Adriano Olivetti

Who was Adriano Olivetti?

Adriano Olivetti was an Italian engineer, politician and industrialist whose entrepreneurial activity thrived on the idea that profit should be reinvested for the benefits of the whole society. He was son of the founder of Olivetti, Camillo Olivetti, and Luisa Revel, the daughter of a prominent Waldensian pastor and scholar. Adriano Olivetti was known worldwide during his lifetime as the Italian manufacturer of Olivetti typewriters, calculators, and computers.

Olivetti was an entrepreneur and innovator who transformed shop-like operations into a modern factory. In and out of the factory, he both practiced and preached the utopian system of "the community movement", but he was not an astute enough politician to have a mass following.

The Olivetti empire was begun by his father Camillo. Initially, the "factory" concentrated on electric measurement devices. By 1908, 25 years after Remington in the United States, Olivetti started to produce typewriters.