Programma 101, the first commercial “desktop computer”

It's terrible that modern Italians no longer understand that our "design" culture can be applied to computers as much it is applied to shoes, food, clothes. It's the same process as the Programma 101 shows, and the engineering background is still here.

"It is usually called a printing programmable calculator or desktop calculator [...] in order to be able to overcome the fears of computers."

We still do the same, but now we call it a smartphone.

It's astonishing to find Olivetti's products in the 60s. They had the aesthetic appeal Apple put into their lines decades later, and seemed like good engineering underneath the style too.

Also, they advertised the same value, making the work easier, leaner, but with fancy desks geometry, cute drawers and typewriters.

Progress never change.

ps: I read in a book that Olivetti's effort to get into the digital computers market died because of a bad bet from their latest owner (De Benedetti failed attempt at taking over https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soci%C3%A9t%C3%A9_G%C3%A9n%C3%... in 1980).

As someone who had the awesome pleasure of a Uncle who started in System Admin in the 1960s and a dad who bought a Sol 20 in 1976 I have to say it doesn't seem very computery. I loved programming that Sol 20 in basic and spend hours fixing it or customizing the programs. Heck a count of 1 to 1,000,000 took over 2 days to finish.