Olivetti S.p.A. is an Italian manufacturer of
computers,
tablets,
smartphone
A smartphone is a portable computer device that combines mobile telephone and computing functions into one unit. They are distinguished from feature phones by their stronger hardware capabilities and extensive mobile operating systems, whic ...
s,
printers
Printer may refer to:
Technology
* Printer (publishing), a person or a company
* Printer (computing), a hardware device
* Optical printer for motion picture films
People
* Nariman Printer ( fl. c. 1940), Indian journalist and activist
* Jam ...
and other such business products as
calculators and
fax machines
Fax (short for facsimile), sometimes called telecopying or telefax (the latter short for telefacsimile), is the telephone, telephonic transmission of scanned printed material (both text and images), normally to a telephone number connected to a ...
. Headquartered in
Ivrea
Ivrea (; pms, Ivrèja ; ; lat, Eporedia) is a town and ''comune'' of the Metropolitan City of Turin in the Piedmont region of northwestern Italy. Situated on the road leading to the Aosta Valley (part of the medieval Via Francigena), it strad ...
, in the
Metropolitan City of Turin, the company has been part of the
TIM Group
Gruppo TIM, legally TIM S.p.A. (formerly Telecom Italia S.p.A.), also known as the TIM Group in English, is an Italian telecommunications company with headquarters in Rome, Milan, and Naples, (with the Telecom Italia Tower) which provides fixe ...
since 2003. One of the first commercial programmable
desktop calculator
An electronic calculator is typically a portable electronic device used to perform calculations, ranging from basic arithmetic to complex mathematics.
The first solid-state electronic calculator was created in the early 1960s. Pocket-siz ...
s, the
Programma 101
The Olivetti Programma 101, also known as Perottina or P101, is one of the first "all in one" commercial desktop programmable calculators, although not the first.
Produced by Italian manufacturer Olivetti, based in Ivrea, Piedmont, and invented b ...
, was produced by Olivetti in 1964 and was a commercial success.
History
Founding
![Macchina da scrivere Olivetti M40 - Museo scienza e tecnologia Milano](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/67/Macchina_da_scrivere_Olivetti_M40_-_Museo_scienza_e_tecnologia_Milano.jpg)
The company was founded as a
typewriter
A typewriter is a mechanical or electromechanical machine for typing characters. Typically, a typewriter has an array of keys, and each one causes a different single character to be produced on paper by striking an inked ribbon selectivel ...
manufacturer by
Camillo Olivetti
Samuel David Camillo Olivetti known just as Camillo (August 13, 1868 – December 1943) was an Italian electrical engineer and founder of Olivetti & Co., SpA., the Italian manufacturer of computers, printers and other business machines. Th ...
in 1908 in the
Turin
Turin ( , Piedmontese: ; it, Torino ) is a city and an important business and cultural centre in Northern Italy. It is the capital city of Piedmont and of the Metropolitan City of Turin, and was the first Italian capital from 1861 to 1865. The ...
commune of
Ivrea
Ivrea (; pms, Ivrèja ; ; lat, Eporedia) is a town and ''comune'' of the Metropolitan City of Turin in the Piedmont region of northwestern Italy. Situated on the road leading to the Aosta Valley (part of the medieval Via Francigena), it strad ...
,
Italy
Italy ( it, Italia ), officially the Italian Republic, ) or the Republic of Italy, is a country in Southern Europe. It is located in the middle of the Mediterranean Sea, and its territory largely coincides with the homonymous geographical ...
. The firm was mainly developed by his son
Adriano Olivetti, whose utopian vision led not only the company's worldwide expansion and commercial sucess, but also influenced business practice, politics, and culture.
Olivetti opened its first overseas manufacturing plant in 1930, and its
Divisumma electric calculator was launched in 1948. Olivetti produced Italy's first
electronic
Electronic may refer to:
*Electronics, the science of how to control electric energy in semiconductor
* ''Electronics'' (magazine), a defunct American trade journal
*Electronic storage, the storage of data using an electronic device
*Electronic co ...
computer, the
transistor
upright=1.4, gate (G), body (B), source (S) and drain (D) terminals. The gate is separated from the body by an insulating layer (pink).
A transistor is a semiconductor device used to Electronic amplifier, amplify or electronic switch, switch ...
ised
Elea 9003, in 1959, and purchased the
Underwood Typewriter Company
The Underwood Typewriter Company was an American manufacturer of typewriters headquartered in New York City, with manufacturing facilities in Hartford, Connecticut. Underwood produced what is considered the first widely successful, modern typewri ...
that year. In 1964 the company sold its electronics division to the American company
General Electric
General Electric Company (GE) is an American multinational conglomerate founded in 1892, and incorporated in New York state and headquartered in Boston. The company operated in sectors including healthcare, aviation, power, renewable en ...
