Olivetti

Olivetti is part of Telecom Italia today, (2011).   It has a range of multi-function printers, tablet computers, point-of-sale equipment (POS) and specialist equipment for franking and weighing, public transport ticketing, document scanning and bank-book printing.  Olivetti very nearly managed a transition from typewriter maker to Global IT player but lacks the global recognition it once had. .

History

Olivetti originated a century ago as a typewriter maker.   In contrast to other typewriter makers like Blickensderfer and Oliver, Olivetti not only grew through most of the 20th Century, it bought several of its competitors, for instance Underwood. In the early 1960s Olivetti developed mainframe computers but sold that division to General electric. Olivetti nevertheless has a claim to have built the first PC with the Programma 101 programmable calculator. As the typewriter market went electronic Olivetti transformed itself into a very successful computer and printer maker. In the 1980s it was one of the best known names in IT. However around the millennium the company hit troubled times. The name is still present, however, and doing some interesting things.

Origins

Olivetti was founded in 1908 by Camillo Olivetti, an electrical engineer born in Ivrea and trained in the Politecnico di Torino where he studied under Galileo Ferraris (one of the inventors of AC motors and poly-phase distribution).

After graduating he spent time in London, developing a keen interest in socialism, federalism and local autonomy. In 1893 he and Galileo Ferraris attended the electricity congress in Chicago and he then spent time at Stanford University. Camillo visited various industrial concerns. He was specially inspired by the Underwood Typewriter Company, just then establishing itself.

On his return to Italy he established CGS a manufacturer of electrical measuring equipment and then Ing. C. Olivetti e C to manufacture typewriters, with a team of 20 people trained by himself. During the First world War production was turned over to the war effort. Afterwards typewriter production resumed with the M20 model. A foundry opened in 1922 and a new company Officina Meccanica Olivetti (OMO) to make machine tools for typewriter production.

In 1938 Camillo resigned as chairman of Olivetti in favour of his son Adriano. During the Second World War Camillo ran the machine tool factory and apparently wrote radical pamphlets. He went into hiding, but died in 1943.

Adriano Olivetti inherited not only his fathers factories but his interest in social affairs. Camillo imposed discipline, sobriety and learning on his family, provoking Adriano to rebellion. He studied chemistry, rather than mechanical engineering as his father wanted. After a brief time working in the factory he was pronounced undesirable to Mussolini's Fascist regime and his father sent him to the US, where he was impressed with the Taylorian model of production being used by Remington.

On his return in 1930, with his fathers approval he re-organised Olivetti into a factory with departments. Output per man hour doubled within 5 years. By 1933 Olivetti was building half the typewriters used in Italy. The benefits were shared with the Olivetti's growing number of workers as improved wages and shorter hours. Adriano joined the Fascist party and whilst it was still clear he disliked the regime some of his projects like building houses for his workers and a keen interest in urban planning fitted their interests as well. Towards the end of the war did his antifascist activities brought a term in jail and he sought refuge in Switzerland. During this exile he completed a book L'ordine politico delle comunità (the political order of communities)and after the war started a political movement Movimento Comunità. The Ivrea plants formed a Works Council with consultative powers on funding for social services and welfare. The company built housing estates and employed top architects in their design. Adriano's ideas might sometimes have been Utopian, sometimes corporatist, either way they paid off. By 1957 Olivetti workers were the best paid in the metallurgical industries.

Postwar production had a new emphasis on industrial design led by Marcello Nizzoli. In 1952 the US Museum of Modern Art held an exhibit titled "Olivetti: Design in Industry"; today.

Olivetti created the Divisumma electric calculator in 1948. Olivetti opened a computer research lab in New Canaan, USA in 1952 and a research lab in Pisa . In 1959 Olivetti bought the US firm of Underwoods, with 11,000 employees. Together with Telettra Olivetti founded SGS. Olivetti launched Italy's first electronic computer the Elea 9003 in 1959. Adriano himself died suddenly in 1960.

In 1964 poor finances and low sales forced Olivetti to sell the computer division to General Electric. They kept the calculator division and in 1965 launched the Programma 101. As well as the 4 arithmetic functions the Programma 101 had jump instructions, stopped for input and programs could be recorded on magnetic cards. It sold 44,000 units - a huge number for the time. HP had the success of the P101 in mind when they launched their own 9100A Model - the beginning of their rise as a computer company. (HP actually infringed some Olivetti patents and had to pay $900,000 in royalties).

1980s Computers

Olivetti became well known for computers and printers in the 1980s. In 1982 Olivetti produced the M20, based on a Z8000. This was followed by a series of Unix-based minicomputers. The Olivetti M24 was a PC-clone and proved very popular.

Olivetti successfully developed a line of computer products and took over the UK's ‘ Acorn Computer ’ in the 1980s. However in the 1990s the rather diverse computer product line seems to have overstretched abilities. Perhaps as a bit of a conglomerate they were also outpaced by American companies like Compaq, Dell and Packard Bell focused on PCs. Meanwhile the typewriter business which had sustained the company for years was at an end.

Olivetti were interested in computers from the 1950s on.   To recover from a financial crisis in the 1960s they sold the computer division but kept calculators and the P101. In the 1980s there were a range of machines from accounting systems to Unix servers and IBM-clone PCs. So Olivetti knew the computer market well. Nevertheless Olivetti seem to have been caught short by the sudden collapse of the typewriter market in the early 1990s as Windows 3 took off. That seems to have been the stress point - it took IBM out of the printer market leaving Lexmark. Within a couple of years it finished Smith Corona.   Brother, Canon and Epson had good printer lines by that time do the demise of typewriters meant instability but they had product lines that could grow, based on continuing research.

In 1999 a Luxembourg based company called Bell S.A, took a controlling stake in Olivetti, selling it to Pirelli and Benetton. Olivetti itself then lunched a bid for Telecom Italia.

After a somewhat tortuous history Olivetti has emerged as a subsidiary of Telecom Italia and is now making Tablet computers, among other things.

Olivetti also advertise that they are one of the few companies worldwide with R&D and production facilities for thermal inkjet printheads, inks and printing systems. One of their advertised interests is MEMS (Micro-Electro Mechanical Systems for life-science applications .