Camillo Olivetti (1868–1943)

The name Olivetti was famous during the 20th century for high-quality typewriters and calculating machines found in offices and homes around the world. Camillo Olivetti was an electrical engineer in northern Italy who began the company and designed its early products.

He was born in 1868 in Ivrea, north of Turin, into a middle-class Jewish family. He graduated in electrical engineering at Turin in 1891 and studied electrical engineering with the physicist and inventor Galileo Ferraris. He went to London to improve his English and gain experience of electrical work. When he returned to Turin he worked as Ferraris’ assistant and went with him to Chicago for the International Electrical Congress. Meeting Thomas Edison and observing American industrial methods made strong impressions on him. As a result he remained in the United States and for a few months taught electrical engineering at Stanford University.

After returning to Italy he began importing typewriters and bicycles but then founded a company at Ivrea in 1896 to make electrical instruments. He designed the factory using the new Hennebique system of reinforced concrete. In 1903 he moved the company to Milan and then to Monza with finance from several sources. However, due to difficulties with the investors he returned to Ivrea in 1908, where he created a new firm, ‘Ing. C. Olivetti & C’, which announced itself as Italy’s first typewriter manufacturer. He designed the Olivetti M1 along with his own machine-tools to manufacture it. The typewriter went into production in 1911.

During the First World War, the company made aeronautic equipment. After it, Olivetti brought out the M20 typewriter and opened retail branches to promote them against the competition. Part of the assurance of quality he offered was that all the component parts were made in Olivetti’s own workshops to high standards. The company also had its own training centre for mechanics and Olivetti emphasized welfare, innovation and design. His factory, housing and social infrastructure at Ivrea were designed by leading planners and architects as a model social project.

During the 1930s, Olivetti began expanding its range to office furniture, teleprinters and calculating machines. Camillo gradually withdrew from the business for his son Adriano to take over. After Mussolini’s government introduced racial laws he was forced to renounce ownership and he took refuge at a hospital in Biella, where he died in 1943. Adriana fled to Switzerland but returned in 1945. The company remained a leader in typewriters, calculators and computers and is still a global brand. Ivrea is a World Heritage site, where both the Laboratory-Museum and the Olivetti Historical Archive present Olivetti’s story.