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Olivetti Programma 101: At the Origins of the Personal Computer

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Re: Olivetti Programma 101: At the Origins of the Personal Computer

#21

Post by jojobas »

begueradj wrote: post #16

At least Italy is still interesting when it comes to software development. Unlike Japan which had a good start but it is not that good anymore ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ky1nGQhHTso )

Japan just quickly reached a "good enough" state and decided to stay there. Like banks with their COBOL codebase but everywhere.

Re: Olivetti Programma 101: At the Origins of the Personal Computer

#24

Post by stenardo »

begueradj wrote: post #16

At least Italy is still interesting when it comes to software development. Unlike Japan which had a good start but it is not that good anymore ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ky1nGQhHTso )

> At least Italy is still interesting when it comes to software development

nope

Re: Olivetti Programma 101: At the Origins of the Personal Computer

#25

Post by crispyambulance »

Olivetti had a number of iconic products both from a technological and design perspective.

My favorites (in addition to the Programma 101) was the Divisumma calculator and the Valentine typewriter.

https://www.massmadesoul.com/olivetti-divisumma-18 https://www.massmadesoul.com/olivetti-valentine

Absolutely gorgeous looks.

Re: Olivetti Programma 101: At the Origins of the Personal Computer

#26

Post by mrighele »

begueradj wrote: post #16

At least Italy is still interesting when it comes to software development. Unlike Japan which had a good start but it is not that good anymore ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ky1nGQhHTso )

> At least Italy is still interesting when it comes to software development.

Do you have an example ? Doesn't look to me like there is that much great software written in Italy. If you ask me the only thing that comes to my mind right now is antirez and Redis, but then the same can be said about Japan (Matz and Ruby)

Re: Olivetti Programma 101: At the Origins of the Personal Computer

#27

Post by kragen »

fortran77 wrote: post #5
wenc wrote: post #2

I remember Olivetti PCs from the late 80s to 90s. They were beautifully designed -- not SGI or Sun beautiful -- but beautiful for PCs. I like the "grate" design. https://www.ebay.com/itm/325569104545 The IBM PS/2 Model 30 was also quite beautiful https://www.computinghistory.org.uk/userdata/images/large/56...

I worked at Olivetti's Advanced Technology Labs in Cupertino until 1989. We were really making some wonderful stuff then, but the company itself was having trouble, and some scandals. The executive staff were always being arrested for one thing or another (see https://www.nytimes.com/1993/11/03/world/accused-olivetti-ch... for example). We paid more attention to cases, fasteners, and design than most other clone vend…

would you say it's more like lisp or more like forth? this has been a topic of argument

Re: Olivetti Programma 101: At the Origins of the Personal Computer

#28

Post by kragen »

2dvisio wrote: post #17

Still have one of those tucked away at my father’s place. He used to use it at the beginning of his career to run calculations for engineering structural computations before Acca and other similar softwares (in Italy due to very active seismic activity you need to run these sorts of calculations also for very small structures).

if we believe the commenter below about ebay prices, you might be able to buy a new car if you sell it

Re: Olivetti Programma 101: At the Origins of the Personal Computer

#29

Post by 082349872349872 »

arabello wrote: post #10

Silicon Valley might have started in Italy with Olivetti, but political issues and unfortunate events stopped it from happening. There's a great podcast about it (Italian): https://podcast.ilsole24ore.com/serie/olivetti-occasione-per...

The way I heard the story, Olivetti management had planned on naming their new Z8000-based machine the "M16", for 16-bits, and luckily a few americans were able to convince them that, in at least one non-italian country, this syntactic space was already occupied.

(these days it seems it may take some bubble-wrangling to convince uncle Google that when I type "t3x" I want, not Tikka, but NMH)

Re: Olivetti Programma 101: At the Origins of the Personal Computer

#30

Post by archerx »

crispyambulance wrote: post #25

Olivetti had a number of iconic products both from a technological and design perspective. My favorites (in addition to the Programma 101) was the Divisumma calculator and the Valentine typewriter. https://www.massmadesoul.com/olivetti-divisumma-18 https://www.massmadesoul.com/olivetti-valentine Absolutely gorgeous looks.

That calculator reminds me of Neumorphism. Its seems like there really is nothing new under that sun.

https://www.interaction-design.org/literature/topics/neumorp...

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