5 ms·

Olivetti – Programma 101 (1967) [video]

58 points by turrini 9y ago

simonebrunozzi 9y ago
If you are not familiar with Olivetti (the company), or the founder's son (Adriano), you should. In a parallel universe, Olivetti is the market leader in chip manufacturing, and Intel never existed.
- cedivad 9y ago
  In a parallel universe, SV is in Italy. Yeah, sure. Let's keep dreaming, fellow Italian.
  - guidocarosella 9y ago
    You should read this ebook, fellow Italian. You can download it for free, in our universe. http://giorgiogaruzzo.com/ http://giorgiogaruzzo.com/
  - jaclaz 9y ago
    Well, in this universe, the actual design/development of new Olivetti PC related models, actually happened in Cupertino, JFYI (in Italian): http://www.storiaolivetti.it/percorso.asp?idPercorso=608 http://www.storiaolivetti.it/percorso.asp?idPercorso=608 https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olivetti_Advanced_Technology_Center https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olivetti_Advanced_Technology_C... It must be the air in Silicn Valley ...
  - danso 9y ago
    This reminded me of the scene in "Sopranos", when Paulie visits a Starbucks-like cafe https://youtu.be/cUKJWsnAAXs?t=1m1s https://youtu.be/cUKJWsnAAXs?t=1m1s
- Angostura 9y ago
  I remember visiting the Olivetti Research Labs in Cambridge in about 1987 and interviewing Herman Hausser and Andy Hopper (I was a tech journalist many moons ago) Some of the stuff they were doing was really innovative. Every member of staff wore 'Active Badges' containing something that today sounds rather like an RFID chip. and sensors blanketing the building You could Telnet into the main campus machine and Finger someone's name and get the response 'Andy Hopper was last seen 5 minutes ago, by the lifts, on the ground floor'. I thought that was dead cool at the time.
  - pmarreck 9y ago
    That would be dead cool even now!
thomasdd 9y ago
There is a great movie about the life of Adriano Olivetti. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2450898/ http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2450898/
pan69 9y ago
Ah, Olivetti. That brings back memories of the M24 my dad bought through his work, I think it was in '88. An 8086 at 8Mhz, 640Kb of RAM (more than enough :) and CGA color graphics (that's a whopping 4 simultaneous colors).
- zerkten 9y ago
  My Dad had one too, but I don't remember the date. It was probably one of the first in Northern Ireland at that time based on later discussions with him. I always gravitate to my Amiga when I visit home, but we still have the M24 knocking around. I wonder if it'll still have the old Lotus 1-2-3 spreadsheets he was working on.
nkkollaw 9y ago
As an Italian, it's so sad to see how the second PC (and possibly first commercially-viable PC?) was Italian and it all went downhill from there :-/
- agumonkey 9y ago
  Do you know about https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Société_générale_de_Belgique https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Société_générale_de_Belgique ? apparently a failed venture on SGB caused De Benedetti to lose money impeding Olivetti to develop new computers in the 80s boom.
  - nkkollaw 9y ago
    I wasn't aware of that, but for sure it's a shame. We kind of got a small revenge on the hardware side with Arduino, although ruined by the trademark dispute in the US.
- pmarreck 9y ago
  Past performance will not necessarily reflect (and should not dictate) future returns :) Also, the Arab world is arguably worse off... Invented much of math, and is now dominated by ascientific theocracies
  - nkkollaw 9y ago
    > Past performance will not necessarily reflect (and should not dictate) future returns :) Not but you know--Bell, Microsoft, IBM and others are doing pretty well. > Also, the Arab world is arguably worse off... Invented much of math, and is now dominated by ascientific theocracies Hardly comparable. You're talking about stuff that happened thousands (5000? no idea) ago, Olivetti had a PC a handful of years before it took off and made many billionaires.
  - yakitori 9y ago
    > Also, the Arab world is arguably worse off... Invented much of math This is historically not true. Sure we get terms like "algebra", "algorithm", etc from the arab world, but the arab world didn't invent these mathematics ideas/fields. These ideas/fields go back to the mesopotamia and ancient greece. Also, the mathematical concepts developed throughout china, india, etc also. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_algebra https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_algebra https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Algorithm https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Algorithm Certainly the arab world made contributions to math but they certainly didn't invent most of math. > and is now dominated by ascientific theocracies Even during the islamic golden age, it was dominated by "ascientific" theocracies. One doesn't necessarily have anything to do with the other.
antirez 9y ago
In case you think this is fake revisionism and computer revolution and Italians don't mix well: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federico_Faggin https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federico_Faggin
- lou1306 9y ago
  I would say that Redis counts as a counterexample, too :)
  - antirez 9y ago
    You too gente :-) Redis is just the incarnation of technology available, so it does not provide any real added value in perspective, however people like Faggin are not isolated cases. Italians insist in believing that the creative force of our country is something lost in the history, but this is not true. For sure in the latest decades there was a serious issue due to the fact that school, once very rigid, became a joke now.
    - zedr 9y ago
      Do you think the gap was caused by a decline in the quality of education? I'm convinced the Italian software industry was set back in the Eighties due to the lack of laws protecting intellectual property. It was more convenient and risk-free to sell compilations of pirated software on datasettes in newspaper stands, than set up a software development company.
agumonkey 9y ago
going from home use, to stored programs, to multivariate math subroutine in 10 seconds
riffraff 9y ago
The businessman having his wife/secretary operate the machine poolside after a dip might be the best thing I've seen in advertisement ever.
- digi_owl 9y ago
  There is no way any company would dare pull that in the present political world... I found it more interesting when the engineer picked up the readied punchcard and filled in some numbers. I suspect that beyond the storage medium (these days he would probably open some Excel template file), this is what most computing is still about today.

