one of the world's leading computermakers in the 1950s was an Italiantypewriter manufacturer olivetti wasfounded in Northern Italy as a maker offine mechanical typewriters but thecompany's Visionary leader Adrianoolivetti fervently believed that itsfuture laid in electronics he recruiteda brilliant Chinese Italian from theUnited States to produce a world leadingcomputer and they deliveredfor a brief time olivetti was capable ofchallenging IBM itself until tragedystruck in this video we're going to lookat an Italian computer pioneerbut first let me talk about theasianometry patreon Early Access membersget to see new videos and selectedreferences for those videos before therelease of the public it helped supportthe videos and I appreciate every pledgeand I recently added an annualsubscription option too thanks and onwith the showMario 2 was born in 1924 in Rome one ofthree childrenhis parents were Republic of Chinadiplomats to Vatican City Italy in the1920s is experiencing the rise offascism the Mario and his siblings livedlife in somewhat of a bubble away fromthe chaos and speaking Chinese at homeMario proved to be a promising studentgifted with an analytical mind and aProficiency in mathematics yet at thesame time he had a talent for music anda passion for philosophy people who knewhim remarked on his cultured and elegantheirover six feet tall Wicked smart andquite handsome Mario had manygirlfriends and easily struckfriendships with his classmates thosefriendships would play a big role in hisfuture in computersin the 1930s Japan invaded the Republicof China starting the secondsino-japanese war Italy's militaryalliance with Japan signed in 1940 witha tripartite Act made them Japan's Allyas a result the Republic of China closedits missions in Rome Mario's father Ianconsidered returning to China butdecided to take up a new position sothat his children might continue theireducation in Italyin 1942 Mario entered the engineeringInstitute at the LA Sapienza Universityhowever his father insists that Mariogoes to United States rather than Europefor his secondary education so Mariowins a scholarship to Washington D.Che spends the majority of World War IIin the United States graduating with abachelor's in electrical engineeringfrom Catholic University of America in1947.in 1949 he earns a masters from thePolytechnic Institute of Brooklyn nowpart of NYU times were hard in Americaback then for a han Chinese Mario studyduring the day and worked as anelectrician at nightafter a brief stint has a TV partsconsultant for a copyright law firmMario becomes an associate professor atColumbia University earning about fourthousand five hundred dollars a yearvery good money for the time but twoLongs for his home in Italyin 1908 a man named Camilo olivettifounded the olivetti company in ivria atown in Northern Italybore into a well-to-do family Camilloworked in London and toured the UnitedStates there he saw the new inventionsbeing created by people like Edison andwas inspiredhe started producing typewriters on hisown his first breakout typewriter wasthe M1 no relation to the Apple chipthe olivetti M1 distinguished itselfbecause it was very well made and peoplecould rapidly type on its Keysunderrated benefitpeople love the design and craftsmanshipof these olivetti typewriters Camilloused to brag that his M20 typewriter notonly type faster than its competitorsbut that you can throw it out of awindow without Dent it was nighindestructiblethe company grew well in the 1920sCamillo's son Adriano joins the businessand becomes general manager heinstitutes new work practices broughtover from the United States which weresuccessfulby 1933 the company and its 870employees produced nearly 25 000typewriters a yearthe next year the company beginsresearching and producing mechanicalcalculator machinesin 1940 olivetti introduces the Samamc4s adding machine their firstmechanical calculatorthen came the war the olivetes hadJewish ancestry Camilo passed away in1943 and Adriano flees to Switzerland in1944. he returns a few years after theend of the warbusiness boomed in these post-war daysthe company grew its capital 10 timesover from 1947 to 1951 on the back ofstrong export sales their products notonly retained their incrediblecraftsmanship but were also sold by anaggressive Sales Force One Frenchcompetitor complainedthe trouble with competing with oliveEddie is that if you throw two of theirmen out the door another one will betrying to climb into the windowproducts like the Lexicon 80 typewriterare recognized as iconic designs worthyof a museumthe Museum of Modern Art exhibitedolivetti typewriters in 1952 saying in abrochurethe olivetti company many critics agreeis the leading Corporation in theWestern World in the field of design forpatronage and architecture productdesign and advertising it would indeedbe difficult to name a secondin some ways olivetti was like the appleof its day iconic design well-madeproducts and with a Visionary leader atthe helmthat Visionary Adriano olivetti wasracing ahead towards an electronicfuturein 1949 olivetti struck a retail salespartnership with the french punch CardMaker bull Bowl had just entered thecomputer business giving Adriano andolivetti a window into this technologya year later in 1950 all of Eddie triedto start an Italian computer projectwith Italy's inacc Computing Center butthe project did not move forward due toa lack of government