. It continued to develop new computing products on its own; one of these was
Programma 101
The Olivetti Programma 101, also known as Perottina or P101, is one of the first "all in one" commercial desktop programmable calculators, although not the first.
Produced by Italian manufacturer Olivetti, based in Ivrea, Piedmont, and invented b ...
, one of the first commercially produced
programmable calculator
Programmable calculators are calculators that can automatically carry out a sequence of operations under control of a stored program. Most are Turing complete, and, as such, are theoretically general-purpose computers. However, their user inter ...
s. In the 1970s and 1980s they were the biggest manufacturer for office machines in
Europe
Europe is a large peninsula conventionally considered a continent in its own right because of its great physical size and the weight of its history and traditions. Europe is also considered a subcontinent of Eurasia and it is located entirel ...
and 2nd biggest PC vendor behind
IBM in Europe.
In 1980, Olivetti began distributing in Indonesia through Dragon Computer & Communication.
In 1981, Olivetti installed the
electronic voting systems for the European Parliament
The European Parliament uses electronic voting to determine the results of roll call votes held during its plenary sessions. Ordinary votes may also be held electronically if the President is unable to determine the outcome of a vote by show ...
in Strasburg and Luxembourg.
In September 1994, the company launched Olivetti Telemedia chaired by Elserino Piol.
Since 2003, Olivetti has been part of the
TIM Group
Gruppo TIM, legally TIM S.p.A. (formerly Telecom Italia S.p.A.), also known as the TIM Group in English, is an Italian telecommunications company with headquarters in Rome, Milan, and Naples, (with the Telecom Italia Tower) which provides fixe ...
through a merger.
Design
![Olivetti carlisle](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f0/Olivetti_carlisle.jpg)
Olivetti became famous for the meticulous attention it paid to the
design
A design is a plan or specification for the construction of an object or system or for the implementation of an activity or process or the result of that plan or specification in the form of a prototype, product, or process. The verb ''to design' ...
of its products, through collaborations with notable architects and designers, over a nearly 60-year period starting in the late 1930s. An early example is the portable 1932
Olivetti MP1 (Modello Portatile in Italian).
From the 1940s to the 1960s, Olivetti
industrial design was led by
Marcello Nizzoli
Marcello Nizzoli (; 1887 - 1969) was an Italian artist, architect, industrial and graphic designer. He was the chief designer for Olivetti for many years and was responsible notably for the iconic Lettera 22 portable typewriters in 1950.
Wor ...
, who was responsible for the
Lexicon 80
A lexicon is the vocabulary of a language or branch of knowledge (such as nautical or medical). In linguistics, a lexicon is a language's inventory of lexemes. The word ''lexicon'' derives from Greek word (), neuter of () meaning 'of or for w ...
and the portable
Lettera 22 typewriters, which were released in 1948 and 1950 respectively. The architect and designer
Ettore Sottsass
Ettore Sottsass (Innsbruck, Austria 14 September 1917 – Milan, Italy 31 December 2007) was a 20th century Italian architect, noted for also designing furniture, jewellery, glass, lighting, home and office wares, as well as numerous buildings an ...
began consulting for Olivetti in the late 1950s and designed a series of products including the Tekne 3 typewriter in 1958, the
Elea 9003 computer in 1959, and later, the Praxis 48 typewriter in 1964 and the Valentine portable typewriter in 1969.
Mario Bellini
Mario Bellini (born February 1, 1935 in Milan) is an Italian architect, critic, and designer. He received a degree in architecture from Milan Polytechnic in 1959 and began working as an architect in the early 1960s. Like many other Italia ...
joined Sottsass at Olivetti in 1963. He designed the
Programma 101
The Olivetti Programma 101, also known as Perottina or P101, is one of the first "all in one" commercial desktop programmable calculators, although not the first.
Produced by Italian manufacturer Olivetti, based in Ivrea, Piedmont, and invented b ...
, a precursor to the desktop computer, which was released in 1965. In 1973 he designed the
Divisumma 18 and Logos 68 calculators, and in 1966 the TCV-250
video display terminal
A computer terminal is an electronic or electromechanical hardware device that can be used for entering data into, and transcribing data from, a computer or a computing system. The teletype was an example of an early-day hard-copy terminal a ...
.
Mario Bellini
Mario Bellini (born February 1, 1935 in Milan) is an Italian architect, critic, and designer. He received a degree in architecture from Milan Polytechnic in 1959 and began working as an architect in the early 1960s. Like many other Italia ...
and
Ettore Sottsass
Ettore Sottsass (Innsbruck, Austria 14 September 1917 – Milan, Italy 31 December 2007) was a 20th century Italian architect, noted for also designing furniture, jewellery, glass, lighting, home and office wares, as well as numerous buildings an ...
, who by then directed design for Olivetti, hired designers such as
George Sowden
George J. Sowden (born 1942 in Leeds, UK) is a designer and product developer.
