improve it or discuss these issues on the talk page . learn how and when to remove these template messages this article may require cleanup to meet wikipedia s quality standards . no cleanup reason has been specified . please help improve this article if you can . february 2011 learn how and when to remove this template message this article s lead section may not adequately summarize key points of its contents . please consider expanding the lead to provide an accessible overview of all important aspects of the article . please discuss this issue on the article s talk page . may 2010 learn how and when to remove this template message olivetti s.p.a. type subsidiary industry information technology founded 1908 ; 108 years ago 1908 founder camillo olivetti headquarters ivrea italy area served europe south america key people simone battiferri chairman riccardo delleani ceo products personal computers computer printers typewriters calculators microsystems photocopiers computer peripherals hardware revenue 227 million 2014 1 number of employees 582 2014 1 parent telecom italia website olivetti.it olivetti s.p.a. is an italian manufacturer of typewriters computers tablets smartphones printers and other such business products as calculators and fax machines . headquartered in ivrea province of turin the company has been part of the telecom italia group since 2003 . 2 the first commercial programmable desktop computer the programma 101 was produced by olivetti in 1964 and was a commercial success . contents 1 founding 2 design 3 typewriters 4 computers 5 end of computer production 6 peripheral 7 end of olivetti as a separate company 8 rebirth and resumption of computer production 9 smartphones 10 see also 11 references 12 external links founding edit olivetti m40 typewriter 1930 designed by camillo olivetti with gino levi martinoli museo nazionale della scienza e della tecnologia leonardo da vinci milan . the company was founded as a typewriter manufacturer by camillo olivetti in 1908 in ivrea italy . 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 the first commercially produced personal computer . in the 1970s and 1980s they were the biggest manufacturer for office machines in europe and 2nd biggest pc vendor behind ibm in europe . in 1980 olivetti is distributed in indonesia through dragon computer & communication . design edit the olivetti lettera 22 typewriter designed by marcello nizzoli in 1950 olivetti was famous for the attention it gave to design a preoccupation with design developed into a comprehensive corporate philosophy which embraced everything from the shape of a space bar to the color scheme for an advertising poster . jonathan martin international directory of company histories 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 mus e des arts d coratifs in paris in 1969 toured five other cities . 3 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 egon eiermann figini pollini ignazio gardella bbpr and many others . 4 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 . 5 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 . 6 during the 1970s olivetti manufactured and sold two ranges 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 its products . during his activity as art director from 1950 olivetti s graphic design obtained several international awards he designed impressive works that created the olivetti image and were an emblematic italian reference in the history of 20th century design . 7 those designers also created the olivetti synthesis office furniture series which mainly were used to be installed in olivetti s own head and worldwide branch offices and show rooms . quite unknown is also that olivetti produced some industrial production machinery like metal working machines of the horizon series . typewriters edit olivetti began with mechanical typewriters when the company was founded in 1909 and produced them until the mid 1990s . until the mid 1960s they were fully mechanical and there were designs like the portable olivetti valentine designed by ettore sottsass . with the tekne editor series and praxis 48 some of the first electromechanical typewriters were introduced . the editor series was used for speed typing championship competition . the editor 5 from 1969 was the top model of that series with proportional spacing and the ability to support justified text borders . in 1972 the electromechanical typeball machines of the lexicon 90 to 94c series were introduced as competitors to the ibm selectric typewriters the top model 94c supported proportional spacing and justified text borders like editor 5 and lift off correction . in 1978 olivetti was one of the first manufacturers to introduce electronic daisywheel printer based word processing machines called tes 401 and tes 501 . later the et series typewriters without or with lcd and different levels of text editing capabilities were popular in offices . models in that line were et 121 et 201 et 221 et 225 et 231 et 351 et 109 et 110 et 111 et 112 et 115 et 116 et 2000 et 2100 et 2200 et 2250 et 2300 et 2400 and et 2500 . for home users in 1982 the praxis 35 praxis 40 and 45d were some of the first portable electronic typewriters later olivetti added the praxis 20 et compact 50 et compact 60 et compact 70 et compact 65 66 the et personal series and linea 101 the top model were 8 lines lcd based portables like top 100 and studio 801 with the possibility to save the text to 3 5 inch floppy disk . the professional line became an upgrade with the etv series video typewriters based on cp m operating system etv 240 etv 250 etv 300 etv 350 and later ms dos operating system based etv 260 etv 500 etv 2700 etv 2900 etv 4000s word processing systems having floppy drives or even harddisk . some of them etv 300 350 500 2900 were external boxes which could be connected through optional serial interface to many of the et series office typewriters the others were fully integrated having an external monitor which could be installed on a holder over the desk . most of the et etv praxis series electronic typewriters were designed by marion bellini . by 1994 olivetti stopped production of typewriters as most users had transitioned to personal computers . computers edit olivetti s programma 101 is considered the first commercial desktop computer . exhibition at museo nazionale della scienza e della tecnologia leonardo da vinci milan . between 1955 and 1964 olivetti developed some of the first transistorized mainframe computer systems such as the elea 9003 . although 40 large commercial 9003 and over 100 smaller 6001 scientific machines were completed and leased to customers to 1964 low sales loss of two key managers and financial instability caused olivetti to withdraw from the field in 1964 . in 1965 olivetti released the programma 101 considered the first commercial desktop personal computer . it was saved from the sale of the computer division to ge thanks to an employee gastone garziera who spent successive nights changing the internal categorization of the product from computer to calculator so leaving the small team in olivetti and creating some awkward situations in the office since that space was now owned by ge . 8 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 . the m24 was sold in north america as the at & t 6300 . olivetti also manufactured the at & t 6300 plus which could run both dos and unix . 9 the m24 in the us also was sold as xerox 6060 . the m28 was olivetti s first pc to have the intel 80286 processor . in 1983 olivetti produced its m10 laptop computer a 8085 based workalike of the successful radio shack trs 80 model 100 which it marketed in europe . 10 these were the first laptops to sell in million unit quantities though the it olivetti m10 itself only attained sales figures in the tens of thousands and went out of production within two years . 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 . at the same time olivetti also tried to compete with schneider europc with the ms dos based prodest pc1 but without luck . in 1987 olivetti introduced the lsx line of computers which was based on the motorola 68k processor . they could run either mos or olivetti s unix x os . 11 in 1989 olivetti introduced the 80486 based next generation of lsx workstations with the lsx 5020 with eisa bus it was shown in cebit 1989 as computing platform cp486 . in 1990 olivetti had its own distribution network in new zealand through essentially software ltd. 12 owned by gary mcnabb located at mt. eden in auckland and wellington where an olivetti m300 100 16 mhz pcs with 80386sx cpu were sold for nz 7395 and used as graphical work station for design houses using corel draw as graphical program . the new zealand distribution stopped in 1991 when olivetti could not supply their pcs . 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 like the m21 portable based on m24 and the m15 . also later olivetti produced interesting laptops like m111 m211 s20 d33 philos and echos series . a very interesting subnotebook was the olivetti quaderno about the same size as an a5 paper it was the grandfather of the netbooks