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Title details for The Mysterious Affair at Olivetti by Meryle Secrest - Available

The Mysterious Affair at Olivetti

IBM, the CIA, and the Cold War Conspiracy to Shut Down Production of the World's First Desktop Computer

by Meryle Secrest
Susan Denaker
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The never-before-told true account of the design and development of the first desktop computer by the world's most famous high-styled typewriter company, more than a decade before the arrival of the Osborne 1, the Apple 1, the first Intel microprocessor, and IBM's PC5150.
The human, business, design, engineering, cold war, and tech story of how the Olivetti company came to be, how it survived two world wars and brought a ravaged Italy back to life, how after it mastered the typewriter business with the famous "Olivetti touch," it entered the new, fierce electronics race; how its first desktop compter, the P101, came to be; how, within eighteen months, it had caught up with, and surpassed, IBM, the American giant that by then had become an arm of the American government, developing advanced weapon systems; Olivetti putting its own mainframe computer on the market with its desktop prototype, selling 40,000 units, including to NASA for its lunar landings. How Olivetti made inroads into the US market by taking control of Underwood of Hartford CT as an assembly plant for Olivetti's own typewriters and future miniaturized personal computers; how a week after Olivetti purchased Underwood, the US government filed an antitrust suit to try to stop it; how Adriano Olivetti, the legendary idealist, socialist, visionary, heir to the company founded by his father, built the company into a fantastical dynasty—factories, offices, satellite buildings spread over more than fifty acres—while on a train headed for Switzerland in 1960 for supposed meetings and then to Hartford, never arrived, dying suddenly of a heart attack at fifty-eight . . . how eighteen months later, his brilliant young engineer, who had assembled Olivetti's superb team of electronic engineers, was killed, as well, in a suspicious car crash, and how the Olivetti company and the P101 came to its insidious and shocking end.
Cover image: Olivetti Programma 101. Museo Nazionale della Scienza e della Tecnologia Leonardo da Vinci, Milan. Wikimedia Creative Commons.

  • Creators

  • Publisher

  • Release date

    November 5, 2019

  • Formats

    • OverDrive Listen audiobook

      • ISBN: 9780593149027
      • File size: 329838 KB
      • Duration: 11:27:09

  • Languages

    • English

  • Reviews

    • Publisher's Weekly

      August 5, 2019
      Biographer Secrest (Elsa Schiaparelli) reveals a little-known slice of computer history in her fascinating account of the Italian typewriter company Olivetti, which created the first desktop computer. The company’s story largely centers on its three leaders: first, Camillo Olivetti, then his son, Adriano; and finally Adriano’s son, Roberto. Each led a fascinating life; Camillo was an inventor and Socialist politician, while Adriano, named company director in 1933, plotted to oust Mussolini during WWII with Princess Marie José Charlotte, future queen of Italy. Following the war, Adriano founded a literary journal and his own Socialist political party, all while steering Olivetti toward ever-greater success and renown. (Günter Grass, Cormac McCarthy, and Gore Vidal all used Olivetti typewriters, Secrest notes.) Roberto, meanwhile, inaugurated Olivetti’s electronics division, which began developing the Programma 101, the first desktop computer, in 1962, two years after Adriano’s fatal heart attack. From here, the story takes a dark and bizarre turn, as Secrest speculates he may in fact have been murdered, perhaps by the CIA to prevent him transferring technology to the Soviets and Chinese. Whether one buys into this conspiracy theory, Secrest offers a riveting look at an ambitious and inventive family deserving wider attention.

Formats

  • OverDrive Listen audiobook

subjects

Languages

  • English

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