Career
He studied architecture at Gloucestershire College of Art in the 1960s. In 1970, he moved to Milan, where he started working with Ettore Sottsass and Oliv ...
and
James Irvine. Sowden worked for Olivetti from 1970 until 1990 and designed the company's first
desktop computer, the Olivetti L1, in 1978 (following ergonomic research lasting two years). In 1991, Sowden's design for the Olivetti
fax
Fax (short for facsimile), sometimes called telecopying or telefax (the latter short for telefacsimile), is the telephonic transmission of scanned printed material (both text and images), normally to a telephone number connected to a printer o ...
OFX420 won the
ADI Adi or ADI may refer to:
Names and titles
* Adi (mythology), an Asura in Hindu faith who appears in the Matsya Purāṇa
* Adi (name), a given name in Hebrew and a nickname in other languages
* Adi (title), a Fijian title used by females of chi ...
Compasso d'Oro Award. In 1999
Michele De Lucchi
Michele de Lucchi (born 8 November 1951) is an Italian architect and designer.
Biography
De Lucchi was born in 1951 in Ferrara and graduated in architecture from Florence. During the period of radical and experimental architecture he was a pro ...
designed the Art Jet 10
inkjet printer
Inkjet printing is a type of computer printing that recreates a digital image by propelling droplets of ink onto paper and plastic substrates. Inkjet printers were the most commonly used type of printer in 2008, and range from small inexpensi ...
, which was also awarded the Compasso d'Oro, and in 2001, the Gioconda calculator.
In 1952, the
Museum of Modern Art
The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) is an art museum located in Midtown Manhattan, New York City, on 53rd Street between Fifth and Sixth Avenues.
It plays a major role in developing and collecting modern art, and is often identified as one of ...
in New York (MoMA) held an exhibit titled "Olivetti: Design in Industry" Another exhibit was mounted by the
Musée des Arts Décoratifs in Paris in 1969 and later toured five other cities. Many Olivetti products and archival material related to design are held in museum collections including the MoMA design collection, the
Cooper Hewitt in New York, and the
Centre Pompidou
The Centre Pompidou (), more fully the Centre national d'art et de culture Georges-Pompidou ( en, National Georges Pompidou Centre of Art and Culture), also known as the Pompidou Centre in English, is a complex building in the Beaubourg area of ...
in Paris. Between 1954 and 2001, Olivetti won 16 Compasso d'Oro awards for design. In May 2022,
ADI Design Museum Adi or ADI may refer to:
Names and titles
* Adi (mythology), an Asura in Hindu faith who appears in the Matsya Purāṇa
* Adi (name), a given name in Hebrew and a nickname in other languages
* Adi (title), a Fijian title used by females of chie ...
in Milan paid tribute to this achievement with an exhibition titled Podium 16.
Olivetti paid attention to more than product design. Graphic design and architectural design was also considered pivotal to the company, which engaged architects and designers such as
Gae Aulenti
Gaetana "Gae" Aulenti (; 4 December 1927–31 October 2012) was an Italian architect and designer who was active in furniture design, graphic design, stage design, lighting design, exhibition and interior design. She was known for her contrib ...
, ,
BBPR
BBPR was an architectural partnership founded in Milan, Italy in 1932.
Partnership
The BBPR studio was formed in Milan in 1932 in a climate described by Giorgio Ciucci as “oscillating between differing and contrasting positions.” The name ...
,
Egon Eiermann
Egon Eiermann (29 September 1904 – 20 July 1970) was one of Germany's most prominent architects in the second half of the 20th century. He was also a furniture designer. From 1947, he was Professor for architecture at the Technical University ...
, ,
Ignazio Gardella
Ignazio Gardella (30 March 1905 in Milan, Lombardy – 16 March 1999) was an Italian architect and designer.
Biography
Born into a family of architects, the first of whom was his namesake (1803–1867). Gardella graduated in engineering fro ...
,
Louis Kahn
Louis Isadore Kahn (born Itze-Leib Schmuilowsky; – March 17, 1974) was an Estonian-born American architect based in Philadelphia. After working in various capacities for several firms in Philadelphia, he founded his own atelier in 1935. Whi ...
,
Le Corbusier,
Carlo Scarpa
Carlo Scarpa (2 June 1906 – 28 November 1978) was an Italian architect, influenced by the materials, landscape and the history of Venetian culture, and by Japan. Scarpa translated his interests in history, regionalism, invention, and the tec ...
,
Giovanni Pintori,
Bob Noorda, and
Lella and
Massimo Vignelli
Massimo Vignelli (; January 10, 1931 – May 27, 2014) was an Italian designer who worked in a number of areas including packaging, houseware, furniture, public signage, and showroom design. He was the co-founder of Vignelli Associates, with his ...
to design factories, office buildings, showrooms, and publicity materials.
