Adriano Olivetti

Adriano Olivetti (11 April 1901 – 27 February 1960) was an Italian engineer, entrepreneur, politician, and industrialist. He was known worldwide during his lifetime as the Italian manufacturer of Olivetti brand typewriters, calculators, and computers. He was son of the founder of Olivetti, Camillo Olivetti, and Luisa Revel, the daughter of a prominent Waldensian pastor and scholar. The Olivetti empire had been begun by his father.

The Olivetti factory initially consisted of 30 workers and concentrated on electric measurement devices. By 1908, the company started to produce typewriters.

Adriano Olivetti transformed shop-like operations into a modern factory. He founded the utopian system of the Community Movement. In his company, apart from managers and technicians, he enrolled a large number of artists like writers and architects, following his interest in design and urban and building planning that were closely linked with his personal utopian vision. His participatory and enlightened corporate model was contrasted to the paternalism of Fiat S.p.A.'s Vittorio Valletta.

Biography

Olivetti's father, Camillo Olivetti, who was Jewish, believed that his children could get a better education at home. Olivetti's formative years were spent under the tutelage of his mother, daughter of the local Waldensian pastor, an educated and sober woman. As a socialist, his father emphasized the non-differentiation between manual and intellectual work. During their time away from study, his children worked with and under the same conditions as his workers. The discipline and sobriety the older Olivetti imposed on his family induced rebellion in the younger Olivetti's adolescence manifested by a dislike of his father's workplace and by his studying at a polytechnic school of subjects other than the mechanical engineering that his father wanted.