In a parallel universe where technological leadership turned out to be the direct result of style, innovation, and technology, this new acquisition of the All About Apple Museum would represent a milestone remembered for anticipating the digital revolution by ten (if not twenty) years. In our dimension, however, the Olivetti Programma 101 remains a curiosity, as well as a piece of extraordinary prestige and historical value for our “Area 51.”
Designed by engineer Pier Giorgio Perotto between 1962 and 1964 and produced by Olivetti between 1965 and 1971, this calculator, sometimes affectionately called the “Perottina,” featured technical characteristics superior to the competition (logical conditions, first and second-level memory) that led some historians to classify it as a true computer—though not without controversy.
Engineer G. Paolo Marinelli, donor of the P101, tells us: “Forefather of modern desktop computers, the Olivetti 101 represents one of the first calculators to appear in the early 1970s, used by professional engineers in many European countries.
The hardware consisted of a power supply unit and two processing units made up of transistors and diodes properly connected: microprocessors had not yet been developed.
The software was created in a machine language made up of 120 instructions per magnetic card, which you can find documented in the attached instruction catalog. The cards you can see next to the calculator were created to solve certain static problems in the structural calculation of buildings.
This calculator accompanied my work as a structural engineer from 1973 to 1990, when it was later replaced by more modern electronic processors. It was a great pleasure for me to donate this device to the Apple Museum in Savona, which hosts, alongside its prized collection, some of the finest examples of our national production. This, in my view, is proof of how Olivetti was, for years, at the forefront of desktop calculators during the ’70s and ’80s.”
The calculator was sold mainly in the United States, with a production of about 44,000 units, ten of which were used by NASA to assist in calculations for the Apollo 11 mission. David W. Whittle, Johnson Space Center, NASA, writes: “At the time of Apollo 11, we had a kind of desktop computer, called the Olivetti Programma 101. It was a sort of super calculator (…). It could add, subtract, multiply, and divide, but it could also remember a sequence of operations, even saving it on a magnetic card (…). It was therefore possible to write a programming sequence and load it into the machine.”
What we affectionately call “Area 51” is a virtual zone of the Museum where visitors are not currently admitted—just like the famous U.S. military site. It physically contains many of the most well-known home computers (“aliens” to the Apple world) from the pre–MS-DOS IBM era, including various Commodore, Atari, ZX Spectrum, MSX, Amstrad, Radio Shack… and many more, either donated or loaned to the Museum. Although they are currently stored in our warehouses, it is our intention to periodically make their contents public (as we have done in the past), so that this important contribution to the spread of home computing may also be highlighted and appreciated by everyone.
