One of the best PCs I ever had, was an Olivetti 486/66. I don't know what was inside, but the cabinet was half the size of the BUBs we had back then, half the noise level, booted like Usain Bolt and never had any hardware issues.
I was in the industry in the early/mid 80's and the Olivetti 286/386 generation of PC's was relatively successful and well regarded. Proper MSDOS compatibility (which mattered at that time), reasonable prices. Compaq really did for them, but they were OK for a while.
I worked for Olivetti in late 1980s and knew the PC lead designer. He was a Stanford grad running the team from Cupertino California next to Apple. Their PCs were really good but they couldn't match up with the lower-margin commodity competition. Intel and Microsoft were playing favorites back then and worked hard to drive some of their customers out of business. We had Olivetti office furniture and it was fantastic.
My father had an Olivetti computer (maybe a M24?) which was one of the first computers which I ever programmed on as a kid. It was great and had the best keyboard which I have ever used, even surpassing IBM keyboards of the era. I can remember programming a pong like game as one of my first projects. Fun times. 👍
Italian governments are always short-sighted and pretty incompetent in technical matters. The planned renew of industrial sectors allocated only € 700M to the whole IT industry, chip making included, they have no idea how much is necessary to build a fab 😅 And just a quick correction at 8:00 the town name is Frascati :)
Especially since the conspiracies divert attention away from the other reasons for the failure of Olivetti. Problems such as brain drain, the lack government support and funding and heavy bureaucracy which are still problems for Italian research and industry today.
It’s not impartial These guy is a propagandist. He is downplaying usa malign influence as usual. If everything is so wonderful why could not British computer scientists, mathematicians get life insurance for decades? Olivetti was destroyed by operation gladio style cell hit squad as part of arms race of computation being the prize for cybernetic age envisioned by the people running the world. Either
what struck my eyes was at the point he mentioned Pirelli, Fiat... All of these still today are not focused to make Italy great but they are focused instead on making money, with no money, no leadership, sad really sad story. The managers of these companies are exactly tye ones to blame for the industrial and technological devastation Italy has. And because their hands are into politics also, that is why Goverments in general are not driven by common sense but evils.
Lol as soon as he said about the engineer's death on the road I was like "well, that's way too convenient, I wonder if he was killed or something" didn't think people would actually have conspiracy theories about it
@@irvingchies1626 In italy you have a conspiracy theory about everything bad that happens. Of course this diverts attention from the truth, so my personal conspiracy theory is that conspyracy theories are fueled by the media to hide the truth.
As a geezer I love these corporate history lessons. I was an EE at Centronics Data Computer, the printer manufacturer in the 1970s. My family, grandfather and father were in the office supply business so I was used to the notion of good years and bad years. What I was unprepared for was the rapid demise of hitech companies due to changing technology and corporate inertia to cannibalize profitable product lines. None of the companies I worked for have survived.
@@JoeHamelin The "real" Centronics connector is a 36 pin version of the Amphenol 57 series used extensively by MaBell. When IBM brought out the PC they change the printer connector to a DB25 (the typical connector used for RS232) and for the serial connector they used a 9-pin version with a subset of RS232 signals. Fun fact, we sold a low cost printer to Radio Shack and that one had a 36-pin edge card connector to save money. Now a days USB has superseded both.
Yes, most of the early pioneers in computing are nowhere to be found today. I just commented elsewhere on this video how easy it is to look backwards and then pretend the computer revolution was obvious in the late 50s and early 60s. New technology which had not yet been invented was required to build the computer revolution. Who the hell would have believed in 1959 that a TV could be reduced down to a handful of components and a chip? A color TV had hundreds of components and cost 500 1959/60 Dollars but was eventually brought down for the 1959 equivalent of 25 Dollars using ICs. Computers were multi million Dollar machines. This stuff just was not obvious then.
I always remember my father talking about P101 and how important where in space program. Mom and dad meet each other working for Olivetti, back in 1971, I missed them, thanks for sharing.
I sold PCs in the 1980s in Australia which was the worlds most competitive market with brands from USA, Europe and Asia. Olivetti was the biggest seller in this market for several years.
