were used in order to provide evidence and disseminate the results of the experiments.