fundingthis persistent pursuit of computersmust have confused many people butAdriana was convinced that the futurewas in electronics he foresaw theelectronic data processor to be at theheart of the quote Office of the futureend quote and wanted to make itin 1952 olivetti sets up a lab a NewCanaan Connecticut to monitor newcomputer Technologies Adriana wants asimilar lab in Italy so he travels toNew York City to recruit talents tostaff itthere are a few stories floating aroundabout how Adriano olivetti and Mario 2first met I think one such storysuggests that they were introduced bythe famous physicist Enrico Fermibut this is what I think is mostplausible Mario went to school with aman named guliamo negre negri himself anotable jurist in his career worked inolivetti's foreign trade office at thetimeso when Adriano sought a talentedengineer for his lab negri put him intouch with Mario Mario recalled in alater interview Adriano being impressedby the Chinese Italian's human qualitiesas well as his obvious expertise inelectronic computersby the end of the job interview the 30year old Mario 2 decides that he willreturn to Italy to run the olivettielectronic research laboratory and putsin his leave of absence from Colombianow let us travel across the Atlantic toItaly sometime in the spring of 1954 theUniversity of Pisa received a largeamount of money from several localgovernments to help build a particleaccelerator designed by their physicsInstitute unfortunately the authoritieseventually built that syncotron in atown closer to Rome this toppled eggonto the faces of the Pisa physicistswho suddenly needed to come up withsomething else to do with this money toraise the area's prestigeafter a long discussion in the summer of1954 they proposed to use some of theallocated funds worth about 2 millioneuro today to build an electroniccomputer for scientific research Italyhad recently imported two of its firstcomputers Italy's inacc had an EnglishFerrante Mark 1 computer named finac andMilan's Polytechnic numericalcomputation Center bought acrc-102a for scientific research andeducating people in computer sciencelike I said those two computers camefrom other countries this proposedcomputer would be the first such to bedesigned and built in Italyhowever local politicians mayor of PisaRonaldo pagni and provincial presidentAntonio maccarone leaned towardsskepticism synchrotrons and other suchthings were related to atomic energywere hot at the time who cares about acomputerin response the Pisa physicistsrecruited the Towering Enrico Fermi theNobel prize-winning Italian physicist heis well known for his role in designingthe first nuclear reactor and the atomicbombFermi wrote a letter to the Consortiumin charge endorsing the computer optionhas quote by far the best choice endquote red and October 4th meeting theletter swayed the balance and everyonein Pisa largely fell onto the idea ofbuilding a computerthe project sought a private partner andolivetti leapt at the chance in March1955 Mario Drew Drew up a four-year planfor the cep Pisa electronic computerprojecta year later in May 1956 the two sealeda formal agreement the university wouldprovide free access to any patents andalready pledged 10 million layer inannual expenditure and to loan staff forthe projectthe cep was eventually delivered in 1961after a year and a half delay itoperated for about seven years andworked well but by then the vacuum tubebased computer was already far behind ASGlobal competitors we will remember itmore for kickstarting Eliain the spring of 1955 Mario recruits ateam of physicists and Engineers to joinhis laboratory he specifically wantedyounger people saying new things areonly done with young people Only theYoung throw themselves into it withenthusiasm and collaborate in harmonywithout ego and without the obstaclesderived from a conventional mindsetof course he himself was only about 30at the timeover hundreds of job interviews Mariofocused Less on candidates academicknowledge and more on their ideas andreal world projectsthe first hire Lucio Borriello remembersI was hired and arrived in Pisa at theend of October 1955. the first to arriveof the newly forming group Mario Chutold me you will take care of massstorage and I internally wondered whatthat wasthey were all Pioneers in early 1956 thelaboratory was moved to a mansion inbarbaracina a residential suburb of Pisaone technician arriving there recallsclimbing to the first floor of the villaand looking out to the balcony You CouldSee Fields and trees as far as the eyecould see in this Pleasant place thethoroughbreds of dormello ogiata came toWinter in those years it wasn't unusualto see the great ribot pass byin case you're wondering like I wasRipple was a famous thoroughbredracehorse one of the most famous of the20th centurycontinuing on Mario 2's office wasfurnished almost spartanly withfurniture produced by olivetti Iremember perfectly the rich library withvolumes all strictly in Englishthere the team self-educated themselveson this new Dynamic fieldafter about a year they eventuallyproduced their first computer prototypemachine zero this computer was based ona Von Neumann machine and thus had acalculations unit a control unit tomanage calculation operations and acentral memory unit to store bothprograms and program datamachine zero was later renamed to theElia 9001 Elia stands for I'm not goingto try to pronounce that