I remember working at McDonalds in the 1990s and using Ollivetti touch screen Point of Sale systems. They were SO MUCH better than the membrane keyboard systems all the other McDonalds used. Plus, ours could be easily updated by the office for various promotions without having to print out and overlay.
@@alexlo7708No, it was not Olivetti under GE. Olivetti sold it's mainframe business in 1965. The recent computers from 1970-2000 were designed and build by Olivetti itself in Ivrea (Italy). Olivetti in 1986 was the first producer of computers in Europe and the second or third in the world, due to it's agreement with AT&T to sell the Olivetti M24 as AT&T PC6300 in the US.
Sad story😢 and it's so sad to see so much incompetent government in Italy. Be a Chinese/Italian it's so hard for me to see a great future for Italy today, and a lot of people that I know they move abroad to have better wages.
@@ebx100europe is just going to become an appendage of America. The game is between China and america now. Let’s see if either side has the balls to roll the die or whether they’re both cowards
I had no idea who Mario Tchou was prior to watching this, but he's one of the more fascinating men I've heard about now in the history of computers. To think he died at 37 in such a tragic way given all his accomplishments and what he likely would have continued to do in his life is interesting to think about. Nice video!
An incredibly well researched and well presented documentary. My only real contact with Olivetti was working on Olivetti teletype machines in the US Army in the early 60's. Beautifully designed and elegantly simple machines compared to the Teletype Corp and Kleinschmidt machines we also used. the Olivetti machines rarely broke down and when they did, I could often fix them with a screwdriver and pliers. The others were far more complex, broke down more often and needed complex part replacements. The Olivetti usually just needed a quick "alignment" with pliers and were on line again in minutes instead of hours or days. Thanks again for a very informative video.
Another great video Jon. An intresting fact is that the STMicroelectronis fab in Castelleto near Milan is the old Olivetti facility. They have a small nostalgic collection of old mechanical typewriters and computers on display there.
Very good insight into Olivetti. I learned programming on a Programma 101, thanks to a visionary teacher at my high school in the 70s. Thanks for the nice memories.
I got the Olivetti PC compatible in 1983 too. It was absolutely reliable, got dragged thru every major airport in Australia for years and never missed a beat. I didn't realise the significance at the time, but yes it was quality.
In the 70s they had a travelling exhibit called 'Olivetti Concept and Form'. Mind blowing style. I lost the incredible booklet/brochure with state of the art print quality to a flood. So sad.
all the internal component are derived by typewriter, the mechanical calculator are design by Natale Capellaro and his history is incredible. he have only primary school grads, he start to work in olivetti at 14, but was a mechanical wunderkind.
I had the opportunity to test Olivetti mainframe based on Hitachi components and running IBM operating system in Ivrea in the 70's. It was an excellent opportunity to know Olivetti installations and Ivrea itself, a place full of innovation concerning ideas, the offices and residential areas and the preoccupation of the company with the well being of the employees. It is a pity that it went bust....
We built PC networking gards in the 80s. Olivetti was one of, if not the, most troublesome brands we had to deal with. Every model seemed to deviate from the IBM spec in a different way, needing work-arounds. No instiutional memory, a new design team each time.
One oddity I found working with Olivetti in 1985 was that the act of putting a label on a minicomputer, e.g. "Olivetti. Made in USA," constituted manufacturing -- and if you put the label on in the USA it constituted manufacturing in the USA.
Besides Olivetti and the DEC rainbow, the least compatible brand was IBM itself, once they went the PS/2 route with micro channel and the new keyboard and mouse connectors and ESDI disks.
I was seated at the lunch table in Ivrea in 1991 with Mr. DeBenedetti where the deal of selling the PC division to DEC was changed to DEC buying 4% stake into Olivetti.