58 points by turrini 9y ago

If you are not familiar with Olivetti (the company), or the founder's son (Adriano), you should. In a parallel universe, Olivetti is the market leader in chip manufacturing, and Intel never existed.

cedivad 9y ago
In a parallel universe, SV is in Italy. Yeah, sure. Let's keep dreaming, fellow Italian.
- guidocarosella 9y ago
  You should read this ebook, fellow Italian. You can download it for free, in our universe. http://giorgiogaruzzo.com/ http://giorgiogaruzzo.com/
- jaclaz 9y ago
  Well, in this universe, the actual design/development of new Olivetti PC related models, actually happened in Cupertino, JFYI (in Italian): http://www.storiaolivetti.it/percorso.asp?idPercorso=608 http://www.storiaolivetti.it/percorso.asp?idPercorso=608 https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olivetti_Advanced_Technology_Center https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olivetti_Advanced_Technology_C... It must be the air in Silicn Valley ...
- danso 9y ago
  This reminded me of the scene in "Sopranos", when Paulie visits a Starbucks-like cafe https://youtu.be/cUKJWsnAAXs?t=1m1s https://youtu.be/cUKJWsnAAXs?t=1m1s
Angostura 9y ago
I remember visiting the Olivetti Research Labs in Cambridge in about 1987 and interviewing Herman Hausser and Andy Hopper (I was a tech journalist many moons ago) Some of the stuff they were doing was really innovative. Every member of staff wore 'Active Badges' containing something that today sounds rather like an RFID chip. and sensors blanketing the building You could Telnet into the main campus machine and Finger someone's name and get the response 'Andy Hopper was last seen 5 minutes ago, by the lifts, on the ground floor'. I thought that was dead cool at the time.
- pmarreck 9y ago
  That would be dead cool even now!

thomasdd 9y ago

There is a great movie about the life of Adriano Olivetti. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2450898/ http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2450898/

pan69 9y ago

Ah, Olivetti. That brings back memories of the M24 my dad bought through his work, I think it was in '88. An 8086 at 8Mhz, 640Kb of RAM (more than enough :) and CGA color graphics (that's a whopping 4 simultaneous colors).

zerkten 9y ago
My Dad had one too, but I don't remember the date. It was probably one of the first in Northern Ireland at that time based on later discussions with him. I always gravitate to my Amiga when I visit home, but we still have the M24 knocking around. I wonder if it'll still have the old Lotus 1-2-3 spreadsheets he was working on.

nkkollaw 9y ago

As an Italian, it's so sad to see how the second PC (and possibly first commercially-viable PC?) was Italian and it all went downhill from there :-/

agumonkey 9y ago
Do you know about https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Société_générale_de_Belgique https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Société_générale_de_Belgique ? apparently a failed venture on SGB caused De Benedetti to lose money impeding Olivetti to develop new computers in the 80s boom.
- nkkollaw 9y ago
  I wasn't aware of that, but for sure it's a shame. We kind of got a small revenge on the hardware side with Arduino, although ruined by the trademark dispute in the US.
pmarreck 9y ago
Past performance will not necessarily reflect (and should not dictate) future returns :) Also, the Arab world is arguably worse off... Invented much of math, and is now dominated by ascientific theocracies
- nkkollaw 9y ago
  > Past performance will not necessarily reflect (and should not dictate) future returns :) Not but you know--Bell, Microsoft, IBM and others are doing pretty well. > Also, the Arab world is arguably worse off... Invented much of math, and is now dominated by ascientific theocracies Hardly comparable. You're talking about stuff that happened thousands (5000? no idea) ago, Olivetti had a PC a handful of years before it took off and made many billionaires.
- yakitori 9y ago
  > Also, the Arab world is arguably worse off... Invented much of math This is historically not true. Sure we get terms like "algebra", "algorithm", etc from the arab world, but the arab world didn't invent these mathematics ideas/fields. These ideas/fields go back to the mesopotamia and ancient greece. Also, the mathematical concepts developed throughout china, india, etc also. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_algebra https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_algebra https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Algorithm https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Algorithm Certainly the arab world made contributions to math but they certainly didn't invent most of math. > and is now dominated by ascientific theocracies Even during the islamic golden age, it was dominated by "ascientific" theocracies. One doesn't necessarily have anything to do with the other.

antirez 9y ago

In case you think this is fake revisionism and computer revolution and Italians don't mix well: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federico_Faggin https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federico_Faggin

lou1306 9y ago
I would say that Redis counts as a counterexample, too :)
- antirez 9y ago
  You too gente :-) Redis is just the incarnation of technology available, so it does not provide any real added value in perspective, however people like Faggin are not isolated cases. Italians insist in believing that the creative force of our country is something lost in the history, but this is not true. For sure in the latest decades there was a serious issue due to the fact that school, once very rigid, became a joke now.
  - zedr 9y ago
    Do you think the gap was caused by a decline in the quality of education? I'm convinced the Italian software industry was set back in the Eighties due to the lack of laws protecting intellectual property. It was more convenient and risk-free to sell compilations of pirated software on datasettes in newspaper stands, than set up a software development company.

agumonkey 9y ago

going from home use, to stored programs, to multivariate math subroutine in 10 seconds

riffraff 9y ago

The businessman having his wife/secretary operate the machine poolside after a dip might be the best thing I've seen in advertisement ever.

digi_owl 9y ago
There is no way any company would dare pull that in the present political world... I found it more interesting when the engineer picked up the readied punchcard and filled in some numbers. I suspect that beyond the storage medium (these days he would probably open some Excel template file), this is what most computing is still about today.