Giovanni Pintori was hired by Adriano Olivetti in 1936 to work in the publicity department. Pintori was the creator of the Olivetti logo and many promotional posters used to advertise the company and its products. During his activity as Art Director from 1950, Olivetti's graphic design obtained several international awards, and he designed works that created the Olivetti image and became emblematic Italian reference in the history of 20th-century design.
Those designers also created the Olivetti Synthesis office furniture series which mainly were used to be installed in the firm's own headquarters, worldwide branch offices and showrooms. Olivetti also produced some industrial production machinery, including metalworking machines of the Horizon series.
Typewriters
Olivetti began with mechanical typewriters when the company was founded in 1909, and produced them until the mid-1990s. Until the mid-1960s, they were fully mechanical, and models such as the portable
Olivetti Valentine were designed by Ettore Sottsass.
With the Tekne/Editor series and Praxis 48, some of the first electromechanical typewriters were introduced. The Editor series was used for speed typing championship competition. The Editor 5 from 1969 was the top model of that series, with proportional spacing and the ability to support justified text borders. In 1972 the electromechanical typeball machines of the Lexicon 90 to 94C series were introduced, as competitors to the
IBM Selectric typewriter
The IBM Selectric typewriter was a highly successful line of electric typewriters introduced by IBM on 31 July 1961.
Instead of the "basket" of individual typebars that swung up to strike the ribbon and page in a typical typewriter of the peri ...
s, the top model 94c supported proportional spacing and justified text borders like the Editor 5, as well as lift-off correction.
In 1978 Olivetti was one of the first manufacturers to introduce electronic daisywheel printer-based word processing machines, called TES 401 and TES 501. Later the ET series typewriters without (or with)
LCD and different levels of text editing capabilities were popular in offices. Models in that line were ET 121, ET 201, ET 221, ET 225, ET 231, ET 351, ET 109, ET 110, ET 111, ET 112, ET 115, ET 116, ET 2000, ET 2100, ET 2200, ET 2250, ET 2300, Et 2400 and ET 2500. For home users in 1982 the Praxis 35, Praxis 40 and 45D were some of the first portable electronic typewriters. Later, Olivetti added the Praxis 20, ET Compact 50, ET Compact 60, ET Compact 70, ET Compact 65/66, the ET Personal series and Linea 101. The top models were 8 lines LCD based portables like Top 100 and Studio 801, with the possibility to save the text to a
3.5-inch floppy disk.
The professional line was upgraded with the ETV series video typewriters based on
CP/M operating system, ETV 240, ETV 250, ETV 300, ETV 350 and later
MS-DOS
MS-DOS ( ; acronym for Microsoft Disk Operating System, also known as Microsoft DOS) is an operating system for x86-based personal computers mostly developed by Microsoft. Collectively, MS-DOS, its rebranding as IBM PC DOS, and a few ope ...
operating system based ETV 260, ETV 500, ETV 2700, ETV 2900, ETV 4000s word processing systems having floppy drives or
hard disks. Some of them (ETV 300, 350, 500, 2900) were external boxes that could be connected through an optional serial interface to many of the ET series office typewriters, the others were fully integrated with an external monitor which could be installed on a holder over the desk. Most of the ET/ETV/Praxis series electronic typewriters were designed by Marion Bellini.
By 1994, Olivetti stopped production of typewriters, as most users had transitioned to
personal computer
A personal computer (PC) is a multi-purpose microcomputer whose size, capabilities, and price make it feasible for individual use. Personal computers are intended to be operated directly by an end user, rather than by a computer expert or tec ...
s.
File:Olivetti Lettera 22 Typewriter Marcello Nizzoli.jpg, Olivetti Lettera 22 Typewriter (Marcello Nizzoli
Marcello Nizzoli (; 1887 - 1969) was an Italian artist, architect, industrial and graphic designer. He was the chief designer for Olivetti for many years and was responsible notably for the iconic Lettera 22 portable typewriters in 1950.
Wor ...
)
File:Olivetti Lettera 32 Typewriter.jpg, Olivetti Lettera 32 Typewriter
File:Olivetti Lettera 33 Ettorre Sottsass.jpg, Olivetti Lettera 33 Typewriter (Ettorre Sottsass)
File:Olivetti Praxis 48 Ettorre Sottsass.jpg, Olivetti Praxis 48 Typewriter (Ettorre Sottsass)
File:Olivetti Lettera 36c Mario Bellini.jpg, Olivetti Lettera 36c Typewriter (Mario Bellini
Mario Bellini (born February 1, 1935 in Milan) is an Italian architect, critic, and designer. He received a degree in architecture from Milan Polytechnic in 1959 and began working as an architect in the early 1960s. Like many other Italia ...