Plan Calcul in France is interesting for many reasons. It produced the Cyclades network that was ahead of it's time concerning data transfer, and would have an impact on what became later on Internet. But the project shared technology with the Americans (and others) and France Telecom wanted to get all government funds for the Minitel (who was back then more realistic although very limited and not future proof on the long run). So Cyclades died instead of surviving like Arpanet and becoming part of Internet
Acorn wound up with 250,000 unsold machines and nearly went under, eventually being rescued by Olivetti. Sinclair sold out to "a mere barrow boy" named Alan Sugar.
All fake though. It was all taxpayer funded scams. It eventually became tax baby ARM whivh helped launch failed ONE LAPTOP PER CHILD PROJECT scam involving UN whivh become cheap mobile phone systems , raspberry pi SBC paradigm and Chromebook bs
Outstanding documentary myself graduated at Pisa university and studied with colleagues at Barbaricina nearby the Faculty of engineering and the San Rossore horses racing
It doesn't matter what industry history you study. Every single one is filled with stories of "almosts" and "what ifs?". It's counterfactuals like these that keep us historians up at night. Sure, it would be nice if the conspiracy theories were true. Alas, the proverb is true: the mighty does not always win the fight nor the swift always win the race. Excellent coverage of this piece of history.
@@brodriguez11000 Yep, perhaps a bit of hubris on the part of Adriano that, despite the misgivings of his colleagues, he could take on this massive company and make it efficient and use it to launch Olivetti in America.
On team building and employing people on the basis of who they are, and not the paper record, an honourable mention should go to Admiral Hyman G. Rickover who built a team on that basis too. They took the reactor and made it go from a city block size to a submarine in a few years.
We had a P101 in my elementary school science lab. It always had students using it. I remember it seemed miles ahead of any other desktop calculator available at the time.
I still have a P101, though it hasn't been switched on for 30 years & its rubber components would need to be replaced. I wonder sometimes if it still works.
In the early 1970s, several of us used the Olivetti Programma 101 exactly as described - to easily make mind-numbing chemistry calculations, over and over, with the instructions stored on magnetic cards. Instant recognition when you showed the photos. That was just before HP came out with their first pocket scientific calculator. Spent a then-princely sum to buy one, disappointed it didn't have magnetic card storage. Tiny mag cards were available on later models. Switched to IBM mainframes. Became a whiz at running card punch machines. Despite majoring in other areas, I spent most of my career in IT. Too many computer families, operating systems, and programming languages to remember. Continuous change! Thanks for the memories.
Australian Goverment offices in Canberra, maybe the department of statistics, were using Olivetti desktop machines in the mid to late 1980s, so they were still in the game up until then
Italy has had so much innovation, not many people think of technology when they think of Itlay. One of their painters invented the submarine, the tank, the helicopter and much, much more. Incredible country with so much history. The most beautiful food, fashion, cars and language.
Hi, great video. I feel this deserves a second part to explain Olivetti's path from the 1960s to early 2000s; there'are a great amount of details to support another video as the company enters the computer era until its demise.
Agreed. This video provided a nice introduction to a part of Olivetti's history that trailed off when the original computer division was sold to GE, with the Programma 101 being a less ambitious project that only managed to find a place in Olivetti's trimmed-down operations due to its recategorisation as a calculator. The modern computer operations of Olivetti were a distinct endeavour. In some ways, this is reminiscent of Ferranti (mentioned in this video) who were a key player in early British computing. When the sector was consolidated under ICL in the 1960s, Ferranti was contractually obliged to not compete with ICL in commercial mainframe computing, but microcomputing gave the company an opportunity to re-enter the commercial space in the 1980s.
I 'worked' on the Olivetti/Kodak collaboration on optical r/w technology for 2 months in 1989 before that project spontaneously combusted in a flash. It did indiectly result in working for a much better company and more interesting career path🙂.
Michael leiper, Olivetti was never included in the ARM dev team, they never wanted anything to do with it, and sold it before ARM / Acorn became as big as they are now. Apple and Philips were investing in ARM only, the rest fell...
