Gravitational interferometers in Italy 1976: a first timid attempt. And a missed opportunity

In 1976, about 10 years before the conception of the Virgo project, two young under-graduates walked into the G23 lab of the Institute of Physics in Sapienza University, where Edoardo Amaldi and Guido Pizzella were leading the effort to build and operate the first small scale prototypes of cryogenic resonant gravitational wave detectors, and they applied for a thesis. Pizzella and Amaldi suggested studying the proposals for an interferometric detector, and possibly developing a benchtop prototype. The two theses got started, virtually with no supervision, as there was no expertise in optics in the group. We shall describe the thesis work, the prototype that was built and how the project was finally abandoned after the graduation of the two students, among which is one of the authors of this pa-per.