)
File:Olivetti Lettera 35i Mario Bellini.jpg, Olivetti Lettera 35i (Mario Bellini)
File:Olivetti Lettera Praxis DLX Mario Bellini Design - Austin Calhoon Photography.jpg, Olivetti Lettera Praxis DLX (Mario Bellini design)
Computers
Between 1955 and 1964 Olivetti developed some of the first transistorized
mainframe computer systems, such as the
Elea 9003. Although 40 large commercial 9003 and over 100 smaller 6001 scientific machines were completed and leased to customers to 1964, low sales, loss of two key managers and financial instability caused Olivetti to withdraw from the field in 1964.
In 1965 Olivetti released the
Programma 101
The Olivetti Programma 101, also known as Perottina or P101, is one of the first "all in one" commercial desktop programmable calculators, although not the first.
Produced by Italian manufacturer Olivetti, based in Ivrea, Piedmont, and invented b ...
, considered one of the first commercial desktop programmable calculators. It was saved from the sale of the computer division to GE thanks to an employee, Gastone Garziera, who spent successive nights changing the internal categorization of the product from "computer" to "calculator", so leaving the small team in Olivetti and creating some awkward situations in the office, since that space was now owned by GE.
In 1974 the firm released the
TC800, an intelligent terminal designed to be attached to a mainframe and used in the finance sector. It was followed in 1977 by the
TC1800.
During the 1970s Olivetti also manufactured and sold two ranges of minicomputers. The 'A' series started with the typewriter-sized A4 through to the large A8, and the desk-sized DE500 and DE700 series.
Olivetti's first modern personal computer, the
M20, featuring a
Zilog Z8000
The Z8000 ("''zee-'' or ''zed-eight-thousand''") is a 16-bit microprocessor introduced by Zilog in early 1979. The architecture was designed by Bernard Peuto while the logic and physical implementation was done by Masatoshi Shima, assisted by a ...
CPU, was released in 1982.
The M20 was followed in 1983 by the
M24, a clone of the
IBM PC using
DOS
DOS is shorthand for the MS-DOS and IBM PC DOS family of operating systems.
DOS may also refer to:
Computing
* Data over signalling (DoS), multiplexing data onto a signalling channel
* Denial-of-service attack (DoS), an attack on a communicat ...
and the
Intel 8086 processor (at 8
MHz
The hertz (symbol: Hz) is the unit of frequency in the International System of Units (SI), equivalent to one event (or cycle) per second. The hertz is an SI derived unit whose expression in terms of SI base units is s−1, meaning that one he ...
) instead of the
Intel 8088
The Intel 8088 ("''eighty-eighty-eight''", also called iAPX 88) microprocessor is a variant of the Intel 8086. Introduced on June 1, 1979, the 8088 has an eight-bit external data bus instead of the 16-bit bus of the 8086. The 16-bit registers and ...
used by
IBM (at 4.77 MHz). The M24 was sold in North America as the
AT&T 6300. Olivetti also manufactured the AT&T 6300 Plus, which could run both DOS and
Unix
Unix (; trademarked as UNIX) is a family of multitasking, multiuser computer operating systems that derive from the original AT&T Unix, whose development started in 1969 at the Bell Labs research center by Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie, an ...
. The M24 in the US also was sold as
Xerox
Xerox Holdings Corporation (; also known simply as Xerox) is an American corporation that sells print and electronic document, digital document products and services in more than 160 countries. Xerox is headquartered in Norwalk, Connecticut (ha ...
6060. The
Olivetti M28 was the firm's first PC to have the
Intel 80286
The Intel 80286 (also marketed as the iAPX 286 and often called Intel 286) is a 16-bit microprocessor that was introduced on February 1, 1982. It was the first 8086-based CPU with separate, non- multiplexed address and data buses and also the ...
processor.
The same year Olivetti produced its
M10 laptop computer, a
8085
The Intel 8085 ("''eighty-eighty-five''") is an 8-bit microprocessor produced by Intel and introduced in March 1976. It is software-binary compatible with the more-famous Intel 8080 with only two minor instructions added to support its added i ...
-based workalike of the successful
Radio Shack
RadioShack, formerly RadioShack Corporation, is an American retailer founded in 1921.
At its peak in 1999, RadioShack operated over 8,000 worldwide stores named RadioShack or Tandy Electronics in the United States, Mexico, United Kingdom, Austra ...
TRS-80 Model 100
The TRS-80 Model 100 is a portable computer introduced in April 26th, 1983. It is one of the first notebook-style computers, featuring a keyboard and liquid crystal display, in a battery-powered package roughly the size and shape of a notepad or ...
, which it marketed in Europe. These were the first laptops to sell in million-unit quantities, though the itself only attained sales figures in the tens of thousands and went out of production within two years.
