Ing. C. Olivetti & Co., SpA., known as Olivetti, is an Italian manufacturer of computers, printer and other business machines.

Founding

The company was founded as a typewriter manufacturer in 1908 in Ivrea, near Turin, by Camillo Olivetti. The firm was mainly developed by his son Adriano Olivetti. Olivetti opened its first overseas manufacturing plant in 1930, and its Divisumma electric calculator was launched in 1948. Olivetti produced Italy's first electronic computer, the transistorised Elea 9003, in 1959, and purchased the Underwood Typewriter Company that year. In 1964 the company sold its electronics division to the American company General Electric. It continued to develop new computing products on its own; one of these was Programma 101, one of the first commercially-produced personal computers.

Design

Olivetti was famous for the attention it gave to design: In 1952, the Museum of Modern Art held an exhibit titled "Olivetti: Design in Industry"; today, many Olivetti products are still part of the museum's permanent collection. Another major show, mounted by the Musée des Arts Décoratifs in Paris in 1969, toured five other cities. Olivetti was also renowned for the caliber of the architects it engaged to design its factories and offices, including Le Corbusier, Louis Kahn, Gae Aulenti, and many others.

From the 1940s to the 1960s, Olivetti industrial design was led by Marcello Nizzoli, responsible for the Lexicon 80 (1948) and the portable Lettera 22 (1950). Later, Mario Bellini and Ettore Sottsass directed design. Bellini designed the Programma 101 (1965), Divisumma 18 (1973) and Logos 68 (1973) calculators and the TCV-250 video display terminal (1966), among others. Sottsass designed the Tekne 3 typewriter (1958), Elea 9003 computer (1959), the Praxis 48 typewriter (1964), the Valentine portable typewriter (1969), and others. Michele De Lucchi designed the Art Jet 10 inkjet printer (1999) (winner of the Compasso d'Oro) and the Gioconda calculator (2001). During the 1970s Olivetti manufactured and sold two range of minicomputers. The 'A' series started with the typewriter-sized A4 through to the large A8, and the desk-sized DE500 and DE700 series. George Sowden worked for Olivetti from 1970 until 1990, and designed their first desktop computer, Olivetti L1, in 1978 (following ergonomic research lasting two years). In 1991, Sowden won the prestigious ADI Compasso d'Oro Award for the design of the Olivetti fax OFX420.

Olivetti paid attention to more than the importance of product design; graphic and architectural design were also considered pivotal to the company. 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 it's products.

Computers

Olivetti's first modern personal computer, the Olivetti M20, featuring a Zilog Z8000 CPU, was released in 1982. In 1983 Olivetti introduced the M24, a clone of the IBM PC using DOS and the Intel 8086 processor (at 8 MHz) instead of the Intel 8088 used by IBM (at 4.77 MHz).

In 1985 the company acquired a controlling share in the British computer manufacturer Acorn Computers Ltd; a third partner was Thomson SA. Olivetti sold the Thomson MO6 and Acorn BBC Master Compact with brand names Olivetti Prodest PC128 and PC128s respectively.

The Olivetti M24 was a successful product and became a reference in Europe. However, as Intel moved on to the faster Intel 386 CPU, Olivetti failed to deliver reliable new products based on the new processor.

Olivetti also sold quasi-portable 8086/8088-based PCs with an integrated keyboard and one or two integrated 3.5" floppy disk drives, running DOS 3.27, an Olivetti OEM version of PC-DOS 3.20 with minor improvements.

End of computer production

Olivetti did attempt to recover its position by introducing the Envision in 1995 , a full multimedia PC, to be used in the living room; this project was a failure, and it might have been too advanced for its time. Packard Bell managed to successfully introduce a similar product in the US but only some years later . The main problem of the company was its inability to conjugate innovation with the quality standards it had committed itself to, at a time when the margins on the PC market were diminishing as not only the market but also the amount of PC clone producers grew . The company continued to develop personal computers until it sold its PC business in 1997.

End of Olivetti as a separate company

The Luxembourg-based company Bell S.A. acquired a controlling stake in Olivetti in 1999, but sold it to a consortium including the Pirelli and Benetton groups two years later. In 2003 Olivetti was absorbed into the Telecom Italia group, maintaining a separate identity as Olivetti Tecnost.

Olivetti today operates in Italy and Switzerland, and has sales associates in 83 countries. Research and development are located in Agliè, Arnad, Carsoli, and Scarmagno in Italy, and Yverdon, Switzerland. Recently the company has started to sell again a line of office fax/scanners/printers devices.

References

1. Nathan H. Shapira, Renzo Zorzi, Design Process: Olivetti 1908-1978, catalogue of a show at the Frederick S. Wight Art Gallery of UCLA, 1979.
2. Ultimate Console Database - Olivetti Envision

External links

• History of Olivetti at Telecom Italia
• Picture of a 1983 office featuring an Olivetti M24