electronicautomatic computerthis first Elia 9001 was made from wiresand vacuum tubes the tubes were the sizeof eggs and ran extremely hot the thingfunctioned but barely soone spring Day in 1957 Adriano olivettihis son Roberto and other companyExecutives arrived at the factory tolook at machine zero people recall Marioseemed nervous and a little worried forthe first time in a whileMario showed the guests the new computerand how it worked despite itsshortcomings Adriano was sufficientlyimpressed to give the green light forthe next step in the computer projectthe team plunged into that next big steptransistors transistors were smallerused less power and did not have thesame heat issues this second prototypethe 9002 was so successful that Mario inhis lab of 30 convinces Adriano totransistorize the whole thingone of the works major issues had beenthe lack of solid-state semiconductorslater Elia computers would use over onehundred thousand transistors and diodesAdriano olivetti his son Roberto andMario Zhu are all convinced thattransistors and other solid-stateElectronics were key to unlockingTechnology's futurebut they didn't want to import them fromthe United States or West Germany or theNetherlands they wanted to make themright here in Italyso in 1957 Adriano and his friendvirgilo floriani founder of the Italiantelecommunications company teletrapartnered 50 50 to found a companycalled societa general semiconductory orSGS SGS sets up a small lab in Milan ayear later a factory in nearby agrat totake advantage of Milan's big industrialbase with a design license from GeneralElectric they start producing theirfirst germanium diodes in 1959.a year later though they would reach outto Fairchild semiconductor and licensetheir planar process for producingtransistors dumping germanium forsiliconone of the many talented Engineers topass through sgs's stores is Federicofejin then just 19 years old he laterjoined Intel and helped design the Intel4004 the first commercial microprocessorover the next few decades the companystruck the right balance of selectivetechnology transfer through Partnershipsand Indigenous research to carve out agood niche in linear circuitsSGS continues to survive to this day in1987 they merged with the Frenchsemiconductor maker Thompson to createSGS Thompson they later changed thatname to St microelectronics today thereare one of Europe's leadingsemiconductor makers a perhapssurprising consequence of all of Eddie'sworkthe fully transistorized 9003 computeris completed in 1959 and it is a beautypowered by sgs's germanium transistorsthe 9003 was one of the first fullytransistorized stored program computersreleased shortly after IBM 7070 modelsin 1958.you can input information into thecomputer using a keyboard paper tapereader and punch card readerit can output information to you with acard punch Magnetic Tape or a printerit was capable of Performing 5000Edition operations per second whichkinda sounds like a lot to comparetoday's Nvidia h100 AI accelerator cando up to four quadrillion floating Pointoperations each second that also soundslike a lotnotably the computer used magnetic corememory to store and run programs thissystem also known as ferrite core memoryis made up of sets of tiny magneticRings strung up with fine copper wiresand gridseach of these rings can carry a magneticfield in a clockwise or counterclockwiseDirection This Maps out to either a oneor a zero this memory could be expandedfrom twenty thousand characters to 160000.workers on the ground floor of thetwo-floor olivetti production factory inMilan wove these core memories togetherby hand this Factory would eventuallyemploy a thousand peoplemagnetic core memory is a predecessor tothe memory chips of today and it gavethe 9003 the power to run up to threeprograms at the same timemulti-programming if it's work were tobe interrupted then it could run anautomatic program to handle thingsthe computer's industrial design wascrafted by the Italian architect itsasthe division's head designersuch SAS faced a compelling problem heneeded to create a design for anentirely new category of machines withno real precedencehe knew that the 9003 would beincredibly expensive about 9.2 millioneuro today as a result the machineneeded to look good for its core buyersof universities Banks and governmentagencieslike Adriano sotzas had a utopian visionfor computer technology they envisioneda class of Bourgeois intellectualsworking together in an enlightenedcapitalist Societyin such a world a computer would not bea machine like in a factory but ratherFurniture users at work should be ableto casually move around their rooms andbe surrounded by their computer withoutdiscomfortso success designed a modular flexiblesystem made up of metal framed cabinetsmuch like Furniture the cabinets weregiven colored Stripes per their functionsotas wrote the computer is like a bullwho fights in the arena and who hasribbons because you decorate bowls whenthey fight the computer for me is a bullit is like a powerful monsteryou can easily reconfigure the setup inorder to give it this flexibility theElia 9003 had a red colored busway ofwires and power cables suspended AboveThis was a big differentiator from theIBM computers which buried those underthe floorthe design also considered ergonomic andhuman factors for instance the computercabinets were about 150 centimeters tallthis was because computers were verynoisy