During the 1980s and 1990s Olivetti continued to release PC compatible machines, facing mounting competition from other brands. It turned to laptops, introducing in 1991 the
D33, a laptop in a carry case, and continuing with the
M111,
M211,
S20,
D33,
Philos and
Echos
Echos (Greek: "sound", pl. echoi ; Old Church Slavonic: "voice, sound") is the name in Byzantine music theory for a mode within the eight-mode system ( oktoechos), each of them ruling several melody types, and it is used in the melodic and r ...
series. A very interesting subnotebook was the
Quaderno, about the same size as an A5 paper – it was the grandfather of the
netbooks introduced 20 years later.
Olivetti did attempt to recover its position by introducing the
Envision
Envision may refer to:
Organizations
* Envision EMI, a management company based in Virginia, USA
* Envision Energy, a wind turbine manufacturer and energy technology company based in Shanghai, China
* Envision Financial, a financial institution ...
in 1995, a full
multimedia PC
The Multimedia PC (MPC) was a recommended configuration for a personal computer (PC) with a CD-ROM drive. The standard was set and named by the "Multimedia PC Marketing Council", which was a working group of the Software Publishers Association (SPA ...
, to be used in the
living room
In Western architecture, a living room, also called a lounge room (Australian English), lounge (British English), sitting room (British English), or drawing room, is a room for relaxing and socializing in a residential house or apartment. Su ...
; this project was a failure.
Packard Bell
Packard Bell is a Dutch-registered computer manufacturing brand and subsidiary of Acer. Originally an American radio set manufacturer, Packard Bell Corporation, it was founded by Herbert A. Bell and Leon S. Packard in 1933. In 1986, Israeli i ...
managed to successfully introduce a similar product in the U.S. but only some years later.
The company continued to develop personal computers until it sold its PC business in 1997.
File:Console di comando per sistema Olivetti ELEA 9003 - Museo scienza tecnologia Milano D1230 2012.jpg, Olivetti Elea
The Elea was a series of mainframe computers Olivetti developed starting in the late 1950s. The system, made entirely with transistors for high performance, was conceived, designed and developed by a small group of researchers led by Mario Tchou ...
9003
File:P 6040 Olivetti (I197902).jpg, Olivetti P6040
The Olivetti P6040 was a personal computer, described by its maker as a personal minicomputer. The P6040 was programmable in Mini BASIC and featured a floppy disk drive that used proprietary 2.5-inch sleeveless disks called "Minidisk". It was ...
File:Computer minipersonal - Museo scienza tecnologia Milano 09298.jpg, Olivetti P6060
The Olivetti P6060 was the first personal computer with a built-in floppy disk. It was presented in April 1975 by the Italian manufacturer Olivetti at the Hannover fair alongside the smaller P6040 that stored data on proprietary 2.5-inch myla ...
File:Olivetti P6066.jpg, Olivetti P6066
File:Olivetti P652.jpg, Olivetti P652
Olivetti S.p.A. is an Italian manufacturer of computers, tablets, smartphones, printers and other such business products as calculators and fax machines. Headquartered in Ivrea, in the Metropolitan City of Turin, the company has been part ...
File:Olivetti BCS 2035.jpg, Olivetti BCS 2035
File:MIC Torino-Olivetti P101.png, Olivetti Programma 101
The Olivetti Programma 101, also known as Perottina or P101, is one of the first "all in one" commercial desktop programmable calculators, although not the first.
Produced by Italian manufacturer Olivetti, based in Ivrea, Piedmont, and invented b ...
File:Envp75.jpg, Olivetti Envision
The Olivetti Envision (400/P75) was an Italian multimedia personal computer produced in 1995. It came with a choice of two processors: Intel 486 DX4 100 MHz or Intel Pentium P75.
It had an infrared keyboard and internal modem, and it was ...
P75
File:Olivetti 70's L1 System.jpg, Olivetti L1
File:Olivetti M19.jpg, Olivetti M19
The Olivetti M19 was a personal computer made in 1986 by the Italian company Olivetti. It has an 8088 at 4.77 or 8 MHz and 256–640 KB of RAM. The BIOS is Revision Diagnostics 3.71. In the UK, it was sold by Acorn Computers as the A ...
File:Olivetti, personal computer desktop M20, 1982 (fond. natale cappellaro).jpg, Olivetti M20
The Olivetti M20 is a Zilog Z8000 based computer designed and released by Olivetti in 1982. Although it offered good performance, it suffered from a lack of software due to its use of the Z8000 processor and custom operating system, PCOS. The c ...
File:Olivetti M24 (1987 - 1988).jpg, Olivetti M24
The Olivetti M24 is a computer that was sold by Olivetti in 1983 using the Intel 8086 CPU.
The system was sold in the United States under its original name by Docutel/Olivetti of Dallas. AT&T and Xerox bought rights to rebadge the system as t ...
