[1] After an apprenticeship with his father, he travelled to London initially settling in the Anglo-Italian community around Leather Lane in Holborn.

[6] On 29 August 1867, his wife died instantly in tragic circumstances when she was thrown from a carriage at Arreton on the Isle of Wight.

[10] The partnership went on to patent several key improvements in the design of barometers and thermometers, producing models capable of functioning under extremes of pressure and movement.

Their company Negretti and Zambra was subsequently appointed opticians and scientific instrument makers to Her Majesty Queen Victoria, Prince Albert and King Edward VII, the Royal Observatory, the British Meteorological Society and the British Admiralty.

[11][10] In its field, the firm became one of the biggest in London, with workshops in Hatton Garden and Cornhill and a retail outlet on Regent Street, as well as a specialist photographic equipment emporium at the Crystal Palace, which the partners had been commissioned to photograph when it was re-erected in Sydenham in 1853.