Thank you very much for this. Fascinating insight to Olivetti's history. In mid 1980s I worked in IT for an insurance company. It was apparent that the IBM PC would make a significant impact on office processes and productivity. I persuaded the IT director to let me evaluate PCs including clones and this included an Olivetti (cannot remember the model). I had the first Olivetti and used the Aston Tate Framework office package, a windowing system using the non-graphics character screen. We eventually bought 100s of the Olivetti PCs. They were faster, had great keyboards (as you would expect from an ex typewriter company) and offered better value. We even bought some of the Olivetti M15 portables with lift out keyboards for the sales force. I still have the M15 in my home office together with MSDOS disks. I hope to give it to computer museum shortly.
It could have been the Olivetti M24. That was an 8086-based machine, as opposed to the 8088-based IBM PC, and was successful enough to be imported into the US and sold by AT&T.
I was at an office that bought hundreds of Olivetti computers as low bid on a contract. They immediately started failing. I opened one up and discovered a motherboard with a spaghetti (pun intended) of jumper cables connected with cold solder joints. I spent the next year constantly soldering trying to keep them running until they were finally scrapped.
i'm from Ivrea and my father worked for Olivetti 35 years, from '57 to '92. I knew the story and this narration is pretty much correct and well documented.
Olivetti went to be a relevant contender in Europe during the 80s in the PC field. I remember they had a lot of brick&mortar stores across Europe (no doubt thank to their typewriter roots), produced decent PC clones and were well known for their printers. Like many other PC manufacturers, they were eventually unable to face the shrinking margins of a brutally competitive field and went bust at the late 90s, but I wouldn't say they were irrelevant after the 70s.
28:52 I have this memory of reading about this machine when I were a wee lad, in an issue of _Reader’s Digest_ that must have come out shortly afterwards. One thing I remember was that it had 500 transistors in it.
LOL, I love the way you pronounced New Canaan, CT. That is the way it reads, I agree, but locals don't pronounce it that way. They say it more like you'd read cane-an, if that makes sense.
For if I remember well, Olivetti had personal computers in the eighties, that were quicker than the IBM-standard ones, more expensive and more beautiful design.
To be fair, the typewriter still had decades of life left in it when they bought Underwood. It makes more business sense than your recent video about investing in a massive CRT factory just before that technology met its end.
That's true, I remember my mother using a typewriter occasionally in the mid 80s. It was not, therefore, a dead industry, and it may have seemed quite feasible in the mind of Adriano that he could remedy inefficiencies in the Underwood company and use it as a way of getting into the American market. It is still common for large faililng firms to be taken over with the apparent belief on the part of the buyer that the struggling behemoth can be turned around; sometimes it can, and sometimes it can't.
@@lucasrem Correct. They should have leveraged their manufacturing capacity and found a niche they could pivot into. They had decades to do so, and they failed. Perhaps Printer ink cartridges would have been a good idea after ribbons. Who knows
While the typewriter may have had quite a few years to run. Underwood was a way into the American market. But not just for Typewriters. Olivetti was looking beyond that. Where there was a market for office products there would soon be a market for computers. He was right but two things stopped the vision. He died. was the most important and the Underwood network and product could not be maintained until it was brought up to the desired position. Yes, Olivetti could have converted Underwood. They had the capability and world wide moved their entire workforce from mechanical product to electronic output. Not just the factories but the entire world wide services work force. The typewriter and calculator repair people became computer and electronic competent as well, with well set internal training, always an Olivetti strong point.
what an amazing story, that should be scripted out to become a movie (fantasizing about a Nolan movie showing different paths of life of Adriano Olivetti and Mario Tchou, and at a certain point they meet and the story goes on in a single timeline).
I have a Lettera 22 I used until the early '80s, when I moved and left it at my parents'. I just refurbished it after a colleague gave me a new ribbon (I didn't even know they were still making those). I cleaned it thoroughly and greased all moving parts. It shows its age with worn-out hammers and it's a bit misaligned, but it's working nicely and it's still a beauty.
26:24 That's not Olivetti Headquarters but its production factory near Naples, that's important for a cultaral stand point, you can see how the well being of the workers and a beautiful workplace was held in the highest regard
More like a luggable than portable. I had to get a strong youngster to carry the M21 prototype around Turin airport in the early eighties. We needed publicity pictures for the Olivetti publication "The Personal Computer Magazine". I had the M10 in the same photo shoot.