File:Olivetti M4 454 S 01.jpg, Olivetti M4 454S
File:Olivetti L1M40ST.jpg, Olivetti M40 The Olivetti S.p.A., Olivetti company, an Italy, Italian manufacturer of computers, Tablet computer, tablets, smartphones, Printer (computing), printers and other such business products as calculators and Fax Machine, fax machines, was founded as a ...
File:PC128S.jpg, Olivetti Prodest PC128
File:Personal computer portatile - Museo scienza tecnologia Milano 15635.jpg, Olivetti M10
The TRS-80 Model 100 is a portable computer introduced in April 26th, 1983. It is one of the first notebook-style computers, featuring a keyboard and liquid crystal display, in a battery-powered package roughly the size and shape of a notepad or ...
File:Olivetti, primo computer portatile M15, 1987 (fond. natale cappellaro).jpg, Olivetti M15
File:Olivetti m21, personal computer, 1984.jpg, Olivetti M21
File:Olivetti Echos44 2.jpg, Olivetti Echos
File:Old computer 4.jpg, Olivetti Quaderno
The Quaderno was a subnotebook produced by Olivetti in two versions from 1992: ''Quaderno'' (PT-XT-20) and ''Quaderno 33'' (PT-AT-60).
History
When it made its debut in 1992, this model realised the idea of a laptop that was smaller (having ...
End of Olivetti as a separate company
In the 1990s, Olivetti's computer businesses were in great difficulty, reportedly because of the competition from US vendors and new cheap manufacturers for PC components in
Taiwan
Taiwan, officially the Republic of China (ROC), is a country in East Asia, at the junction of the East and South China Seas in the northwestern Pacific Ocean, with the People's Republic of China (PRC) to the northwest, Japan to the nort ...
like
ASUS,
MSI,
Gigabyte and so on from which local system builders profited much to offer cheaper PCs than Olivetti did with their own designs. It was on the brink of collapse and had needed government support to stay afloat.
In 1992,
Digital Equipment Corporation
Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC ), using the trademark Digital, was a major American company in the computer industry from the 1960s to the 1990s. The company was co-founded by Ken Olsen and Harlan Anderson in 1957. Olsen was president un ...
announced its intention to invest in Olivetti, approximating to a 10% stake valued at around , amidst a wave of investment in European companies by their US counterparts. Digital were already reselling Olivetti personal computer models in Europe, and the investment presented an opportunity for the adoption of Digital's Alpha processor in Olivetti's workstation products.
The investment programme was to be conducted in two steps over an 18 month period, augmented by additional share purchases.
The partnership between the companies, regarded as a way of supporting Olivetti whilst cementing a development relationship around Digital's Alpha platform, developed in the following two years, although the balance of revenue from selling products to each other was reported as being strongly in Olivetti's favour, it having generated lire from Digital in 1993, but with Digital only selling products worth lire to Olivetti. Digital remained a significant purchaser of laser printers and laptops from Olivetti, but had begun to manufacture its own personal computers and planned to produce its own laptop products. Meanwhile, Olivetti had been slow to introduce Alpha-based products, eventually shipping models based on Digital's own products. With Digital's finances under pressure, posting quarterly losses and incurring costs around redundancies, the company sold its stake - noted as amounting to 7.8% - for .
A company in transition, it had moved out of the typewriter business into personal computers before embracing telecoms between 1997 and 1999, spinning off its personal computer business in 1997 and divesting its computer services business in 1998.
In the process it had lost around three-quarters of its staff.
In 1999, The
Luxembourg
Luxembourg ( ; lb, Lëtzebuerg ; french: link=no, Luxembourg; german: link=no, Luxemburg), officially the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg, ; french: link=no, Grand-Duché de Luxembourg ; german: link=no, Großherzogtum Luxemburg is a small lan ...
-based company Bell S.A. acquired a controlling stake in Olivetti, but sold it to a consortium including the
Pirelli and
Benetton groups two years later. Olivetti then launched a hostile bid for Telecom Italia in February 1999, despite being less than a seventh of the size of its target. In a take-over battle against
Deutsche Telekom and other potential bidders that initially seem to have been settled in Deutsche Telecom's favour, with an merger reportedly agreed in April 1999,
Olivetti won out and controlled 52.12% of former monopoly Telecom Italia, Italy's #1 fixed-line and mobile phone operator. However, the ownership structure of the merged Olivetti / Telecom Italia was complex and multi-layered with Olivetti took on around $16 billion of extra debt. It was then referred to as the "Olivetti/Telecom Italia affair" because of the unpleasant secret affairs behind.
After a 2003 reorganization, Olivetti became the office equipment and systems services subsidiary of Telecom Italia. In 2003 Olivetti was absorbed into the
Telecom Italia
Gruppo TIM, legally TIM S.p.A. (formerly Telecom Italia S.p.A.), also known as the TIM Group in English, is an Italian telecommunications company with headquarters in Rome, Milan, and Naples, (with the Telecom Italia Tower) which provides fixed ...
group, maintaining a separate identity as Olivetti Tecnost.
