Excellent technical history, but it misses what made Olivetti incomparable: Adriano's human-centric philosophy that business and human culture were inseparable.
The article mentions worker housing and urban planning in passing, then moves on. But that was the strategy. Ivrea wasn't welfare—it was integrated design. Factory, housing, schools, public spaces all operating under one coherent philosophy: machines and lives should both be beautiful and functional.
Search "Olivetti negozio", "fabbrica" or "architettura"—the retail design and factory architecture show it, decades before Apple. But more importantly, search for Adriano's writing on the Community Movement. He believed you couldn't separate good design from good society. The red typewriter wasn't just aesthetics; it was a statement about human dignity.
That's why Olivetti succeeded where technically equivalent competitors didn't. They engineered for humans, not just machines. Beauty, culture, and production were one integrated system.
The article's strength—technical rigor and business detail—accidentally proves the weakness: it treats design and culture as separate from engineering. Olivetti proved they're the same thing.
(I have a working M10 from 1983. Still remarkable machine—that tiltable screen, the integrated design. They were still building for humans, not just specs.)
Its an incredible story and way another time. As my cousin put it while i was last in ivrea: those factory buildings where like spaceships at that time.
Partialy very bad luck, but with all the nostalgia i think adriano was also partialy a bit dreamy and that ultimately came at a cost.
On the other side and what rarely gets mentioned: olivetti had a really good and massive sales crew. And that allowed them to spend money on these things.
Ps.Adriano is my biological grandfather.
Pps.i posted the link before, but didnt get much traction.
> Excellent technical history, but it misses what made Olivetti incomparable: Adriano's human-centric philosophy that business and human culture were inseparable.
>
> The article mentions worker housing and urban planning in passing, then moves on. But that was the strategy. Ivrea wasn't welfare—it was integrated design. Factory, housing, schools, public spaces all operating under one coherent philosophy: machines and lives should both be beautiful and functional.
>
> [...]
>
> That's why Olivetti succeeded where technically equivalent competitors didn't. They engineered for humans, not just machines.
Two decades ago I randomly found myself in a tiny lecture room with a Very Important Manager from a Very Big European Bank. She started her talk stating "In the '80s, the Italian politics had to choose between the economic model of the Olivetti's family and that of the Agnelli's family. They choose Agnelli's. That was a mistake." Followed by a long string of expletives.
For context and for contrast, the Agnelli family was the owner of FIAT, then the biggest private employers in Italy. They were strongly anti-unions. They even bought the most important newspaper in Turin (the headquartiers of FIAT) to suppress reports of workers initiatives and strikes.
true, '80s were the years that signed the switch from an economy based on products and services (Olivetti) to an economy based on financial papers (Agnelli). If the 1st one was more human sized, the second one forgot about people.
The fall of Berlin wall was signalling that politicians were all with "us".
The Community Movement (Movimento Comunità) was Adriano Olivetti's broader social philosophy: focused on worker participation, cooperative economics, and community-based organization.
there is not so much in English, all my knowledge comes from Italian sources. The Italian wikipedia page in the section Bibliografia lists some books in Italian, maybe you'll be able to find them, at least now we have the advantage to be able to translate on the fly.
Anyway here http://momoneco.kotka.fi/ivrea_nayttely_4_uk.html there is something about the urban planning.
I have fond memories from my Acorn days of staying in the 'typewriter' hotel on visits to Ivrea - it became derelict, but perhaps it has been revived...
Olivetti is famous for having bought Acorn, and owning the ARM architecture.
They likely think about that missed opportunity deeply in their corporate culture.
I don't know the story of how they let that get away.
"Such was the secrecy surrounding the ARM CPU project that when Olivetti were negotiating to take a controlling share of Acorn in 1985, they were not told about the development team until after the negotiations had been finalised...
"Olivetti would eventually relinquish majority control of Acorn in early 1996, selling shares to US and UK investment groups to leave the company with a shareholding in Acorn of around 45%."
Growing up in Italy in the 90s, Olivetti was already fading but still everywhere. My grandmother had a Lettera that I swear will outlive us all.
Reading these comments is interesting—for most of you it's nostalgia for nice hardware. In Italy it hits different. We grew up hearing about Olivetti as this national wound. Adriano dies in 1960, Tchou in a car crash a year later, electronics division sold to GE. It gets brought up whenever people complain about "cervelli in fuga" (brain drain)—look, we once had this company that attracted top talent and led the world, and we let it slip away.
I've been living abroad for 10 years now and the irony isn't lost on me. The machines were great. But in Italy what stings is the what-could-have-been.
That the impression I had! The mention of the US government pressing Olivetti to sell its electronics division to GE before the mysterious deaths of the main people managing that division does make it look seriously suspicious what happened. The success of US corporations today does not seem to have been only a result of America’s aptitude for business as we tend to think, but also of plain government intervention.
An Olivetti PC was an ultimate dream to have in the late 80s and the early 90s for me, in impressionable age of adolescence, prone to the call of tinkering, hacking and programming. They were the brand, at least in Europe.
I worked in IT support and engineering for a UK Olivetti dealer / distributor in the 1980s/90s. As such I had access to all sorts of Olivetti kit in various states of functionality. At one time, my home PC was an Olivetti M280 case with an M380 (386DX) motherboard and EGA display adapter. It had a colour monitor and the ANK 27-102 keyboard - it was a 'top end' hybrid for its time that I'd put together from several non-working machines..