6:38 It's pronounced New "Cay Nin" Connecticut, with peace and love. This is not a criticism. Just in case you have to say it again, I want to see you say it correctly. I love your videos. I've been an avid watcher for maybe 18 months.
I’m Italian born and raised, majored in Economics and this is my point of view. The inability of the government to see beyond its nose is pretty much the norm and it probably will always be. You just have to watch into the number of partial welfare measures that never got into a real comprehensive system and means that the country is always running behind the latest emergency. The country has never been pioneering and the shortsightedness of the government and its people have resulted into the inability to perceive change and adapt to, very often choosing security over opportunity. It’s not even a particularly fond of entrepreneurship so even when a good idea comes around there lies the inability to transform it into a business. No wonder a good number of capable people leaves the country for the US or other European countries.
@@futuristica1710 I agree with @jrstf regarding other governments and I agree that many people are happy to have avoided Italian fascism. But Italian fascism was a tiny parentheses in the time line of Italian history. Every country has had regrettable periods in its history, but few people chose to characterise an entire nation based on those regrettable periods.
Italy was a pioneer in computing since middle ages, and indeed they just missed to be the European Sillicon or Po Valley. But finding the role of a Chonese Italian born researcher is such an unknown aspect.
I remember working on an Olivetti in 1980 at the school lab. It was about the size of a small microwave and would have been a micro computer at time. I don't remember the model nor could I get it to boot. It had several cards and slots like the computers from that era. I was hoping to see it but from checking I can only find models TC800 and TC1800 of the time. Interesting history since I worked on Honeywell Bull until the 1990s. Loving to history and current progress world wide.
Thank you, very interesting, I don't know if it's relevant to your channel, but even the evolution of Olivetti / Telecom post 70s could be interesting (from a business standpoint). As for the "why didn't the italian government help", well... from the '58 to the '68 we had more than 10 governments
Growing up in the late Soviet Union/early Russian Federation, I remember seeing the Olivetti logo at the opening time clock card of 19:00 news broadcast. That must have been 1990-1994.
I actually had a demonstration of the P101 at Carnegie-Mellon University. By that time there were far superior machines licensed by Dietzing and Burroughs for $3500.
👍🏽 🇬🇧 March 2024 Even as a self-appointed wordsmith - I _don't_ have the words to describe how fantastic this (& these) video essays are!! Ineffably fantastic!
I did my highschool work practice working for Olivetti in Croatia in '97.-'99. and then worked for them as PC and ATM specialist back in 2003-2005. An European IBM with an Italian twist, lots of tiny stupid design flaws and sometimes brilliant ideas, loved working on them, hated opening some cases that had rotating handles on sides :D
@23:49 I go to the grocery store that sits in that former typewriter factory land. It's nice that the plaza is called "The Royal" with a typewriter design in a simple sign. Really fun how close to home (literally) this story hits.
Quite a impressive recap of Olivetti history... Kudos 😎 A few notes about the content: - You misplaced an r letter: the physics laboratory is in Frascati non Fascati and is Federico Faggin not Frederico...😉 - I worked in Ivrea at Olivetti headquarters, in the early 80s for a few years as a consultant, my company was owned partially by Olivetti, and even if the company was struggling the people working there was just awesome, so many smart people... I worked on M20 a very capable personal computer for the time... - The reasons why the company didn't get government support is that, unfortunately, it was in Italy and politics, then and still now, doesn't have a forward looking industry policy.. Also Mr. Olivetti was one of a kind guy, like Enzo Ferrari, and probably didn't want to mess with politicians as is common here... - Lastly, regarding the robustness of Olivetti's typewriters, in the early 60s i was 6 years old and my father gave me a Lettera 22 as present to learn writing and typing, the next day I tried to disassembly the whole thing with no success, so I spent half a morning to drop the typewriter from the second floor onto the concrete, to see if some piece can jump out of the that thing... Not a single piece broke... My father wasn't very happy... 😏
Thank for your comment. That's good for those Americans who are so proud of their products and laugh when you try to tell that some other products in the world are better. Poor Lettera 22. Such a work of art. I could not imagine it was so sturdy and resistant to chutes.