back then so technicians needed tobe able to make eye contact with oneanotherthis wonderful design won such theprestigious Golden Compass industrialdesign prize in 1959.overall this time Mario 2 managed thelab with Incredible skill the ChineseItalian was a natural leader he ranthings with absolute Authority butdefinitely employed that Authority insuch a way to make people of all sortsand backgrounds buy-in to his missionit was not a micromanager rather heassigned broad tasks and goals to histeams and let them go about it withoutmaking a big deal of how they did it andlike any great manager he shielded hisguys from interference from authoritiesback at headquarters in IsraelMario's Family upbringing and diplomacyendowed him with the right tools tosoothe big egos call nerves and tensionsand give everyone their own do despitethe high pressure and intense work theygot along with each otherthe first 9003 was installed in November1959 in the headquarters of a Milantextile Factory called marzotto thesecond was installed at one of theworld's oldest surviving Banks the MonteDei pashi di Sienna this computer waseventually preserved and can still beseen todaythe computer received a fair amount ofpublicity their computer Factory wasfeatured in the popular magazine epochathe oliveti film office produced adocumentary called Elia class 9000 whichdiscussed how computers can helpindustryover 40 9003s were produced forcustomers eventually taking 30 percentof the Italian computer Market in theearly 1960scustomers included Banks Automotiveclubs and ini the oil companythen in April 1961 olivetti launched acheaper version of the 9003 the Elia6001 from 1961 to 1965 the 6001 wouldsell about 100 units to universities andsmall businesses it became a standardtool set for University programmingcentersdespite the success Elia suffered manyproduct challengesfirst and foremost was the software fromthe very start elia's developmentheavily focused on its Hardware aspectsthis sort of makes sense all of Eddiebegan with typewriters and Hardwarefor this reason the Elia 9003development team gave insufficientresources to the software which causedmany problems later onthe small software team spent most oftheir time studying high-level languagescompletely neglecting applicationsoftware this was left to another teamat olivetti which scrambled to producesoftware for whatever the customerneeded as a result the Innovativemulti-programming feature I mentionedearlier was never used in practiceElia also suffered a cash issuefollowing IBM's practices thesecomputers were not sold but ratherrented to customers it should be fine inthe long term but in the short termRevenue fell far short of cost a cashtiming mismatchthis problem was worsened by the factthat all of Eddie's computer effortswere entirely self-funded without anyfinancial support from the nationalgovernment in an interview Mario saidcurrently we can consider ourselves atthe same level as our competitors from aqualitative point of view however othersreceived enormous aid from the state theUnited States allocates large sums forelectronic research especially formilitary purposes Great Britain alsospends millions of pounds olivetti'seffort is relatively notable but othershave a more secure future than oursbeing helped by the statethis issue becomes far more serious forall of Eddie's computer division as thecompany began to run into difficultyin October 1959 Adriano purchases one ofhis American competitors UnderwoodUnderwood is a typewriter manufacturerfounded back in 1895 that had once beenan innovator there were the originalinspiration for Camilo olivetti when hevisited the United States in the 1920sbut the company had fallen into distressthey spent years paying a high dividendrather than investing in their businessleaving their equipment decades out ofdatethey allowed IBM and Remington ran toLeapFrog them in the electronictypewriter Market leaving them only withan overpriced product in a decliningmanual typewriter Marketunable to find an American acquirer theyfinally took all of Eddie's offer seeingit as Mana from heavenwith this purchase Adriana wanted to useUnderwood's massive commercial Networkto tap the American Market Olive EddieAmerica in an Underwood combined wouldgross over 90 million dollars in 1959revenues making it a major player in themarketand all of Eddie's domestic Market waslosing Terror protections due to theforthcoming European Community takingover the American Underwood Factorywould give greater access to UnitedStateshis management team examined the booksand were very worried but Adrianobelieved he can turn them aroundolivetti eventually spent 92 milliondollars nearly a billion dollars todayto purchase 69 percent of the companysadly Adriano never made good on hispledge to turn Underwood around onFebruary 27 1960 just a few months afterthe Underwood takeover he died of anapparent heart attack in a train inSwitzerland he was 58 years oldhis death derailed the work ofintegrating Underwood into olivetti hewas overseeing the stock sale to fundthe acquisition and was making plans forslimming down Underwood's 18 productlines to just threea year later in November 1961 tragedystruck again Mario 2 was killed in a carcrashhe had set out for a softwaredevelopment meeting that morning inIsrael a two-hour drive away he wasriding in a Buick Skylark with hiscompany driverhe had apparently liked that car a lotjokingly