I also had a 'faulty' Olivetti inkjet printer that was written off under warranty with a mysterious fault. I eventually managed to fix it by bending the metal paper detector arm so that it slotted properly into the optical sensor - it was a little out of whack and the sensor sometimes couldn't work out whether there was paper in the tray.
Living in Italy at the time, I recall early Olivetti portable computers back in the ‘80’s. They were out of reach for a teenager though, so had to stick to my BBC Micro. Olivetti was the reference when it came to well-designed machines.
In North America I think they're remembered as computers that were MS-DOS compatible, but not PC-compatible, and thus kind of a dead end. Like the DEC Rainbow or the Tandy 2000.
Some were, but Olivetti moved into PC compatibles. I’ve used many PC desktops and servers with their brand (and design!).
I have a complaint however. One family of desktops seemed to demand blood sacrifice every time they were serviced. You’d open the machine, replace the failed drive, test, close it up, and a cut would appear in your hand. I don’t remember cutting my hand on the sharp edges inside, but there was always a cut afterwards.
Back in the 1950s Olivetti was famous for its striking, modernist showrooms, with typewriters and calculators displayed on pedestals like works of art.
It's been said that they inspired the Apple stores.
"The Arduino project began in 2005 as a tool for students at the Interaction Design Institute Ivrea"
"The institute was based in the former Olivetti Study and Research Centre..."
If you happen to pass by Ivrea (short trip from Turin or Milan) there is a very nice small museum which showcases most of the machines mentioned. It has also a working Programma 101 and if you are lucky there might be a volounteer that can demo it. There also volounteer giving guided tours and if you are with kids you have the option to have them do a workshop (includes some 3d printing).
Our school had an Olivetti PC (286), which was memorable for two reasons: it was faster than my own 286 (surprising because I thought they were running at the same clock speed), and it was the only one. Indeed, it was the only Olivetti PC I'd seen anywhere.
I was 11 when my school got donated an Olivetti 286. This was in the early 2000s and to this day it remains the only one that I've seen and used (it ran MS-DOS 4.0 & came with a manual).
Readit News
The article mentions worker housing and urban planning in passing, then moves on. But that was the strategy. Ivrea wasn't welfare—it was integrated design. Factory, housing, schools, public spaces all operating under one coherent philosophy: machines and lives should both be beautiful and functional.
Search "Olivetti negozio", "fabbrica" or "architettura"—the retail design and factory architecture show it, decades before Apple. But more importantly, search for Adriano's writing on the Community Movement. He believed you couldn't separate good design from good society. The red typewriter wasn't just aesthetics; it was a statement about human dignity.
That's why Olivetti succeeded where technically equivalent competitors didn't. They engineered for humans, not just machines. Beauty, culture, and production were one integrated system.
The article's strength—technical rigor and business detail—accidentally proves the weakness: it treats design and culture as separate from engineering. Olivetti proved they're the same thing.
(I have a working M10 from 1983. Still remarkable machine—that tiltable screen, the integrated design. They were still building for humans, not just specs.)
Ps.Adriano is my biological grandfather. Pps.i posted the link before, but didnt get much traction.
Admin at the linked domain.
Deleted Comment
Two decades ago I randomly found myself in a tiny lecture room with a Very Important Manager from a Very Big European Bank. She started her talk stating "In the '80s, the Italian politics had to choose between the economic model of the Olivetti's family and that of the Agnelli's family. They choose Agnelli's. That was a mistake." Followed by a long string of expletives.
For context and for contrast, the Agnelli family was the owner of FIAT, then the biggest private employers in Italy. They were strongly anti-unions. They even bought the most important newspaper in Turin (the headquartiers of FIAT) to suppress reports of workers initiatives and strikes.
The fall of Berlin wall was signalling that politicians were all with "us".
And also the Waldensians https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waldensians
https://zoningthegardenstate.wordpress.com/2020/10/04/the-pr...
They likely think about that missed opportunity deeply in their corporate culture.
I don't know the story of how they let that get away.
"Such was the secrecy surrounding the ARM CPU project that when Olivetti were negotiating to take a controlling share of Acorn in 1985, they were not told about the development team until after the negotiations had been finalised...
"Olivetti would eventually relinquish majority control of Acorn in early 1996, selling shares to US and UK investment groups to leave the company with a shareholding in Acorn of around 45%."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acorn_Computers
Deleted Comment
Reading these comments is interesting—for most of you it's nostalgia for nice hardware. In Italy it hits different. We grew up hearing about Olivetti as this national wound. Adriano dies in 1960, Tchou in a car crash a year later, electronics division sold to GE. It gets brought up whenever people complain about "cervelli in fuga" (brain drain)—look, we once had this company that attracted top talent and led the world, and we let it slip away.
I've been living abroad for 10 years now and the irony isn't lost on me. The machines were great. But in Italy what stings is the what-could-have-been.
Such a nice memory :)
I also had a 'faulty' Olivetti inkjet printer that was written off under warranty with a mysterious fault. I eventually managed to fix it by bending the metal paper detector arm so that it slotted properly into the optical sensor - it was a little out of whack and the sensor sometimes couldn't work out whether there was paper in the tray.
I have a complaint however. One family of desktops seemed to demand blood sacrifice every time they were serviced. You’d open the machine, replace the failed drive, test, close it up, and a cut would appear in your hand. I don’t remember cutting my hand on the sharp edges inside, but there was always a cut afterwards.
It's been said that they inspired the Apple stores.
https://www.archdaily.com/155074/ad-classics-olivetti-showro...
https://www.printmag.com/daily-heller/the-daily-heller-i-los...
https://www.museotecnologicamente.it/category/collezione/