[HN Gopher] Olivetti Programma 101: At the Origins of the Person...
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Olivetti Programma 101: At the Origins of the Personal Computer
Author : rbanffy
Score : 133 points
Date : 2024-08-25 20:20 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.inexhibit.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.inexhibit.com)
| wenc wrote:
| 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...
| BirAdam wrote:
| https://www.ebay.com/itm/166770231506?mkcid=16&mkevt=1&mkrid...
| rbanffy wrote:
| My favorite comes from before the PC era:
|
| https://www.ebay.ie/itm/176082135417
| fortran77 wrote:
| 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 vendors.
|
| I left out of frustration and joined a little company that put
| a stack-based programming language inside laser printers.
| 082349872349872 wrote:
| Did you edit with `jet` by any chance?
|
| Lagniappe: https://www.scaruffi.com/history/long.html
| kragen wrote:
| would you say it's more like lisp or more like forth? this
| has been a topic of argument
| fortran77 wrote:
| It's more like forth if I had to pick one. Though it is
| very lispy -- you can pass functions as objects, etc.
|
| I was quite good at programming in it back in the day.
| kragen wrote:
| you may enjoy my friend nathan's
| http://postscriptcode.com/
|
| he says it's more like forth, i disagree
| NikkiA wrote:
| The IBM PS/1 was the machine I coveted for its beauty, but it
| was overpriced and underspecced when I could finally think
| about one; so a generic beige 386-40 it was.
| AlexDragusin wrote:
| Started on an AT&T 6300 (Olivetti M24)
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olivetti_M24#/media/File:Vinta...
|
| Oh, the memories! Great thing was the keyboard, gave the user
| certain assurance and stability, not sure how would I explain
| it but those of you who used these, would instantly know what I
| mean.
| rjsw wrote:
| The keyboard on the AT&T 6300 looks different to that for the
| Olivetti M24, just comparing the pictures on the wikipedia
| page.
|
| I had an M24, with the original design of Logitech mouse that
| plugged into the keyboard.
| leoc wrote:
| The keyboard with the strongest psychological boost I've ever
| experienced is the M0116 Apple Standard Keyboard
| https://deskthority.net/wiki/Apple_Standard_Keyboard
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hY7XXo5uEZI with its old ALPS
| (Orange, or sometimes Salmon) switches. Every time you press
| a few keys the little voice in your head tells you
| (accurately or not!) "Yes, I have accomplished something
| meaningful. Significant work is being done here." It's really
| quite self-defeating that Apple can't find the pocket change
| necessary to bring back Apple keyboards with early ALPS
| switches, especially now that it's relatively serious about
| desktop computing again. Things could be a lot worse though:
| seven years after introducing the M0116 Apple put out the
| M2980 Apple "Design" "Keyboard"
| https://deskthority.net/wiki/AppleDesign_Keyboard which could
| leave you pining for death.
| reidrac wrote:
| My first PC was an Olivetti Prodest PC1, and it felt a natural
| design back then coming from the "wedge" design of the 8 and 16
| bit machines of the time, as in "the computer is the keyboard".
|
| http://www.seasip.info/VintagePC/prodestpc1.html
|
| I appreciate now how different the design was!
| leoc wrote:
| Yes, Olivetti PCs frequently looked nice. The sting in the tail
| was incompatibility with third-party components, combined with
| high prices.
| kragen wrote:
| the thing i like most about these is that, though normally
| they're executing their machine code from the keyboard like a
| normal calculator, the 'v', 'w', 'y', and 'z' keys jump to user-
| defined machine code addresses and start executing code from
| memory. i think that's an inspiring way to provide an application
| with programmable function keys on a really extremely limited
| computer, far too small for even forth
| KingOfCoders wrote:
| Looking at eBay, 20.000 EUR
| dvh wrote:
| That's only $2000 adjusted for inflation (from 1965)
| erie wrote:
| Back in the 80s, having their typewriters allowing you to delete
| the last 4 characters was cutting-edge material. Then a tiny
| screen was a 'wow moment'.
| arabello wrote:
| 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...
| 082349872349872 wrote:
| 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)
| mattkevan wrote:
| Olivetti also owned Acorn Computer, inventor of the ARM
| processor, although Dave began a good few years before they
| bought it. Apparently the project was so secret that Olivetti
| didn't know about it until the purchase was complete.
| lnxg33k1 wrote:
| The best thing I know about Olivetti, is that nearby my city,
| there is a small village, where there are houses, schools,
| nurseries, etc. and Olivetti production centers, where Olivetti's
| employees were living, it is a great concept to be an innovative
| company, but also really think about the wellbeing of your
| employees, that is now lost, now they maybe give you a pizza,
| some ping pong, and as soon as you're not useful, you're just
| discarded, the american system is a disgrace
| begueradj wrote:
| 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)
| alfiopuglisi wrote:
| Depends. For example cupy (https://github.com/cupy/cupy) is
| developed by a Japanese company and I find it extremely
| effective.
| rbanffy wrote:
| There's also a language called Ruby. I wonder if people have
| heard about it.
| jojobas wrote:
| Japan just quickly reached a "good enough" state and decided to
| stay there. Like banks with their COBOL codebase but
| everywhere.
| stenardo wrote:
| > At least Italy is still interesting when it comes to software
| development
|
| nope
| mrighele wrote:
| > 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)
| 2dvisio wrote:
| 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).
| kragen wrote:
| if we believe the commenter below about ebay prices, you might
| be able to buy a new car if you sell it
| agentcooper wrote:
| Somewhat related: Steve Job's 1983 talk at Aspen design
| conference (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n8Q7gXwavUU) where he
| argues that all good designers are now busy with automobiles and
| buildings and no one is looking at personal computers.
| crispyambulance wrote:
| 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.
| archerx wrote:
| 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...
| inejge wrote:
| The Valentine is famous among the designers, but the truly
| popular model is the Lettera 22[1]: many journalists and
| writers, famous or not, used it, and of course it had a hipster
| revival. (Also a beautiful machine.)
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olivetti_Lettera_22
| aj7 wrote:
| In 1966, we had one in the Stuyvesant HS computer room, along
| with an IBM 1130 system that ran Fortran 4. I got good at the
| Programma, it was quite useful. But I don't recall 240 steps; I
| recall less than 100. Indeed, the much more advanced HP 9100
| circa 1968, with CRT, rpn, and 10-digit accuracy, had only 196.
| spiritplumber wrote:
| Olivetti was amazing but they got screwed by the Italian
| government. Basically executive positions were imposed by Italian
| politics so you ended up with an amazing company with a bunch of
| scumbags at the top siphoning up all the profits.
| kmoser wrote:
| I just finished reading _Empire of the Sum: The Rise and Reign of
| the Pocket Calculator_ , which describes the Programma and many
| of its contemporaries. Highly recommended reading if you're
| interested in the history of calculating machines and how they
| intersect with computers.
| insane_dreamer wrote:
| I had their typewriter many many years ago; didn't even know they
| did PCs.
| johnkozak wrote:
| The first machine I was paid to write code for! Fond memories.
| effed3 wrote:
| the history of p101 from one of the creators:
| https://archive.org/details/programma101. It's a fascinating
| reading (sorry, Italian language, hire google for help..),
| directly from the source, about those years when a new world was
| born, full of big promises and incredible mistakes. Olivetti is
| still a case study in economy and management.
| effed3 wrote:
| also:
| https://web.archive.org/web/20060511054748/https://www.pierg...
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