telling designer satsas you seenow I am no longer afraid to go fromMilan to ivriathe fastest way there is the Milan Turinback then a three-lane highway with ashared passing Lane this Lane was calledsuicide alley for its frequent head-oncollisionsone point where you have to go over aRailway Bridge is particularly dangerousbecause there is little visibility an 87year old driver was driving a two tothree ton truck and saw Drew's Buickcoming at him after overtaking anothertruck the truck hit the Buick head onkilling both two and his driverMario 2 was then 37 years old and leftbehind a wife and two childrentheir deaths came at the worst possibletime Olive Eddie in the early 1960s wasa heavily leveraged company in desperateneed of stable leadershiptheir Bank debts grew almost five timesover from 7.6 million in 1958 to 32.5million at the end of 1963. many ofthese debts were held by American Banksthis debt is almost entirely due to thedisastrous Underwood acquisition thesubsidiary's net worth by then wasnegative 8.6 million dollarsat the same time the company's fortuneswere hit by both a broad economicdownturn and a competitive upsurge fromJapanese exports warehouses filled withunsold productsolivetti's publicly traded shares fellfrom 11 000 Lira at the start of 1962 toabout 1500 lira in March 1964.the company fell into financialdifficulty and had to be rescued as aresult the olivetti family lost controlover their company to an interventiongroup consisting of Fiat Pirelli and afew Banksthe group told top management and theolivetti family that the company had toeither sell Underwood or the electronicsdivision management managed to convincethe banks that they could turn Underwoodaround by closing sales branches andreplacing them with a network of salesagentsthis left the electronics division withthe Italian government uninterested in abailout all of Eddie sold a 75 share intheir computer division to GeneralElectric in September 1964. this salecame a month after GE bought the Frenchcomputer Maker bullthe division had other products in theworks at the time of the sale thisincluded the 9004 successor to the 9003and the Elia 4001 a medium-sizedcalculator most of these left to go toGeneral Electric but a small team stayedwith the original olivetti companyPierre gyrogo peroto had worked withMario 2 on the first Ilia project he didnot want to move to GE so Robertoolivetti arranged to keep him and a fewothers around peroto eventually startedworking on a project that came to him ina dreamI dreamed of a friendly machine to whichto delegate the operations producingmental fatigue and error a machine thatcould docily learn and then perform thatstored data and simple intuitiveinstructions whose use was withineveryone's capacity cheap and the samesize as other office devices whichpeople already usedsounds like a PC to meusing newly available silicontransistors cheaper delay line memorytechnology and an Innovative magneticprogram card they produced the programa101.the p101 was a programmable desktopcalculator kind of like the Wong 300from Wong labs it can do the four bigmath functions square roots and more youcan upload a program card and have itexecute operations on data in secondsintroduced in October 1965 a year beforethe Wong 300 it sold over 44 000 unitsin the United States NASA bought 10 ofthem and used them for the Apollo 11missionunfortunately all of Eddie's topmanagement was busy dealing with thelabor impact of the mechanicalbusinesses Decline and could not easilypivot to this new business ofprogrammable calculatorsit took another three years for olivettito release a successor to the p101 thelogos 328 calculator in 1968. newproducts took up to five years todevelop and release the boom faded andolivetti hasn't been relevant sinceI've read some conspiracy mongeringabout olivetti's dual tragediesthat Adrian olivetti and Mario 2 weremurdered by the Americans to protectIBM's Computing Monopoly there is a bookcalled The Mysterious Affair at olivettitalking about itit is hard for me to buy into thisTheory I don't doubt that the CIA can doevil conspiratorial things but it is notuncommon for a 58 year old man to diefrom a heart attack and two's caraccident did happen on a dangeroussection of Highway sometimes a spade isjust a spadepinning all of Eddie's fall on somenefarious American conspiracy cheapensthe lessons from their decline thefinancial distress and debt from theUnderwood acquisition are more thansufficient explanations if Adriano sobelieved in electronics being the futurewhy did he spend so much more money on afailing mechanical typewritermanufacturer perhaps he was dazzled bynostalgiaand success in the electronics divisionwas far from guaranteed even if both menlived alevedi's software deficiencieswere quite serious and the Europe of the1960s was far from ready to adoptComputing let alone personal computingthe one real question that I Ponder iswhy the Italian national governmentnever lifted a finger to save theirNational Champion computer maker atleast France launched planned calculafter GE took over their nationalchampion bullwhat couldn't the Italian government seein the potential of funding their ownIBM it is a real Miss and it leads oneto wonder what could have been for allof Eddie and the Italian computeralright everyone that's it for tonightthanks for watching subscribe to theChannel Sign up for the newsletter andI'll see you guys next time