My first 486sx 33 MHz was branded Olivetti and I once saw a computer printer with Olivetti on it. That was all I knew of them untill now. Super interesting as always!
Olivetti was my introduction to computing. In the early 1980's I was working on a copper mine in (now) Namibia. We had just received an Olivetti P6060 - quite a large box with a 40(?) character display and 2 floppy drives. We had some problems with the software and a technician from the Olivetti agents in Windhoek and I began "de-bugging". Got it all working in the end. Then we received a HUGE removable disk drive - 5Mb !!!. This then got me into programming and writing a wages system. Later I bought an Olivetti M20 (?) desk-top PC for home and later for use in my own business. Quite a ride, but in the end I completed a correspondence course in programming and received my Diploma. Thanks Olivetti.
I spent 40 years in the semiconductors business in Italy, 28 of which at Motorola Semiconductors. Olivetti was the biggest account in the country. Thanks a lot for this history, albeit sad. They almost invented the PC, but their managers strangled the baby in the crib by telling their people "let's not dream, we cannot have done something of worldwide importance". True though, sufficient capital was not there and they would not find it outside. So everyone just wanted to float along, not understanding that this was just a recipe for decline. This is the history of my whole country, and their "cold war" incompetent governments. I still remember newsbits in Electronics magazine in the '70s, praising innovative solutions in their workstations. Oh well...
During the 80's a friend of mine was hired to repair an Italian leather surface measuring machine ..we were digital engineers . all TTL logic .when we opened the machine to start troubleshooting .We discovered a system made of little boxes with colors and no idea how that worked ..We opened one o those little colored cubes .And i was embedded in some resin ..After cleaning with solvents ..We discovered a little pcb board with transistors and resistor. Apparently the Italians had made a complete logic circuitry with regular discrete components ,transistors ,resistors and diodes ..So we redesigned the complete logic controller using Texas instruments integrated circuits
Had to return to this very excellent presentation of the history of Olivetti and Mario Tchou. Your work is truly exceptional and i greatly appreciate your completeness and style. The manner of Mr. Tchou's death and the timing mirrored that of too many, especially in europe. Something more need to deliberate and help prevent.
Was going to say the same thing. I was confused for a second until I remembered the nuclear institute there. Interesting to think it was originally planned to be located in Pisa. Arguably it may have been a better choice given the proximity of the University and research community. Frascati is not far from Rome but still a bit isolated.
To answer your question about the Italian government, it has been their policy to not put money on R&D (although they love to throw the word innovation around). They have been very succcessful in this endevour and that's why most prominent talent in Italy has a tendency to end up in countries like Germany, the US or the UK. This video was great. I would also love to see a sequel focused on the next Olivetti period and the absolute disaster that was Carlo De Benedetti. That should entertaining.
we need to look at the market situation in 1960s. While computer was touted as the future in data processing, the majority of offices and small business were still relying on typewriters to generate documents. The same situation faced by Kodak when deciding between investing in digital image technology vs downsizing the lucrative film business.
Wonderful video - clearly spoken and no background 'music'. In 1960 I visited the Olivetti factory in Pozzuli, whilst studying the economic and social development of the Mezzogiorno (Southern Italy), as well as meeting with representatives of Fiat in Torino, IRI in Rome, ENI in Sicily. And in 1967-8 worked with ENEL in Rome, and with Finmare at all the Italian ports, on the feasibility of computerizing maintenance of the electrical distribution network and the national shipping operations. An unforgettable period of economic optimism. What a shame that Olivetti failed to continue to provide the means for computer advancement.
I purchased some Olivetti Terminals for use by students at R.M.I.T in the late '70's. for our timeshare system running a CDC Cyber main frame. They were streets ahead of the old ASR33's.
9:46 Chimneys to channel hot air from the vacuum tubes. Funny I can’t recall seeing anything similar for other vacuum-tube computers from that era. Something to do with Italy’s warmer climate?