Rebirth and resumption of computer production
In 2005, Telecom Italia relaunched the company in the information technology sector, investing €200 million; at first, restoring the original Olivetti brand, then replacing it with Olivetti Tecnost in 2003. In 2007, Olivetti launched the "LINEA_OFFICE", designed by
Jasper Morrison for Olivetti; a new line of PCs, notebooks, printers,
fax machine
Fax (short for facsimile), sometimes called telecopying or telefax (the latter short for telefacsimile), is the telephonic transmission of scanned printed material (both text and images), normally to a telephone number connected to a printer o ...
s and calculators. Olivetti today operates in Italy and
Switzerland, and has sales associates in 83 countries. Research and development are located in
Agliè,
Carsoli Carsoli ( Marsicano: ') is a town and ''comune'' in the province of L'Aquila, Abruzzo (central Italy). The ancient Roman city lies southwest of the modern town.
History
The ancient city, known as ''Carsioli'' (or ''Carseoli''), was founded in the ...
and
Scarmagno
Scarmagno is a ''comune'' (municipality) in the Metropolitan City of Turin in the Italian region Piedmont, located about northeast of Turin.
Since the 1960s, it was home to a large plant of the Olivetti company, which, for some periods, produced ...
in Italy, and
Yverdon
Yverdon-les-Bains () (called Eburodunum and Ebredunum during the Roman era) is a municipality in the district of Jura-Nord vaudois of the canton of Vaud in Switzerland. It is the seat of the district. The population of Yverdon-les-Bains, , was ...
, Switzerland.
In March 2011 Olivetti began producing the OliPad, its first
tablet computer
A tablet computer, commonly shortened to tablet, is a mobile device, typically with a mobile operating system and touchscreen display processing circuitry, and a rechargeable battery in a single, thin and flat package. Tablets, being com ...
, featuring a ten-inch screen, 3G, WiFi,
Bluetooth
Bluetooth is a short-range wireless technology standard that is used for exchanging data between fixed and mobile devices over short distances and building personal area networks (PANs). In the most widely used mode, transmission power is limi ...
connectivity,
Nvidia Tegra
Tegra is a system on a chip (SoC) series developed by Nvidia for mobile devices such as smartphones, personal digital assistants, and mobile Internet devices. The Tegra integrates an ARM architecture central processing unit (CPU), graphics proc ...
2,
Android 2.2.2 and a 1024 x 600 display. It also features an application store, with
apps specifically designed by Olivetti for 'business & government'. In 2014 the R&D department in
Arnad was sold to
SICPA
SICPA (acronym for the former name ''Société Industrielle et Commerciale de Produits Alimentaires,'' no longer in use) is a Swiss company that provides security inks for currencies and sensitive documents, including identity documents, pass ...
.
Smartphones
In 2013, Olivetti launched a series of smartphones called ''Oliphone'':
* Olivetti Oliphone M8140
* Olivetti Oliphone Q8145
* Olivetti Oliphone Q8150
* Olivetti Oliphone Q9047
* Olivetti Oliphone WG451
* Olivetti Oliphone WG501
See also
*
List of Italian companies
Italy is a unitary parliamentary republic in Europe with the third largest nominal GDP in the Eurozone and the eighth largest in the world. As an advanced economy the country also has the sixth worldwide national wealth and it is ranked third ...
*
Olivetti typewriters The Olivetti company, an Italian manufacturer of computers, tablets, smartphones, printers and other such business products as calculators and fax machines, was founded as a typewriters manufacturer by Camillo Olivetti in 1908 in the Turin commun ...
*
Olivetti computers
*
TIM Group
Gruppo TIM, legally TIM S.p.A. (formerly Telecom Italia S.p.A.), also known as the TIM Group in English, is an Italian telecommunications company with headquarters in Rome, Milan, and Naples, (with the Telecom Italia Tower) which provides fixe ...
References
External links
*
History of Olivettiat
Telecom Italia
Gruppo TIM, legally TIM S.p.A. (formerly Telecom Italia S.p.A.), also known as the TIM Group in English, is an Italian telecommunications company with headquarters in Rome, Milan, and Naples, (with the Telecom Italia Tower) which provides fixed ...
(archived 2005)
Picture of a 1983 office featuring an Olivetti M24*
- SEQ Corporation, Stockholm, Sweden
Video Olivetti L1 M40 ST Retro Computer museum, Zatec, Czech Republic videoVideo Olivetti P6066 Retro Computer museum, Zatec, Czech Republic video
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Technology companies established in 1908
Electronics companies established in 1908
Italian companies established in 1908
Italian brands
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Compasso d'Oro Award recipients