The Royal Italian Industrial Museum was established by a decree in 1862, with the aim "of promoting industrial education and the progress of industries and commerce", with the help of rich collections of industrial products and instruments. The initiative owed much to the work of the director of the Italian department of the London International Exhibition of that year, later a senator and minister, Giuseppe Devincenzi (1841-1903), who designed the Museum on the model of institutions of higher technical education already launched abroad such as the South Kensington Museum in London and the Conservatoire des Arts et Métiers in Paris. In 1906 the Museum merged with the Royal Application School for Engineers of Turin to become the Royal Polytechnic.